Brazil represents an agricultural superpower in the world. This talk will recount the experience of four researchers who traveled to Brazil to investigate the rapidly expanding agricultural sector. Eric Morgan (Agricultural Communications and Natural Resources and Environmental Science), Joana Colussi (Agricultural & Consumer Economics), Gary Schnitkey (Agricultural & Consumer Economics), and Nick Paulson (Agricultural & Consumer Economics) visited several locations in Brazil from May 1, 2023 to May 12, 2023. The purpose of the research trip was to investigate how Brazilian soybean farmers make sense of a rapidly changing communication context as well as to understand how farming practices have changed with the advent and diffusion of new digital communication technologies. The presentation will focus on preliminary findings from this research with a discussion of implications for international agricultural communications and agricultural economics.
Eric L. Morgan, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science. His research focuses on cultural discourses of environment and agriculture as well as science communication within the agricultural sector. He currently directs the science communication initiatives for the recently funded NSF Science and Technology Center in Quantitative Cell Biology housed in the Beckman Institute at UIUC. He is also an affiliate with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology in the Infection Genomics for One Health (IGOH) group.
Dr. Joana Colussi is an instructor and postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She pursued her graduate education following a 10-year career as an agricultural journalist in Brazil. She holds a master's in Agribusiness and a Ph.D. in Management from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Joana is also a member of the Farmdoc team, an extension group from the University of Illinois.
Dr. Gary Schnitkey is the Soybean Industry Endowed Chair in Agricultural Strategy within the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois. His activities focus on farm and risk management on Corn Belt grain farms. He analyzes factors causing differences in profitability across farms, and develops ways of mitigating risk on farms. He writes the Weekly Farm Economics article that appears each Tuesday on the farmdocDaily website.
Nick Paulson holds the Gardner Hinderliter Professorship in Farm Management in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois. He also currently serves as the Associate Head and Director of the award-winning farmdoc extension project in ACE. Paulson’s appointment incudes teaching, research, and extension responsibilities. He currently teaches small business finance at the undergraduate level, and agricultural finance and econometrics at the graduate level. He has received Department, College, and national awards for teaching quality and innovation. Paulson’s applied research program focuses on agricultural finance, farm and risk management, and agricultural policy. Paulson has contributed more than 500 extension articles to the farmdoc daily website over the past 12 years. In 2019 he served as the Senior Economist for agriculture and trade on the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House.
