The influence of perceptions of practice characteristics: An examination of agricultural best management practice adoption in two Indiana watersheds

Agricultural best management practices (BMPs), or conservation practices, can help reduce nonpoint source pollution from agricultural lands, as well as provide valuable wildlife habitat. There is a large literature exploring factors that lead to a producer’s voluntary adoption of BMPs, but there have been inconsistent findings. Generally, this literature has not examined specific attributes of BMPs that may affect acceptability to farmers and ultimately adoption. To address these limitations, a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with farmers was conducted to determine which characteristics make four common BMPs more or less acceptable to agricultural producers. Interviews were conducted with forty-five producers in two watersheds in Indiana, USA. The producers were asked about their use of these conservation practices and the reasons behind their decisions. This study outlines the perceived characteristics of each conservation practice that are most important in either facilitating or impeding adoption of those practices. Results indicate that perceived high levels of relative advantage (e.g., reduced inputs, time-savings, and on-farm and environmental benefits), compatibility (with farm system and needs of producer), and observability (observing practice’s advantages) are most important in increasing adoption of conservation practices. Low levels of perceived relative advantage and incompatibility of practices were found to be most important in non-adoption of conservation practices. Perceived risk and complexity associated with specific practices were only found to limit adoption for a few practices, though it was an important barrier for conservation tillage. In order to increase adoption, conservation promoters should focus on raising awareness of the on-farm and financial benefits, the environmental benefits, and compatibility of conservation practices with current farm operations.     

Laggards or Leaders: Conservers of Traditional Agricultural Knowledge in Bolivia

Many sustainable agricultural practices are based on local and traditional farming knowledge. This article examines the conservation and loss of three traditional practices in the Bolivian Altiplano that agronomic research has shown increase the resiliency of small farmers in the face of climate‐related risks. These practices are the use of manure, the use of local forecasts and risk‐management strategies, and the preservation of crop biodiversity. Although these practices are widely used today, farmers have been steadily abandoning them during the past decade. This article examines the characteristics of those who maintain and those who abandon traditional practices to see if the abandonment of local knowledge can be explained by the adoption‐diffusion literature. This research does not support the adoption‐diffusion literature; although the factors related to conservation are slightly different for each practice, the findings do not support the idea that young, educated, and wealthier farmers are more likely to reject local knowledge. Instead, off‐farm activities such as migration, employment, and trade seem to be related to the decline in local practices as each affects the availability of labor and the availability of people to learn these practices.     

Information and communication technology adoption in micro and small firms: Can internet access improve labour productivity?

The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) may increase firms’ productivity with important consequences for job creation and for economic growth. This article contributes to this discussion by analysing the impact of internet adoption on labour productivity and the mechanisms shaping this relationship in Peruvian micro and small manufacturing firms over the period 2011–2013. The article estimates a reduced form where labour productivity is a function of internet adoption and other explanatory factors. Internet adoption is instrumented using a measure of the availability of financial opportunities for micro and small firms in Peru. Findings indicate that internet adoption: (a) increases firms’ labour productivity; (b) reallocates employment away from temporary administrative workers and non‐remunerated workers and expands employment of permanent production workers; (c) leads to the formalization of labour relationships, to the implementation of new organizational practices and to the improvement of training measures. While changes in employment and formalization of workers are linked to labour productivity gains, increases in training measures and organizational changes do not generate any additional productivity increase. Policies oriented to promote the adoption of ICT in micro and small firms can be beneficial to close the productivity gap with larger firms in Peru. Moreover, policies directed to the formalization of the workforce can provide an extra benefit, i.e. additional labour productivity gains in firms adopting the internet. Finally, policies oriented to the development of digital skills are also important to ease the re‐employment of those workers losing their jobs and the achievement of additional productivity gains that new organizational practices can provide.     

Reconsidering conceptualisations of farm conservation activity: The case of conserving hay meadows

Changes to agri-environmental policy, with an emphasis on encouraging more environmentally friendly farming practices, have been paralleled in the last two decades by a body of research into agri-environment scheme adoption. To date much of this research has considered conservation behaviour as a static issue across whole farms, and viewed participation decisions as solely a present-day issue. Based on an in-depth case study from the Peak District (UK) this paper considers the case of hay meadows—an important cultural, ecological and agricultural feature of the landscape which has been seriously threatened by changing farm practices during the last century, and which now features as a conservation option in the main agri-environment schemes. Drawing on material from semi-structured interviews on 62 farms, and participant observation on 20 farms, the paper discusses how hay meadows represent a unique case for conservation and considers the limitations of existing conceptualisations of scheme adoption for understanding hay meadow conservation. In particular, the paper examines how current conservation decisions are constrained by, and intersect with, past managements that affect the “eligibility” of meadows for scheme adoption. A model is developed which places meadow types of different eligibility against conservation styles to illustrate how different conservation scenarios are created.     

