Communicating with farmers about conservation
With an interdisciplinary team, we sought to understand farmers’ interest in adopting edge-of-field practices. These practices which can improve soil & water quality. We conducted a content analysis of news coverage about conservation and agricultural practices, a survey of farmers in Iowa about edge-of-field practices, and - to investigate how to expand audiences for conservation content - a social media message test.
My collaborators
Dr. Dara Wald
Dr. Jacqueline Comito
Eric Williams
Elizabeth Ripley
Iowa Learning Farms team
Research highlights
We began our work with a review of other studies that surveyed farmers about conservation. Through that process, we identified gaps in research when it comes to communicating with farmers, such as understanding more about how and when they use social media to learn about conservation. We offered suggestions to improve the wording of related survey questions in our publication.
In our own survey, we found that younger farmers and female farmers were more likely to attend virtual conversation events. For agricultural educators interested in making content more accessible to these audiences, virtual options appear to be an appealing outreach tool.
We conducted a social media experiment where we bought ads on Facebook to promote conservation events hosted by the Iowa Learning Farms. We compared frames rooted in farmer identity literature including business, hero, and steward, in addition to science. We found the business-framed ads (see example to the right) were the most cost effective, but we saw more engagement with the science and steward frames among women. The best frame therefore depends on the goal of the communicator in that the ad that was the most cost effective was not the the ad that was best at reaching new audiences for this content.