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Communication Strategies to Support Agricultural Innovations and Engagement

Project Description

View All Funded Pilot Projects

2015-present

Our approach is to work in collaboration with UMASH efforts to raise awareness about lowstress animal handling techniques, also known as stockmanship, among dairy farmers in Minnesota. Our project focuses specifically on identifying the best communication strategies, channels, and content to reach dairy farmers and agricultural media organizations to share training and educational materials.

Our project will identify how agricultural media organizations have covered stockmanship information in the past. We will also investigate the understanding of stockmanship practices among dairy farmers, attitudes towards practices, barriers to implementing practices and communication preferences for receiving information about stockmanship. This foundational research will allow us to make communication recommendations for sharing key information. As UMASH is about to release videos and has made some attempts to attract dairy farmers to trainings, this historical and ongoing work provides a foundation to build communications campaign recommendations designed specifically for rural communities and farmers. This provides an excellent opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness and potential to leverage communication to increase dialogue about these issues.

Our project focuses specifically on identifying the best communication strategies, channels, and content to reach dairy farmers and agricultural media organizations to share training and educational materials.

Project Personnel

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Photo of Rebecca Swenson PhD

Rebecca Swenson, PhD

Assistant Professor of Agricultural, Food and Natural Resource Communication Agricultural EducationUniversity of Minnesota
Address 146D Ruttan Hall Phone: 612-625-3866
VIEW CENTER ACTIVITIES

Publications and Presentations

  • Swenson, R. (2018). Safely through the Gate: Exploring Media Coverage and Journalists Decisions on the Flow of Farm Safety Stories, Journal of Applied Communications. 102(2). https://doi.org/10.4148/1051-0834.1840
  • Wilmes, E., & Swenson, R. (2019). Engaging Dairy Farmers in Safety Messages: Values, Moral Norms, Barriers, and Implications for Communication. Journal of Applied Communications. 103(1). https://doi.org/10.4148/1051-0834.2204
  • Swenson R and Wilmes E. Engaging dairy producers: stockmanship, farm safety, worker education and communication. 2016 NORA Symposium. Minneapolis, MN. May 4, 2016.
  • Swenson R and Wilmes E. Engaging dairy producers with stockmanship and messages; research findings and implications for communication strategies. 2017 NORA Symposium. Minneapolis, MN. May 5, 2017.
  • Wilmes, E., Swenson R. Engaging dairy producers with stockmanship and messages; research findings and implications for communication strategies. International Society for Agricultural Safety and Health (ISASH). Logan, UT. June 25-28, 2017.

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