Implications of Recent Research on Eastern European Adoptees for Social Work Practice

Social workers engaged in preparing and supporting families that adopt non-infants and sibling groups from Russia and other Eastern European countries need to be well-versed in: (1) the issues that affect this population of adoptees and adopters; and (2) the recent research on both. They also need to expand the model of adoptive families that drives their work. The authors identify three areas of risk to successful older-child adoptee and adoptive family functioning, explore the consequences of detrimental adoption policies and practices on the micro and macro-levels, and make recommendations for needed changes. The changes the authors identify are framed through an investigation of recent research on international adoptees and their adoptive families. The authors use adoptive parents’ own words to make the issues they discuss more concrete. Implications for social worker training and practice, and expanded roles for social workers, are identified.     

From social psychology to political economy: A model of energy use behavior

Multiple and complex factors determine people's energy use behavior. However, policies designed to affect individual energy use behavior focus mostly on a limited number of micro, short-run and easily manipulable variables. These have produced limited response.A theoretical framework is proposed in this paper that attempts to provide a comprehensive and integrative view of energy use behavior. The framework examines variables that create and maintain particular types and intensities of energy use behavior. Based on this framework, implications for energy policies and their potential effectiveness have been drawn.     

A level playing field for migrant entrepreneurs? The legal and policy landscape across EU and OECD countries

Migrant entrepreneurship has been recognized as a form of integration in the country of destination and a viable alternative of decent and sustainable employment for migrants. Laws and policies can create barriers or support migrants who start a business in the country of destination. Despite their importance, these laws and policies have received scant attention from academic scholarship. By applying the mixed embedded approach, this article analyses the institutional and policy framework for migrant entrepreneurs in European Union (EU) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and how this framework varies according to the migrants’ individual legal status and gender. In order to do so, this article draws upon the findings of two different studies conducted on the topic. The first one analyses the national institutional framework for migrant entrepreneurs of these countries. The second study consists of a review of measures to foster migrant entrepreneurship in the same sample of countries. On the one hand, this article shows that the institutional framework restricts access to self-employment for some categories of migrants (e.g. based on their legal status). On the other hand, a wide range of measures are now available to support migrant entrepreneurs. However, these measures treat them as a rather homogeneous group. These findings suggest that the fact that some migrants are less engaged in self-employment or face more difficulties may be explained by the lack of institutional opportunities and policy support.     

Innovating Conservation Agriculture: The Case of No‐Till Cropping

Abstract The extensive sociological studies of conservation agriculture have provided considerable understanding of farmers' use of conservation practices, but attempts to develop predictive models have failed. Reviews of research findings question the utility of the conceptual and methodological perspectives of prior research. The argument advanced here is that actor‐network theory is useful in analyzing conservation agriculture as a radically different agriculture: a new paradigm with new beliefs about soils, plants, the environment, and farmers themselves as well as new crop production systems. The new indigenous cultures of conservation tillage and cropping are innovative products of social networks that join farmland, farmers, farm advisors, and farm supply representatives in new ways. The spread of conservation agriculture has occurred as the result both of new agricultural science of conservation tillage and cropping and the spread of these new networks and their innovative cropping systems.     

Agricultural structural change: Impact on the rural environment

Current farm practices contribute to a wide array of environmental problems: the monoculture of many agricultural regions, the problem of soil erosion, the contamination of ground water resources by nitrate and pesticide, wildlife habitats lost or subject to fragmentation. Over 50% of the EC's total land area is used by agriculture.Assumed are links between settlement and farm structure, rural culture, related values and environmental quality. This paper attempts to identify key indicators and relationships to predict what the environmental impact of certain structural changes will be. Is there a correlation between farm size or type and environmental impact? An example is the decreasing linkage between animal husbandry and crop growing.Is there a correlation between degree of pluriactivity and the structure of land use? The majority of small farms in the F.R.G. have additional off-farm income. The predominance of small farms is characteristic of the few charming rural areas left. Does that imply that large farm units mean necessarily infrastructural changes, loss of crop diversity and more monotonous landscape?Finally, the question of the impact that different policy measures have on the direction and intensity of agricultural change is examined. A major conclusion is that environmental policies need to be an integral part of regional development and agricultural policies.     

Whither the lender of last resort?: The rise and fall of public farm credit in Australia and New Zealand

Public farm financial institutions were established in 20th Century Australia and New Zealand to facilitate agricultural and rural economic development. This arrangement reflected agriculture's economic importance, and rural society's political importance to both countries until the early 1980s. With both countries’ adoption of monetarist principles (including financial deregulation and the drive for smaller government) from the mid-1980s these public farm credit providers were seen to distort the allocation of farm credit and to be an inefficient use of public resources. Deregulation would, according to its many proponents, remove these distortions and create a free market for farm credit which would deliver the most appropriate loan packages for both countries’ farm sectors. The extensive literature on the New Zealand experience of farm sector restructuring and primary research into the South Australian farm crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s show that the commercialisation and/or abolition of public farm credit providers in both countries has fundamentally restructured the farm credit market but failed to address many farm families’ demand for concessional, long-term finance. The research also demonstrates the continuing need for local and regional case studies of the impacts of and responses to major institutional restructuring that are both theoretically informed and scale sensitive as a means to building a genuinely international literature on contemporary rural and agrarian change.     

