Dyadic Analysis of a Speed-Dating Format between Farmers and Citizens

Abstract

Alienation between farmers and citizens has increased amid complex developments of agriculture’s intensification, urbanization processes, demographic change, and specialization in food supply chains in developed countries. Traditional public relations instruments have failed to generate societal acceptance of today’s intensive agricultural practices. At the same time, the agricultural sector feels alienated from societal value changes. Other controversial contexts showed that open face-to-face encounters at eye level hold the potential to promote mutual understanding and acceptance. The study aims to analyze how speed-dating conversations between farmers and citizens, considering participants’ characteristics, impact different outcome variables. 24 farmers and 22 citizens specifically recruited for participation in the speed-dating were organized to have short conversations of 10–15 min in different farmer-citizen-constellations. Each conversation had a specific overall agricultural topic including animal welfare, agricultural technology, environmental protection, agricultural policy, and esteem for food. Four months after, different outcomes were measured in a follow-up survey. For 84 person-constellations complete dyadic data were available to be analyzed by hierarchical regression analyses. Participants were mostly satisfied with the dialogue format and gained new factual and personal information. Results indicate stronger impacts of socio-demographic characteristics and personality traits than characteristics of the conversations themselves. Constellations with male citizens, female farmers, more educated farmers, extroverted participants, emotionally stable farmers, and more open participants tended to have higher dyadic outcome variable values. The results call for a re-design of farmer-citizen dialogue formats to facilitate more direct interpersonal communication.

What Do the Public Want to Know about Farming and Why? Findings from a Farmer-Initiated Public Consultation Exercise in Ireland

“…The public is variably engaged with food production and farming practices. As farms have become increasingly specialised, mechanised, and intensified, many nonfarming communities have become increasingly disconnected from, and unaware of, the specifics of production systems and practices [5]. Rural migration into urban centres has also resulted in increased physical, and psychological, distance between citizens and farms [6].…”

“…To avoid (further) polarisation, finding mechanisms for different actors to understand and empathise with the values and perceptions of others is important. Often, public communication from the agricultural community has been unidirectional, with a primary aim of 'educating' [5]. In contrast, a dialogue-oriented communication style includes a 'listening mode', with an aim to equalise the contributions of other actors, empathise with their values and views, and build mutual understanding and trust [24].…”

“…That this was such a strong line of questioning reinforces the much-discussed increasing citizen-farming disconnect. In the past, farming was a more central focus in rural communities, but increasingly citizens are viewed as having more physical and psychological distance from farming practices [5,6]. This results in little familiarity with on-farm practices and can present challenges for finding common ground for communication.…”

“…Underlying these sentiments was a reflection by participants that farming is a job carried out by a closed segment of the Irish population. Participants felt it is not an accessible career choice to young people, particularly those living in urban areas, and this not only makes farming an inaccessible career choice, it also is feeding into the disconnect where farming is perceived as something carried out by faceless 'others' [5,6]. This sentiment also illustrated some concern about the lack of diversity in the farming profession with questions asked around how open farming as a profession is to not only urban dwellers, but also females.…”