Periodic Reporting for period 1 - YOUNG FARMERS (What can digital communications do for generational renewal in farming?)
Période du rapport: 2021-07-01 au 2023-06-30
The YOUNG FARMERS project aims to explore the relationship between the two parallel trends “lack of interest to work in the farming sector among youth” and “increased youth engagement in agri-food movements” and approaches the broad question “What are the specific mechanisms, contexts and strategies through which youth in late modernity can be most effectively engaged with the agriculture system, not only as civic engagement, but also with farming as a “career option”? The project studies the “young farmer problem” by looking from a digital sociology perspective, and aims to contribute to the two main challenges within the contemporary socio-economic research field: (i) a global difficulty of attracting youth into farming, and (ii) the growing pressure on institutions to respond to the demand for efficient knowledge-transfer to youth in the digital age. This study has a final objective to provide a cross-country comparison with case studies from the USA and EU by reporting career stories of young farmers, particularly stories of young women farmers will be studied to explore the gender dimension of the “young farmer problem”.
Work performed from the beginning of the YOUNG FARMERS project to the end of the first period covered three-step research process. Step-I: Literature review that investigated the use of school-based, community based and informally organized digital communication tools to increase attractiveness of farming career; Step-II: Farmers’ engagement that explored farmers engagement in new media and its effect on their career perceptions; and Step-III: non-farmers’ engagement that researched on the engagement of non-farmers in social media accounts those manage by farmers.
In Step-I, a literature review argues that career communications for farming receives insufficient attention, and could be better integrated into agricultural communications strategies by using the potential of digital communications.
In Step-II, a mixed-method study explores the contribution of “The New World of Work” to farming careers. The study concludes that the duality between career self-concepts and social-self still holds patterns even among young generation farmers, regardless of their integration level to new media.
In Step-III, a qualitative multi-method study investigates the use of social media by farmers and the engagement behavior of online communities that farmers reach out to. Due to the important role of youth in climate activism, study analyzed climate dialogue engagement on the social media platform of TikTok during the UN COP26. The results suggest that the typical empathic engagement of the analyzed climate dialogue is emotional reactions (expressed briefly or explicitly). Even though the analyzed videos contain alternative ways of communication (dynamic demonstrations, humor), cognitive empathy can differ based on the narrative and narrator.
In Step-I, a literature review argues that career communications for farming receives insufficient attention, and could be better integrated into agricultural communications strategies by using the potential of digital communications.
In Step-II, a mixed-method study explores the contribution of “The New World of Work” to farming careers. The study concludes that the duality between career self-concepts and social-self still holds patterns even among young generation farmers, regardless of their integration level to new media.
In Step-III, a qualitative multi-method study investigates the use of social media by farmers and the engagement behavior of online communities that farmers reach out to. Due to the important role of youth in climate activism, study analyzed climate dialogue engagement on the social media platform of TikTok during the UN COP26. The results suggest that the typical empathic engagement of the analyzed climate dialogue is emotional reactions (expressed briefly or explicitly). Even though the analyzed videos contain alternative ways of communication (dynamic demonstrations, humor), cognitive empathy can differ based on the narrative and narrator.
The YOUNG FARMERS project is the first attempt to evaluate digital communication tools for generational renewal support in farming. The work performed from the beginning of the YOUNG FARMERS project to the end of the first period provides new perspectives to public debates on the “young farmer problem” by providing three main beyond the state of art knowledge: i) Online career communications for farming receive insufficient attention and could be better integrated into agricultural communications strategies through online agricultural, environmental and science communications, and public engagement campaigns by using the potential of digital communications. Project findings provide practical applications for agricultural extension and rural communications specialists, as well as education institutions; ii) The use of new media is not just changing in technology levels but also changes in behaviors and relationships, resulting in emotional, social, and moral consequences. Project findings mainly reported the emotional and social consequences of new media use for work among young farmers and gave tentative insights into the moral consequences; iii) The framework of digital empathy holds the potential to understand rationales that mobilize dialogue engagement to the posts created by young farmers and helps to overcome the “silence” topics such as “climate spiral of silence” where individuals are not willing to express their opinions if their belief is not shared by others, which in turn creates a climate silence spiral. Even though food-related social movements (e.g. organic and local food movements) have motivated a growing number of youths, farmers are still in the early stages of using social media with their professional identities.
The results of the YOUNG FARMERS project disseminated via academic journal article publications, articles for the press, policy briefs, academic/non-academic conference participations, and collaborations with experts at the Pennsylvania State University, University of Florida, University of Chicago, and Perdue University. For the USA case study region, the YOUNG FARMERS project presented to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and discussed the potential policy actions to promote young farmers in the depopulated districts of Centre County, Pennsylvania. For the European case study region, wider societal implications of the project planned with Art and Science collaborations with UNESCO, the EU COST action project the “Rural NEET Youth Network”, and the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Initiative.
The results of the YOUNG FARMERS project disseminated via academic journal article publications, articles for the press, policy briefs, academic/non-academic conference participations, and collaborations with experts at the Pennsylvania State University, University of Florida, University of Chicago, and Perdue University. For the USA case study region, the YOUNG FARMERS project presented to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and discussed the potential policy actions to promote young farmers in the depopulated districts of Centre County, Pennsylvania. For the European case study region, wider societal implications of the project planned with Art and Science collaborations with UNESCO, the EU COST action project the “Rural NEET Youth Network”, and the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Initiative.