Issues of educational support in primary school and secondary education in disadvantaged suburbs in France

From a critical sociological perspective, this article advances the debate between global schooling with political incentives and local meanings with localized educational practices and supports. It focuses on the role of education policies in the pursuit of social inclusion and social justice, but also shows how local actors adapt and experiment in managing the socio-cultural diversity of the students and the school contexts. First, I show the issues of educational support policies in the French context with a historical background and their re-appropriation by local actors. Second, I present the theoretical framework of my research (2008 to 2013), the methodology and initial results. Last, I analyze the main qualitative results of my comparative research in order to highlight ‘good’ or ‘bad’ educational support practices according to various criteria, starting with interactional socio-cultural posture between different actors.     

Soil as Social‐Ecological Feedback: Examining the “Ethic” of Soil Stewardship among Corn Belt Farmers

In this article we examine in‐depth interviews with farmers (n = 159) from nine Corn Belt states. Using a grounded theory approach, we identified a “soil stewardship ethic,” which exemplifies how farmers are talking about building the long‐term sustainability of their farm operation in light of more variable and extreme weather events. Findings suggest that farmers' shifting relationship with their soil resources may act as a kind of social‐ecological feedback that enables farmers to implement adaptive strategies (e.g., no‐till farming, cover crops) that build resilience in the face of increasingly variable and extreme weather, in contrast to emphasizing short‐term adjustments to production that may lead to greater vulnerability over time. The development of a soil stewardship ethic may help farmers to resolve the problem of an apparent trade‐off between short‐term productivist goals and long‐term conservation goals and in doing so may point toward an emergent aspect of a conservationist identity. Focusing on the message of managing soil health to mitigate weather‐related risks and preserving soil resources for future generations may provide a pragmatic solution for helping farmers to reorient farm production practices, which would have soil building and soil saving at their center.     

Attitudes to Practice: National Survey of Adoption Obstacles Faced by Gay and Lesbian Prospective Parents

Gays and lesbians wishing to adopt are challenged with managing policies and practices about their right to adopt while also trying to identify adoption professionals that do not stigmatize against them. In an attempt to understand how attitudes toward same-sex couples potentially influence adoption professionals and surrounding policies/practices, 187 surveys were sent to adoption agencies throughout the United States. Questions posed focused on the directors' (a) knowledge of state and federal policies surrounding LGs adopting, (b) attitudes toward equal rights for same-sex couples, and (c) opinions of LGs as parents. These variables accounted for 42% of variance in regards to whether or not these agencies would accept applications from LGs.     

Using social-psychology models to understand farmers’ conservation behaviour

Research into farmers’ attitudes and motivations in the past has tended to be subjective and theoretically rather imprecise. This paper presents findings from research based on the structured social-psychology model, the Theory of Planned Behaviour, into farmers’ conservation-related behaviour. Responses from a survey of 100 Bedfordshire farmers were analysed to identify the underlying determinants of behaviour and to comprehend farmers’ attitudes. Farmers with greater environmental awareness, members of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, are more influenced by conservation-related concerns and less by farm management concerns than other farmers. They appear also to be more influenced by farming and conservation referent groups, grants and conservation advice.     

Parenting practices of Somali immigrant mothers in Alberta

This paper provides insights into the little-explored gendered perspective of the parenting practices of Somali immigrant mothers in a Canadian province (Alberta). We use a critical ethnographic methodology and a transnational feminist framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Somali mothers aged 18 to 50. Mothers were interviewed about their parenting practices in a post-migration context, including challenges. Our results show immigrant mothers combine their cultural values with new values from Canada that they find effective. We find gendered differences in how parenting experiences are perceived. Our results suggest the need for anti-racist and culturally safe health, education, and child policies and practices.     

Soil erosion and perception of the problem

Most efforts to reduce soil erosion have included an educational component designed to make farmers aware of their erosion problem. These strategies implicitly assume that once farmers become aware of an erosion problem, they will take appropriate action. It is recognized that various social and economic factors influence the adoption process at a later stage, but their influence on perception of the problem has not been explored. This analysis indicates that perception of a soil erosion problem may be influenced more by social and economic factors than by the actual extent of the problem. Perception of environmental problems, therefore, is based not only on awareness, but also on the ability to do something about the problem. Therefore, structural constraints influence both the adoption of conservation practices and perception of an environmental problem. It is suggested that if an effective soil conservation program is to be developed, we must understand the unique problems, interests, and goals of farmers.     

