News: Focus on Dr. Linda Lobao

Rural sociologists at The Ohio State University influence sociology as an academic discipline and its practice, through public policy related work. An example is Dr. Linda Lobao's research on farming and community, which examines the social consequences of industrialized farming as compared to family farming for communities and households. This research has been published as a recent article in the Annual Review of Sociology in collaboration with Dr. Katherine Meyer, Department of Sociology at OSU. In 2001, Dr. Lobao's research formed the basis of expert witness testimony in a federal court case in South Dakota involving regulation of global agribusiness firms. In the late 1990s, South Dakotans passed by wide mandate a law designed to restrict operation of industrialized farms, because of presumed detrimental social and environmental effects on communities. The law incurred the ire of agribusiness firms who sought to overturn the law which had become part of the state's constitution. To protect the law, environmental, family farm organizations, and the state joined in its legal defense. Lobao's research addressed one challenge against the law, that the public had acted out of ignorance in its passage, through irrational fear of industrialized farms. In fact, Lobao's research showed that government and social science concern with the potential adverse effects of industrialized farming dates back to more than half a century.

Another example of the use of social science research beyond the academy, into national public policy is Lobao's work on local government with NACo (National Association of Counties). In July, 2001, Lobao and David Kraybill (Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at OSU) presented the results of a survey of county governments at the National Press Club, Washington D.C. Their findings that remote rural counties are more likely to lack the personnel and infrastructure needed to respond to federal devolution initiatives, such as welfare reform was used in congressional testimony for farm bill legislation by the Rural Policy Institute.

Dr. Lobao is President-Elect of the Rural Sociological Society, and will begin her one-year term as President at the annual meeting of the Society in August, 2002.