Farm Magazines Research Articles

Metaphors in climate discourse: an analysis of Swedish farm magazines

This article examines communicative aspects of climate change, identifying and analysing metaphors used in specialized media reports on climate change, and discussing the aspects of climate change these metaphors emphasize and neglect. Through a critical discourse analysis of the two largest Swedish farm magazines over the 2000–2009 period, this study finds that greenhouse, war, and game metaphors were the most frequently used metaphors in the material. The analysis indicates that greenhouse metaphors are used to ascribe certain natural science characteristics to climate change, game metaphors to address positive impacts of climate change, and war metaphors to highlight negative impacts of climate change. The paper concludes by discussing the contrasting and complementary metaphorical representations farm magazines use to conventionalize climate change.

Review: The War on Bugs

Review: The War on Bugs By Will Allen Reviewed by Byron Anderson Northern Illinois University, USA Allen, Will. The War on Bugs. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008. xxix, 268 pp. ISBN 9781933392462. US$35.00, paper. Printed on chlorine-free, 20-percent post-consumer-waste old- growth-forest-free recycled paper, using soy-based ink whenever possible. The book’s premise is “that advertising and propaganda campaigns have historically played, and continue to play, a very important role in guiding a farmer’s choice in which products to buy” (p. xxi). The content proceeds chronologically from the 1840s to the 2000s. For the past 160 years, farm magazines have advocated for chemical use in agriculture through editorials, testimonials from both scientists and farmers, and saturation advertising. Farm magazines have had undue influence on farmer decisions, especially in convincing them to use chemical-based solutions in declaring a war on bugs, weeds, and declining soil fertility. Early magazines had a near monopolistic advantage with no media competition and free subscriptions. Use of toxic pesticide on a large scale started in the 1860s with the use of arsenic to control potato bugs. There was notable farmer resistance to adopting chemicals through the 19 th century, but by playing on fear of loss of crops and profits, chemical companies, government agencies, and farm magazines convinced farmers to use chemicals in place of biological farming strategies. By the early 1900s, cyanide had replaced arsenic, and later came synthetic nitrogen, hormones, antibiotics, and more recently, genetically modified organisms. Use of farming chemicals reach a phenomenal growth rate, for example, in the 1930s, 3.5 percent of farm acreage used fertilizer with synthetic nitrogen, by the 1990s, it was used by 90 percent. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth century, farmers did not see chemicals as synthetic poisons and did not know how dangerous they were. Heavy reliance on chemicals did produce, in many cases, short-term benefits, for example, eradication of unwanted bugs. This would last only until the bugs became resistant to the pesticide, a fact well documented in the book. Marketers pictured farmers as being engaged in a war, and this is reinforced by the fact that some of the chemicals used by farmers, for example, parathion and malathion, were also used in war, in this case as nerve poison. The book contains dozens of copies of advertisements from farm magazines that were used to promote chemical usage over time. Even Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) becomes involved. The chapter, Pesticide Spray Devices, Household Poisons, and Dr. Seuss, reproduces a number of cartoons by him and others which helped to promote the myth that poisonous chemicals were necessary and not to be feared. The chapter Liebig and the Industrialists provides a good overview of agricultural chemistry and chemists and the emergence of agricultural science. The chapter Twentieth-First-Century Populism: Organic Farming and the Anti-factory-farm Movement ushers in a more hopeful future. The author ends by calling for “an agricultural policy that emphasizes sustainability” (p. 240) with the goal to “be able to buy safe food wherever we live” (p. 241). Will Allen has a doctoral degree in anthropology and co-manages a large organic farm in Vermont. The book has two useful timelines covering 1865 to 2007, and numerous photos and illustrations ably supplement the text. An appendix outlines the amount of pesticide use on certain crops from California. Notes, a bibliography, and index complete the book. Recommended for public libraries, undergraduate collections, agriculture collections, and anyone interested in the history or expansion of agricultural chemicals. Byron Anderson , Acting Associate Dean, Northern Illinois University Libraries, DeKalb, IL 60115 USA. TEL: 815-753-9804, FAX: 815-753-9803.