The Adoption of the Corporate Governance Model by Nonprofit Organizations

This article examines the circumstances under which nonprofit organizations adopt corporate governance practices. In the study reported here, the authors found that adoption of corporate governance practices depends primarily on the presence of a supportive institutional (that is, value) context as well as available resources to support governance restructuring. These findings strongly suggest that the adoption of structures and practices from the for-profit sector is neither a feasible nor even a desirable solution to problems facing many nonprofit organizations.     

Why do nations matter? The struggle for belonging and security in an uncertain world

This paper explores the reasons why national forms of identification and organization (might) matter in the contemporary era. In contrast to the majority of macro‐sociological work dealing with this topic, I develop an analytical framework that draws together recent research on everyday nationalism with micro‐sociological and psychological studies pointing to the importance of routine practices, institutional arrangements and symbolic systems in contributing to a relatively settled sense of identity, place and community. The second part of the paper focuses on the hierarchies of belonging that operate within a given national setting. Of particular interest is the largely taken‐for‐granted status of the ethnic majority and the degree to which it underpins claims to belonging and entitlement that are used to secure key allocative and authoritative resources.     

Sustainable Agriculture and Conservation Tillage: Managing the Contradictions*

L'auteur examine dans cet article l'élaboration d'un discours sur l'agriculture, qui encourage l'adoption d'un travail de conservation du sol comme agriculture écologiquement durable. L'analyse débute par l'argument selon lequel ce discours est né dans les années 1980, en réponse aux conséquences sur l'environnement de l'agriculture classique. On soutient ensuite que l'attention portée au travail du sol plutôt qu'à d'autres solutions de rechange quant à ces impacts, attention qui doit être comprise dans le cadre d'une analyse plus large des développements politico-économiques dans le domaine de l'agriculture au Canada. On a déterminé que les intérêsts contradic-toires des divers secteurs de l'industrie agroalimentaire, en ce qui concerne le maintien de l'utilisation de produits chimiques coûteux et le contrôle des prix payés aux agriculteurs dans le contexte de la crise économique de l'agriculture, jouaient un rôle essentiel dans l'attention portée au travail du sol. On soutient que le travail de conservation du sol permet de régler ces contradictions de deux façons. Tout d'abord, le travail de conservation du sol a fourni une base pour affirmer que les problèmes de pollution chimique et d'épuisement du sol étaient en train d'être résolus sans que soient nécessaires des changements plus substantiels dans le système de production à base chimique. Enfin, il offrait aux agriculteurs un moyen et une raison de réduire les coûts de production devant les crises constantes relatives aux prix et a la rentabilité des fermes. This paper examines the development of a discourse within agriculture which promotes the adoption of conservation tillage as environmentally sustainable farming. The analysis begins with the argument that the discourse emerged during the 1980s as a response to the environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. It is then argued that the focus on tillage practices over other alternative solutions to these impacts must be understood within a broader analysis of the political-economic developments in Canadian agriculture. The contradictory interests of the various sectors of agribusiness capital, both in sustaining the use of expensive chemical inputs and in controlling the prices paid to farmers within the context of the farm economic crisis, are identified as playing a vital role in shaping the focus on tillage practices. It is contended that conservation tillage offered a means of mediating these contradictions in two ways. First, conservation tillage provided a basis for the claim that chemical pollution and soil depletion problems were being resolved without the need for more substantial changes in the chemically-based production system and, second, it gave farmers a means and a rationale for cutting production costs in the face of continuing crises in prices and profitability at the farm gate level.     

Determinants of the Rigor of State Protection Policies for Persons With Dementia in Assisted Living

Continued growth in the number of individuals with dementia residing in assisted living (AL) facilities raises concerns about their safety and protection. However, unlike federally regulated nursing facilities, AL facilities are state-regulated and there is a high degree of variation among policies designed to protect persons with dementia. Despite the important role these protection policies have in shaping the quality of life of persons with dementia residing in AL facilities, little is known about their formation. In this research, we examined the adoption of AL protection policies pertaining to staffing, the physical environment, and the use of chemical restraints. For each protection policy type, we modeled policy rigor using an innovative point-in-time approach, incorporating variables associated with state contextual, institutional, political, and external factors. We found that the rate of state AL protection policy adoptions remained steady over the study period, with staffing policies becoming less rigorous over time. Variables reflecting institutional policy making, including legislative professionalism and bureaucratic oversight, were associated with the rigor of state AL dementia protection policies. As we continue to evaluate the mechanisms contributing to the rigor of AL protection policies, it seems that organized advocacy efforts might expand their role in educating state policy makers about the importance of protecting persons with dementia residing in AL facilities and moving to advance appropriate policies.