Agriculture for the Future

    For my culminating action project for my Climate Change Communication class, I published a podcast called Agriculture for The Future. 

        Since agriculture plays a huge role in climate change (and is one I'm passionate about), I thought it'd be interesting to look at climate resilient agriculture strategies and how they're working to improve our food security throughout the world. This podcast seeked two answer two questions; (1) how are we handling agriculture in the face of our current climate emergency? and (2) how do these strategies that we’re using improve our food security throughout the world?

    In order to fully answer these two questions, I created a five episode podcast. The audience that I intended for this podcast were people who were interested in sustainable agriculture, people who were worried about climate change, farmers and people who are interested in how our food security will look during our climate crisis.

    My main reasoning for doing a podcast was because I wanted to make information accessible and easily digestible. I had a set of target audiences that I wanted to educate about climate resilient agricultural strategies and food security and, based on the audience, I figured a podcast would be a good way to reach a variety of people, especially because it is something that can be listened to during drives and possibly while working as well.  Splitting it up into episodes was supposed to enhance digestibility as well as create a podcast that was easier to stop and resume later. In addition to that, every episode has sources listed  in the 'summary' section in order to make it easy for people to see where I got my information from and so that they could reference it later.

    My podcast was published here. That link leads to anchor.fm, which was where I recorded and edited all five episodes of my podcast. In addition to that, my podcast was also published on Spotify, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Google Podcast and Breaker.

    In order to gain attention to my podcast, I posted on my story and messaged people directly who I thought would be interested in my podcast. Below are two examples of posts across different social medias:

        

   

     One of the connections that I made to class was found in"Reframing the Climate Messages" in What we Think About When We Try Not Global Warming by Per Espen Stoknes. This section was primarily talking about how climate change has been routinely framed as a "disaster, destruction, cost, uncertainty and sacrifice". This negative framing rarely works to get people to think about climate change, enhance their avoidance of the topic and inhibits the massive social change necessary. Talking about climate in a more hopeful frames -- such as a security and opportunistic frame -- is more conducive to action. In terms of the podcast that I produced, I wanted to create a different framing of the climate message and chose to address frames such as security, preparedness and opportunity to hopefully create a stronger climate message. I also referenced this directly in the final episode of my podcast. 

    Another connection that I made to class was found in "The Power of Social Networks" in What we Think About When We Try Not Global Warming by Per Espen Stoknes. This chapter within the book was centered around creating a 'social norm' surrounding climate change. The best way to influence people is through social norms. When thinking about this podcast, this was something that I directly wanted to address. By improving the framing of the issue and providing the information, I was hoping that it would improve the social norms that were there. I referenced social norms directly in the fifth episode of my podcast with the idea that it's important for other farmers to see other farms making change in order for their social norms to shift.

   

    The final class connection that I made was Climate Change and Ideological Transformation in United States Agriculture by Diana Stuart. This paper was centered around how farmer's view climate change and how industrial agriculture will continue to constrain the adoption of climate change mitigation measures. This paper was the one that originally influenced me to do my podcast on climate change resilient agriculture. It provided great background knowledge on how farmers view climate change and how they view the current agricultural systems. This was particularly influential in me picking out how I was going to address the topic of climate change within my podcast; first, with a different frame and, second, with enough information to supply even a small change to social norms.

    Some issues that I ran into were issues with getting visibility for the podcast. While I originally had planned to gain 250 plays, after doing some more research surrounding podcasts and speaking to more people in the podcast community, I adjusted my number to be 50 plays. Something that I found that worked really was was messaging people directly and asking them to listen. By identifying people that were interested in this podcast and reaching out directly, they usually were eager to listen and give me feedback on what to do better in my next episodes and how to better structure my episodes. This would be something that I would potentially enjoy pursuing in the future surrounding agriculture and climate change though I think it'd be more interesting to conduct my podcast in a interview/conversational format to enhance the changing of social norms and framing aspects I hoped to achieve. 

    As of Tuesday, May 11th at 12:13 PM, I have a total of 27 plays. 

      My most popular episode by far was Episode 1: Introduction to agriculture within the United States and climate resilient agriculture. Further break down can be seen in this graph below. 

    As for my listener breakdown, here's a breakdown of where they're located and what platforms are reaching the most people.

    Once again,  my podcast was published here. That link leads to anchor.fm, which was where I recorded and edited all five episodes of my podcast. In addition to that, my podcast was also published on Spotify, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Google Podcast and Breaker.

References:

Amadeo, K. (2019). How the U.S. Agriculture Industry Works. The Balance. https://www.thebalance.com/us-agriculture-stats-facts-history-4776144.

August 7, 1997. (1997, August 7). U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists. Cornell Chronicle. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat.

Lengnick, L. (2020, September 30). Adaptive Capacity and Climate Resilience. SARE. https://www.sare.org/publications/climate-risk-management-and-resilience-on-farms-and-ranches/understanding-climate-risk/adaptive-capacity-and-climate-resilience/.

Srinivasarao, C. (2021). Climate resilient agriculture systems: The way ahead. Down To Earth. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/agriculture/climate-resilient-agriculture-systems-the-way-ahead-75385#:~:text=Climate%2Dresilient%20agriculture%20(CRA)%20is%20an%20approach%20that%20includes,farm%20incomes%20under%20climate%20variabilities.

USDA, Climate change, global food security and the U.S. food system (2015).

Adaptive Capacity and Climate Resilience. SARE. https://www.sare.org/publications/climate-risk-management-and-resilience-on-farms-and-ranches/understanding-climate-risk/adaptive-capacity-and-climate-resilience/.

Ngumbi, E. (2019). Becoming Drought Resilient: Why African Farmers Must Consider Drought Tolerant Crops. Reliefweb. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/becoming-drought-resilient-why-african-farmers-must-consider-drought-tolerant-crops#:~:text=Importantly%2C%20there%20are%20benefits%20of,periods%20when%20the%20rains%20fail.

Charles White. (2017) Penn State Extension. https://extension.psu.edu/managing-soil-health-concepts-and-practices.

Climate-Resilient Farms. NRDC. (2021, February 2). https://www.nrdc.org/issues/climate-resilient-farms#priority-experts-resources.

Council on Foreign Relations. (n.d.). Rising Hunger: Facing a Food-Insecure World. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/article/rising-hunger-facing-food-insecure-world#:~:text=Global%20food%20insecurity%20has%20surged,and%20spur%20further%20mass%20migration.&text=In%202019%2C%20an%20estimated%20135,the%20UN%20food%20assistance%20agency.

Mwanundu, S., & Firmian, I. (2015). Climate-resilient Agriculture Development. ifad.org. https://www.ifad.org/documents/38714170/40264252/climate_sun.pdf/15655fe0-d06f-434e-b4ea-df9017c93ef2

A Closer Look at the 2018 Farm Bill: Working Lands Conservation Programs. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. (2019, July 24). https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/a-closer-look-at-the-2018-farm-bill-working-lands-conservation-programs/

Conservation Reserve Program. (n.d.). https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-programs/conservation-reserve-program/index

Willingham, Z. (2021, January 21). Promoting Climate-Resilient Agricultural and Rural Credit. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2021/01/14/494574/promoting-climate-resilient-agricultural-rural-credit/

Stuart, Diana. (2017). Climate Change and Ideological Transformation in United States Agriculture. Sociologia Ruralis. 58. 10.1111/soru.12175.

Chapter 9: The Power of Social Networks. (2015). In What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action (pp. 168-189). Chelsea Green Publishing.

Chapter 10: Reframing the Climate Messages. (2015). In What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action (pp. 190-209). Chelsea Green Publishing.