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The social capital of collaboration is a critical part of the research process. While AAAE supports collaboration and inclusivity, analysis has not occurred for what collaborations are occurring. This study addressed collaboration between researchers via a social network analysis of coauthorship in the Journal of Agricultural Education from 2008 to 2017. There were 587 articles published in that time frame with 593 unique authors. The number of articles published annually and number of authors per article increased during the 10-year period. The majority of authors only published one article in the time frame analyzed. After excluding authors who never collaborated on an article, a social network of 582 coauthors was analyzed. There was a general tendency for the most prolific authors to also be the most connected, though there were some outliers. Of note, the majority of the most connected authors received their terminal degrees from one of three institutions. The majority of the most prolific coauthor pairs were advisor-advisee pairings, and the remainder were individuals who had worked at the same institution during much of the study’s time frame. A prolific coauthor pairing was not necessarily indicative of a connection that was important for bridging authors across the network.

Sustainable intensification of animal agriculture will rely on the acceptance and adoption of many new practices and technologies. We discuss the literature related to behavior change and sustainable practice adoption in the context of beef cattle production, focusing on sustainable rotational grazing and the use of cover crops. Research from a variety of contexts is discussed with a conceptual framework that combines diffusion of innovation theory with the reasoned action approach. Background characteristics of producers and their operations as well the characteristics of any new practice/technology will influence producer perceptions of them. These background and perceived practice characteristics will influence producer behavioral, normative, and control beliefs regarding the behavior, which will in turn inform attitudes about the behavior and perceptions regarding behavioral norms and the capacity to adopt new behaviors. Factors such as the demographics of beef cattle producers, land tenure, and labor and credit availability, as well as producers’ concepts of what it means to be a “good farmer”, should inform the conceptualization and development of new practices and technologies to increase the likelihood of their adoption.

Online, direct selling (ODS) has become the leading way that people acquire goods, with Amazon (Seattle, WA) being the largest online vendor in the United States. This study sought to determine if horticultural businesses were engaging in ODS with Amazon, ebay, and other websites. Researchers examined the ODS activity of 498 businesses using quantitative content analysis methods, and found that 93 horticultural industry businesses were conducting some form of ODS through their websites, but only four offered products on Amazon. Results indicate that ODS remains an untapped marketplace for the horticultural industry, particularly for small, rural businesses.