Blogs also have a relatively low volume of conversations . However, Blogs display the second highest reach score , and they are tied with Forums for the highest Impact score . Blogs are a type of online media that straddles the line between news outlets and social media. Like Twitter, blog content is produced by a small minority of online users who make up 9.6% of the US population, but blog posts are consumed daily by 77% of internet users . Additionally, blogs generate considerable user engagement through user comments . The high impact and reach scores show that blogs are an effective medium for communication about our topic. As confirmed by other studies, blogs are important in a strategy for science communication and disseminating research and marketing . Outreach and engagement strategies should however also consider the possibility that blogs may decline in relevance in the future due to lower readership from younger demographics , this is reflected in our findings that show a slight decrease in content from blogs in the second year of our data Another potential drawback is that effective blogs require a considerable investment of time to produce—with success greatly depending on higher length, quality, and frequent publication of new posts . Beginning farmers.org is a blog site that generated 15 hits from our query, but we otherwise did not identify any other blogs that emerged as a leader in producing content around pastured poultry and integrated production, indicating both a possible gap and opportunity for communication and outreach. Our data shows that online forums generate not only a high volume , but also high impact and reach . Results displayed on Table 1 show that including Reddit, six of the top ten websites with the highest volume of relevant posts are online forums. Thus,seed growing rack we are able to identify these specific platforms as hot spots of conversations around our research topic, which present an opportunity for targeted extension engagement in the future.
Backyard chickens.com, a popular hobbyist poultry keeper forum, ranks #1 in sites with the highest volume of posts from a single site , highest impact score and second highest impact score of any website. Other popular online forum sites are not poultry or agriculture specific. They include Reddit.com, one of the leading content sharing online community platforms in the digital world ; 4channel.com, a similar discussion board platform commonly distinguished by its controversial counterculture communities and political movements such as Anonymous and the Alt-right; uber people.net, an online community for Uber drivers; and finally, survivalist boards.com, a community of people who practice outdoor survival skills as a hobby. Finally, although YouTube trails behind other content types in terms of volume , it still ranks 4 th in terms of sites that produced relevant posts . Due to the high volume of non-functional URLs and links, missing post body text, and/or irrelevant posts generated by the web scraper, we were unable to include posts from YouTube.com in the manual text analysis. Reach and impact data were also not available for us to give a more in-depth assessment of this platform. It is entirely possible that some relevant posts were not picked up since the Brand watch web scraper captures text content rather than video content. Although in the 2nd year of our study YouTube declined by over 80%, its relevance cannot be completely disregarded since overall usage of this platform has increased steadily in recent years to include 82% of US adults in 2022. Whereas social media platforms are sometimes known to skew towards promulgating negative opinions , this dynamic was not observed for the topic of pastured poultry and integrated production. Across all platforms, conversations tended to focus much more on the beneficial attributes rather than barriers related to the key attributes we identified. As shown in figure 4, soil health and animal welfare, autonomy topped the charts with over 150 mentions. Other attributes like autonomy, ease of use, weed control, and pest control were also frequently mentioned. Overwhelmingly, the potential for pastured poultry to contribute to soil fertility and soil health is stated as a benefit or motivator for producers.
The term “soil”, and related phrases such as “soil health” and “organic matter” topped the most mentioned charts and therefore unsurprisingly emerged as the most discussed attribute in manual review of social media posts. Animal welfare follows closely behind soil as the second most mentioned attribute. In most cases, online users state a belief that chickens are happy and healthy when allowed to forage and graze on pasture, and report their usage of mobile chicken coops as a way to allow pasture grazing while protecting flocks from predators. There is also a frequent mention of using integrated poultry-vegetable production to control weeds. In the 91 posts we identified that brought up this attribute, many online users described employing poultry to clear unwanted vegetation either at the end of a cropping season, or to start a new plot of land for cultivation. Online users also frequently mentioned chickens’ tendency to consume insects , although sometimes they frame access to insects on pasture as a benefit to chicken nutritional needs, while other times it is framed as an ecosystem service that chickens provide for removing pests from crops. Our research also revealed some value-based drivers for poultry in integrated production systems. The benefit of autonomy was the 3rd most mentioned attribute : in many posts, people who discussed pastured poultry and/or poultry-crop integrations related their motivations to their desire to increase self-reliance in the face of supply chain disruptions, high food costs, and mistrust towards the food system. We were able to identify several of the platforms or accounts as belonging to the “homesteading”, “prepper”, or “survivalist” communities. This finding is somewhat unexpected as this aspect of pastured poultry and integrated cropping was mentioned only once in the literature we reviewed by Sossidou et al., who wrote “there are many social benefits of raising pastured poultry, such as family work ethics, community involvement and improving lifestyles. This alternative enterprise fits with the farmers desire to live on the farm and to be self-sufficient and self-directed” . Others expressed a value for integrated systems because they are perceived to be more natural or sustainable. At a small extent, some social media posts also expressed counter-industrial values, contrasting integrated production favorably in contrast to large-scale commercial production; and overall intrinsic value towards practicing such types of sustainable production from which they derive a sense of happiness, well-being, and satisfaction . Overall, positive or neutral sentiment far outnumbered negative sentiments by a ratio of around 9:1. Of the negative sentiments expressed, ease of use, animal welfare, and economic viability of pastured poultry and integrated production were most frequently mentioned. Negative sentiments related to ease of use predominantly occurred in online forums, which tells us that many people are trialing the systems and turning to discussion boards for troubleshooting.