Work, Family, and Faith: Rural Southern Women in the Twentieth Century

In Work, Family, and Faith, the editors Melissa Walker and Rebecca Sharpless achieve their stated aim of providing an “accessible introduction to scholarship on twentieth-century southern rural women” (p. 3). The essays are based on a rich trove of evidence: fascinating oral history interviews, farm magazines of the era, works of the Federal Writers' Project, government documents of the Progressive Era and the New Deal, and material from the archives of the Methodist Church and the Salvation Army. The stories tell about the rural South from the perspective of ordinary women, whose voices come through strong and clear. Sharpless and Walker are to be thanked for sharing the results of their fifteen years of research on rural southern women. They have collected nine essays that tell powerful local stories and, through scholarly analysis by the authors, give those stories universal meaning. Women—black and white—in the poor rural South adapted heroically to the dramatic changes of the twentieth century, balancing work and family, and leavened both with faith.

From Barbarian Farmers to Yeoman Consumers: Curtis Publishing Company and the Search for Rural America, 1910–1930

This article argues that rural America became an increasingly important focal point for marketers and advertisers in the early twentieth century even as the United States was becoming increasingly urban. It focuses on Curtis Publishing Company, the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies' Home Journal, and looks at how Curtis and others in the advertising world saw the farm market as crucial to creating a truly national marketplace as a consumer economy in the United States began to expand rapidly. It examines the rise of Curtis's farm magazine, Country Gentleman, and looks at how Curtis, especially, took the nineteenth-century symbol of the yeoman farmer and recast it in terms of consumption. In doing so, it created an idealistic image of a new class of consumers, an image that urban advertisers easily understood and willingly bought.

Greening pesticides: A historical analysis of the social construction of farm chemical advertisements

Ideology is maintained anddriven by powerful symbols. Agricultural mediasuch as farm magazines achieve this byappropriating societal values of currency andincorporating them in imagery that accompanyadvertisements of agricultural products,including pesticides. Critical questionsrelating to environmental sustainability andsocial risks associated with the use of suchproducts are often masked as a result. Contentanalyses of two mid-western farm magazines fromthe 1940s to 1990s trace the socialconstruction of pesticide advertisements overtime, illuminating changing images ofpesticides in farm magazine advertisements inresponse to changes in the socio-culturalsetting. Changing images reflect how theagricultural industry strategically repositionsitself to sustain market and corporate profitby co-opting dominant cultural themes atspecific historical moments in mediaadvertising. Sustainability implications in thebroad context of agriculture and society areexamined.

Survey of Management Practices Used for the Highest Producing DHI Herds in the United States

This study was initiated to identify management practices that characterize the highest producing dairy herds. The top Dairy Herd Improvement herds, based on yearly rolling herd average for milk, were identified, and producers were surveyed to obtain information on nutritional management, reproductive management, herd health management, facilities, implementation incentives, preferred information delivery systems, and future plans. Survey forms were returned from 133 of 250 Holstein and 20 of 47 Jersey farms that were identified as top producing herds. The average production of identified Holstein herds was 13,368 kg/yr of milk, 479.9 kg/yr of fat (3.59%), and 424.5 kg/yr of protein (3.17%). The 47 Jersey herds averaged 8,844 kg/yr of milk, 409.8 kg/yr of fat (4.63%), and 332.2 kg/yr of protein (3.17%). Breeding efficiency of high producing Holstein herds apparently declined since a 1992 survey, with means of 100.2 d to first service, 2.8 services per conception, 163.0 d open, and 14.5 mo calving interval. Feeds primarily used (percentage of respondents) were: corn silage (91.0%), legume haylage (81.2%), legume hay (57.9%), corn grain (83.5%), soybean meal (70.7%), whole cottonseed (70.8%), and roasted soybeans (47.7%). Producers responding to the survey remained optimistic that they can continue to increase production per cow. They express most interest in receiving new information from farm magazines, on-farm demonstrations, farm visits, printed fact sheets, farm field days, and group meetings. Although 87.5% have a computer, these producers strongly resist satellite programs, home study courses, Internet, and computer programs as a means of receiving information.

Sources of information for commercial farms: usefulness of media and personal sources

The usefulness of several information sources is examined for U.S. farms with sales in excess of $100,000. The results indicate that crop/livestock-specific magazines and general farm magazines are the most useful information sources. Analyses indicate that the types and number of different commodities that the farm produced, as well as Internet use, are the most consistent predictors of attitudes toward various information sources. However, characteristics that explain attitudes toward different information sources vary substantially across the information sources considered.

