Abstract
Disruptions from COVID-19 forced agricultural business owners to navigate the uncertainty of market disruptions with limited information. As an effect, the quality of information available for agricultural businesses to adapt to changes was a concern. The purpose of this study was to determine the availability and credibility of resources for agricultural businesses to make informed decisions about food markets during COVID-19. Source credibility was the guiding framework to achieve the research objectives of 1) Describe resources available related to impacts of COVID-19 on the food supply chain, 2) Determine the credibility of available resources. A quantitative content and textual analyses were employed. Results revealed 401 terms used to describe resources (n = 779). Eleven of the top 36 terms were used over 100 times. These were: farmer, resources, farm, market, business, local, health, safe, supply, agriculture, and chain. The majority of resources (66%, f = 514) were mid-level credible sources (industry/business organization, online/print news source, nonprofit), and 32.2% (f = 251) were of the highest credibility (university scientists, USDA scientist, Extension). Implications of this work show an opportunity for university and Extension systems to publish resources and serve as credible sources related to this particular crisis.
Highlights
Introduction and Problem StatementA crisis is a complex event that causes or threatens to cause widespread disaster among a whole social system, often with an urgent timeline forcing rapid responses (Pauchant & Mitroff, 1990)
The overall purpose of this study was to explore an area of literature otherwise unknown and to describe resources available to help enable agricultural business owners to make better informed decisions based on credible, trustworthy resources during the COVID-19 pandemic
The first way the sample was gathered was by using a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) website that aggregated resources related to the topic of COVID-19 food supply chain disruptions
Summary
Introduction and Problem StatementA crisis is a complex event that causes or threatens to cause widespread disaster among a whole social system, often with an urgent timeline forcing rapid responses (Pauchant & Mitroff, 1990). The impacts to agriculture were great with disruptions in food supply chains (Duvall, 2020) and increased need for alternative methods of selling agricultural products to meet new needs (Nelson, 2020) These social behavior changes, specific to agriculture, have continued well into 2021 and are observed as changes in consumers’ food buying patterns and disruptions to supply chains (Nakat & Bou-Mitri, 2021). Little is known about what resources currently exist for agricultural business owners related to COVID-19 food supply disruptions. Because of this problem, this study sought to explore and identify available resources and assess the quality of resources, in terms of authoring source credibility. With a better understanding of what topic areas are already covered and the credibility level of those existing resources, researchers and communicators can have insight when working to fill the needs of agricultural business owners navigating COVID-19 impacts
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