Users commonly discussed challenges around moving their poultry flocks around for rotational grazing. This often involved the heavy weight of the mobile chicken coops, which varied depending on the building design and material. Other complaints revolved around undesired labor, time or logistics involved in executing this type of production system. Negative sentiments on the animal welfare topic often revolved around challenges related to predation, with users either having lost birds due to predation or expressing doubt that chickens can be adequately protected in an outdoor mobile chicken coop. Another concern was around exposure of chickens to the elements,indoor grow rack with some users expressing that mobile coops were not sufficient to house chicken in the winter.Doubts and concerns around the economic viability of pastured poultry and integrated production were captured solely from online forum posts, with some users arguing that such farming systems cannot be profitable as a source of income. A much smaller share of concerns was expressed around the expenses related to implementing the system. This may indicate that the economic challenges are perceived by many to lie in access to market or marketing rather than cost of entry. It was unclear in many cases whether the users were speaking from firsthand experience or merely for the sake of theoretical debate. It is possible to speculate that negative sentiments were absent from platforms like Twitter and Reddit because they are being used to promote pasture and integrated systems rather than to debate its efficacy. Finally, although based on keyword identification through natural language processing, mentions of terms related to egg production and broiler production are roughly even, manual review of social networking content indicates that the number of posts discussing layer production is almost twice as numerous as posts mentioning broiler production. This indicates that online users may be more interested in egg production, but that both are important since broiler production was also mentioned at a relatively high volume. Figure 5 allows us to compare the proportional breakdowns of the attributes mentioned in each source type. We found that across all three source types, attributes related to soil health rank amongst the top 3 most discussed topics, whereas the ratios of prevalent conversation around other topics differed across source types. For Reddit users, the larger share of conversations mentioned autonomy compared to other content types. Forums revolved at a relatively greater percentage around ease of use and animal welfare. Twitter users are mentioning climate change 3x more than users on the other sites.
They are overwhelmingly positive and focus on the potential for using poultry to remove unwanted vegetation, and the improved sustainability and higher market value of integrated farming outputs. The findings also allow us to elucidate gaps in the discourse around certain topics related to pastured poultry and integrated cropping that we have identified as subjects of interest to producers. We found that discussions around relevant scientific research trials and findings, food safety, processing, and certification of goods produced through integrated pastured poultry production noticeably showed the lowest presence from social media discourse in our data set. This lack of awareness or interest may be due to bias among the social media user demographics towards people who are relatively new to this type of production system and may not be knowledgeable about certain challenges that they have yet to face. A low extent of practical experience in pastured poultry and integrated farming may also explain the low volume of perceived challenges and negative sentiment found in our data, in which case negative sentiment might be expected to increase in the future as producers confront more challenges over time.We may speculate that this demographic is unlikely to be trialing the production at such a scale as to be very concerned about certification or processing, or perhaps they simply see these topics as part of general considerations for poultry and crop production that are not uniquely associated with pastured poultry and integrated cropping. Finally, the absence of relevant scientific findings and studies mentioned in the social media posts indicates an opportunity for researchers and extensionists to engage and promote the relevance of scientific findings for the benefit of producers. According to the United Nations, the population of the world is expected to grow in the next century, which in turn encourages the development of innovative techniques to ensure agricultural sustainability. Agriculture on productive land is threatened not only by high levels of urbanization, uneven water distribution, and inclement weather, but also is threats to biodiversity that have unfavorable environmental impacts. Due to the anticipated drastic population growth and constraints on resources in the upcoming decades, only 10% of the demand for food is estimated to be met by expansion of productive lands, with the remainder relying on new techniques that can achieve higher yields. Therefore, developing novel methods to augment the ratio of crop production over used land is a vital issue. In recent years, the indoor vertical farming systems with artificial light are found to be a viable solution to resolve the in-creasing demands of future agricultural products. The IVFS are promising alternatives to open field or greenhouse agriculture because they have precisely monitoring environmental parameters and are insensitive to outdoor climates, which can boost annual sales volume per unit area up to 100 times compared to that of open lands.