Cost, Average Returns, and Risk of Switching to Narrow Row Corn

The objective of this analysis was to compare the production cost, average profitability, and risk of corn (Zea mays L.) in 30 in, rows with rows of approximately 20 in. Baseline yield advantage estimates were made by pooling publicly available research data. A narrow row yield data set from Pioneer Hi-Bred International (Pioneer) was used to test the sensitivity of results. For the producer who currently uses a 30 in, row planter for corn only, narrow row corn would increase long term equipment costs by about $6.50/acre per yr. Much of the narrow row cost discussion has focused on equipment, but for many producers increased corn rootworm (Diabrotica spp.) insecticide costs would be more important. This analysis indicated that narrow row corn has potential economic advantages in the northern Corn Belt Some benefits and costs of narrow row corn could not be quantified in this analysis. These included use of narrow row planters for both corn and soybeans, potential for reduced herbicide use, increased stalk breakage, increased starter fertilizer, and business risks related to use of custom operators and resale value of equipment.

The Ideology of Success in Major American Farm Magazines, 1934–1991

During the past century, the farm press used farm magazine stories about successful farmers to offer readers models of responses to industrialization and technological change in U.S. agriculture. This analysis of “success” stories in three major American farm magazines from 1934 through 1991 shows they have consistently featured farmers with larger than average farms and portrayed them in a way that promotes conventional, commercial agrarian values of production, efficiency, and expansion. The stories also have used agrarian imagery to further advertiser interests and marginalize more traditional conceptions of farming success.

Silent Partners: Women in Farm Magazine Success Stories, 1934–19911

Abstract Women's contributions to the farm and farm household have historically been undervalued. An analysis of farm magazine “success” stories through six decades indicates that these stories may be a vehicle for reproducing and transmitting a traditional domestic ideology that separates farm production from the rest of the farm household and that rarely portrays women as significant contributors to the economic well‐being of either. Magazine stories depict women as spouses or farm helpers, but not as producers or decision‐makers. Farm magazines thus offer few models of realistic gender relations for either farm women or farm men.

The Safety Education Training Needs Of Farmers And Ranchers With Physical Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceived safety education training needs of individuals who were farming or ranching with a physical disability. A survey was developed and administered to 1,954 farmers and ranchers who were known to have severe physical disabilities. A total of 627 surveys were returned for a response rate of 32.1 percent. Of the surveys returned, 552 were used in the final evaluation. Slightly over 41 percent of the respondents reported spinal cord injury as their disability and over 30 percent reported either an upper or lower limb amputation. Forty percent had been disabled for less than 10 years. Working with livestock was perceived by the respondents to be the most hazardous task on their farming or ranching operation, followed closely by operation of tractors and machinery. The participants in this study indicated a great need for educational safety training to reduce their rate of injury. They identified newsletters and related resources as being the most helpful in preventing injuries to those farming and ranching with a physical disability, as well as that most helpful system of delivering safety information, followed by farm magazines and the Cooperative Extension Service. Safety topic information most desired by respondents was machinery and tractors, followed by livestock.

A “curious blend”: The successful farmer in American farm magazines, 1984–1991

Mass media images offer audiences models for how to perform the social roles they depict. Opinions and other attributes of credible media models may likewise be embraced by audience members seeking to identify with those models. Thus farm magazine narratives about “successful” farmers may encourage readers to model or aspire to featured farmers' production and management techniques and ascribe legitimacy to models' responses to current agricultural issues. However, production of agrarian images in the mass media — including images of farms, farmers, and farmers' values — are inevitably biased such that media representations of successful farmers selectively present objective characteristics in terms of the media's own ideological frameworks, which in turn reflect the dominant ideology of the social relations in which the media are engaged. As a first step in identifying farm magazines' role in creating social models for farmers, this study analyzes articles featuring “successful,” “leading,” or “innovative” farmers in leading agricultural magazines. The featured farmers are categorized according to enterprise characteristics and characterizations of them and their management philosophies. Findings show that farmers in farm magazines have larger than average operations and are portrayed in a way that blends a “farming as business” orientation with more conventional agrarian values but that generally omits non-business aspects of farm life.

Journalists' views of advertiser pressures on agricultural news

All major journalism ethical codes explicitly state that journalists should protect editorial copy from undue influence by outside sources. However, much of the previous research on agricultural information has concentrated on what information various media communicate (gatekeeping studies) or communication's role in increasing innovation adoption (diffusion studies). Few studies have concentrated specifically on organizational and structural constraints that might adversely affect agricultural journalists' ethical standards; those that have, focus largely on farm magazines. A study of newspaper reporters who cover agricultural news found that the most pressing ethical concern is the effect of advertiser (agri-business) pressure on editorial copy, and that their concerns in general parallel those of farm magazine writers and editors. The majority reported being in situations in which they might be exposed to advertiser pressure, including pressures to change or withhold editorial copy. Large minorities suggested that advertising pressures affect the overall environment in which agricultural journalists work, and more than one in ten said they allow advertiser pressures to influence editorial decisions. The newspaper reporters who cover agricultural beats showed slightly more resistance to advertiser pressure than did farm magazine editors in a parallel study.

Agricultural Journalists' Assessments of Print Coverage of Agricultural News1

Abstract Critics of agricultural news claim farm media and mass media coverage of agriculture is systematically distorted, a condition that could seriously affect the agricultural information system. A national survey used agricultural journalists as expert judges to assess how well three types of print journalists cover agricultural news. Their assessments indicated that mass media reporters who do not regularly cover agricultural news tend to write agriculture stories that are superficial and stereotyped but not biased toward agricultural interests. Farm magazine writers' stories are not superficial or stereotyped, but writers are uncritical of agriculture, biased toward agroindustry, and overlook important social and environmental issues. Newspaper farm beat reporters are closer to farm magazine writers in not trivializing agriculture and closer to general newspaper reporters in avoiding close ties with industry. Both farmers and public thus receive biased and fragmented reporting that may polarize their views on current agricultural issues. Even if reporters are aware of critical shortcomings in their coverage, improvement may require reduction in structural constraints on story choice.

Characterization of the Management Practices of the Top Milk Producing Herds in the Country

Out of 128 surveys mailed to dairy farms that had been identified by the nine DHI processing centers as the top milk producing herds in the country, 61 surveys were returned. The predominant forage being fed was corn silage, followed by legume hay and haylage. On average, 6.7 feed additives and 3.5 alternative feeds were fed. Producers reported the following incidences of metabolic disorders: parturient paresis, 7.2%; displaced abomasum, 3.3%; ketosis, 3.7%; and nonspecific downer cow syndrome, 1.1%. Producers scheduled detection of estrus 3.1 times per day. Only 18.3% of the herds used routine synchronization of estrus. Artificial insemination was used on 94.8% of the cows and 88.5% of the heifers. The most important trait in sire selection was PTA for milk. For mastitis control, 75.4% of the producers practiced predipping, 85.2% used individual paper towels, 93.4% practiced postdipping, and 95.1% treated all cows at cessation of milking. Increased profitability and lower costs or higher returns were the primary motivators of these producers. Veterinarians were the most frequent source of information, followed by farm magazines. Satellite delivery of educational programs was the least acceptable delivery method. Extension professionals need to be cognizant of the producers’ preferred information sources and delivery systems to ensure accurate, timely, cost-effective transfer of technologicaladvances.

Filling the white space between the ads

In this personal essay, subtitled “A jaundiced view of journalism after 30 years in the trenches,” the author discusses the ethics challenges too often involved in the relationships between farm magazines and advertisers. Collusion between advertisers and editors is a clear and present danger, particularly in times when publications are struggling economically. Yet a more important question relates to agricultural journalists' collective failure to report on the underlying structural changes in agriculture and the broader society.

An activist press: The farm press's coverage of the animal rights movement

The animal rights movement is a serious challenge to current agricultural practices. Agriculture's response, in part, depends on how successfully it can mobilize its natural constituency, farmers. However, theories of the mainstream press suggest that the mainstream press generally covers events, rarely reports or adopts the perspective of alternative movements, rarely includes mobilizing information, and suggests that routine social structures can, should, and will contain the movement. Hence, current theory indicates that the mainstream press does not act to mobilize the general public. However, very little research has examined how specialized presses, such as the farm press, respond to movements. The study reported here was based on an analysis of 406 articles from ten farm magazines. The findings suggest that the farm press acted more as an advocacy press than does the mainstream press. Collectively, the farm press articles included as many positions pieces and stories explaining animal rights as an issue as they did event stories. The articles reported, and countered, the positions of the animal rights movement; suggested that routine social structures might not contain the animal rights movement; called for agriculture to mobilize; and included specific recommendations concerning how agriculture should mobilize.

Life in the Upper Country. The Diary of Evelyn E. Amos

Reviews 269 craftsmanship of the Hasting’s Chautaqua Pavilion photograph—the careful composition, the control of light, and the well-printed details—make it a pleasure to read, while also evoking the dignity of the structure’s purpose, though the dumpsters now present suggest Sunday School picnics rather than lectures. In this photograph and others, the dryness struggled against is not literal but metaphorical. Mostbuildings are presented asmonuments, grand or simple attempts to bring culture to a barren land. Bruhn imaginatively presents echoes between the more elaborate, urban public structures and private mansions and the rural houses, halls, and barns that through simple decorative features create buildings that shelter against more than winter storms. Poet Ted Kooser in his introduction observes that this collection “honors and in many instances reveres its subject.” Although true, Bruhn’s generally direct approach, especially to building exteriors, also limits the book’s emo­ tional range. He states in the preface that the use of black and white can evoke the archetypal and eternal, but at the same time it can also abstract, decontextualize, and evoke a formalist photographic tradition. Thus the photographer’s vision of this dry land at times seems overly serene. Nevertheless, Bruhn and the buildings he has photographed deserve to be honored for the sense of culture they have created. REGINALD DYCK University of Washington Life in the Upper Country. The Diary ofEvelyn E. Amos. (Boise, Idaho: cold-drill books, 1990. 122 pages, $12.95.) While reading this journal I kept asking myself, to whom is Ms. Amos writing? Who is her audience? The “you”in this diary disturbs me. This doesn’t seem to be a therapeutic exercise, since her feelings are almost entirely absent from its pages, nor is it a record of the past for her children, because her three sons are living this same life alongside of her, participating in everything she’s “instructing” her readers about such as hog butchering and sausage making: “(And maybe you think it doesn’t take a lot of elbow grease to turn that hand meat grinder).” Her husband kills a civet cat: “Boy, what a strong atomizer for a small creature—fetid scent billowed from the coop like smoke.” Much of this diary is written in a style like the above quote. I can forgive such silly mock 19th-century prose if what I’m reading gives me some worth­ while insight into a forgotten past or an unfamiliar landscape, but the period about which Ms. Amos is writing is 1948-1957, the period of my own childhood, 270 WesternAmerican Literature and I find the patronizing voice in these pages offensive, such as the cataloging of mundane chores addressed with an attitude of their being unusual hardship. She also takes pride in living in a dump when she receives an ad for a farm magazine subscription with home decorating suggestions, “I laughed at how these appealing ideas did not apply to m e....”She catalogs her canning shelves and says, “At the first glance, this list appears to be quite avariety, but actually it isn’t, as anyone who examines a canning recipe booklet can tell you.”Here we encounter that annoying “you”again. Canning doesn’t seem like an abnormal occupation to me, and it probably wasn’t unusual for most women during this period, city women included, so I have trouble jumping on the bandwagon here. As I scan her list of cauliflower pickles, pickled beets, etc., my experience tells me that she has probably wasted much of her precious time since most of these things may look great on a cellar shelf, and they even look nice in little crystal bowls on a lace tablecloth at family gatherings, but no one actually eats much of them. They’re scraped off polite people’s plates into the slop bucket. I kept hoping I’d get a glimpse of the woman Evelyn Amos in these pages, but she keeps her inner life quite strictly to herself, which I suppose is a survival trait of most farm women who feel that if they openly address their loneliness they will cease to be able to live with it. I do, however...

Feeling the Heat from Advertisers: Farm Magazine Writers and Ethical Pressures

Responses from a mail survey of 190 journalists who work for farm journals—a 78% response rate—reveal that about two thirds of the journalists say advertisers have threatened their journals on occasion, and about one-half say that advertising has actually been withdrawn. The journalists also report that advertisers sometimes attempt to win over journalists with gifts, free meals, or in other ways, usually not with success. These journalists report that most farm publications do not have a clear policy in dealing with advertiser influence. At the same time, most farm journals are struggling to maintain advertising, a struggle that makes them vulnerable to pressures.

Sources, Uses, and Adequacy of Marketing Information for Commercial Midwestern Cash Grain Farmers

AbstractThe objective of this research is to better understand the use of marketing information by cash grain farmers. In particular, factors which influence farmers' perceptions of the “adequacy” of their marketing information supply are examined. Statistical analyses of a random sample of Ohio cash grain farmers were employed in these evaluations. Radio broadcasts and general farm magazines were the two marketing information sources most frequently cited as useful. Highly formalized and marketing specific sources such as marketing consultants, commercial advisory newsletters and computerized information sources were cited relatively infrequently. Radio and television broadcasts were more frequently cited as the ‘most useful’ source of marketing information by older farmers and operators of small farms than by their counterparts. Marketing professionals were cited as ‘most useful’ more frequently by operators of larger farms and operators with at least some college education. A multivariate logit analysis was used to examine the joint effect of operator, farm and information source characteristics on information adequacy evaluations. The probability of an “adequate” evaluation was positively influenced by total farm information expenditure, the use of time‐diversified marketing of grain from storage facilities, and the use of marketing consultants, brokers or commercial advisory newsletters as the primary source of marketing information.