John Blue - Why do farmers and ranchers need social media? With notes.

Truffle Media

Ned Arthur, Director of Sales and Content Development

John Blue, Chief of Community Creation

Hi, My name is John Blue and I work at Truffle Media Networks, an ag media company focused on animal health issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48H7zOQrX3U

Intro to see farming and social media

Why a video?

Greg Peterson wanted to help their friends in town understand what Greg’s family does on the farm.

Greg and Nathan.

Why do farmers and ranchers need social media?

Farming Mythology

Farms have a mythology: Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte’s Web, Elsie the Cow, Chicken Little, American Gothic all have implanted in our brain a vision of farms and farming that just is not true today.

Unusual events happen that make us go "Huh?"

When the H1N1 outbreak hit, the name given to it was Swine Flu and that cause people to stop eating pork when it really was not a flu that can be passed through meat and H1N1 involved was not the variety related to pigs. However, the media ran with Swine Flu and it stuck.

Smuggling cheese.

Cheese smuggling from the US to Canada created this image of dairy that probably confused many people.

PETA, HSUS, Mercy for Animals portray any use of animals in any way is always wrong all the time.

These organizations receive lots of money and spend tons on advertising, media, and public relations.

Lean Finely Textured BeefPink Slime

ABC worked hard to create a story about lean finely textured beef.

Food safety in the news implies all food of same type is now bad.

When there is a bad burrito, cantaloupe, or spinach, consumers react by not buying anything fresh or ag related.

Consumer observations of products in the stores not always as they seem.

People think organic is better for you so product companies will work on creating a food label to fit. People feel better without hormones or antibiotics in their food so product companies will create packaging to fit.

Science to advance growing more foods is opposed by people wanting to not have science based approach to growing food.


Everyone eats

Everyone eats

There are 311 million people in the USA but only ~4 million are actually involved in growing, raising, and harvesting food.

Number of farms

Farmers and Ranchers across the USA: Texas has 200,000+ farms and Alaska about 600~ farms. These are working production farms whose goal is to make money as a business.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0823.pdf

Relative farm population segments

http://agtoday.us/us-farmer-subgroups-info-2011

The farmers and farming is very diverse; this is the population of farmers by subgroup. There are approximately 2.1 million crop farmers and about 61,000 hog farmers.

Relative farm revenue size

http://agtoday.us/us-farmer-subgroups-info-2011

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0823.pdf

And these farmers aim to make money with their operations. Crop farming revenue for 2011 is about $142 billion dollars and sheep/goat revenue is about $550 million dollars.

Can Agriculture Media Help?

78+ Ag agencies70+ Ag associa/ons160+ Ag focused companies232+ Ag focused print media

http://www.agrimarketing.com/

There are may players in agriculture media; From agencies that help develop marketing and advertising campaigns, trade associations, ag product companies, and the ag media its self.

Print Association

Company Agency

Where are these ag media companies? They are very much focused on the core agriculture regions.

And farmers and ranchers are people just like us! Some of these people are farmers that recently tweeted

Pictures via Twitter: Lower Dairy Farm, Tracy Zeorian, Ryan froman, Marilena Barbera, Jennifer Dewey, Chad Ingels, Susie J Kirkham, Suderman Bros, sean harmon, McGregor

Farms, Zach Watson, Philip Brigham, John Pawsey, Brenda Kirsch, Tried&True, Bryan Avison, James Lane

This is a personal view of those farmers and ranchers during harvest.

Because they havea story to tell.


Here are some examples

Why: milk prices in the USA were not working well for some dairy farmers; Do consumers know this?

Action: use Twitter to trend #Moo to help draw attention to the milk price issues.

http://gilmerdairy.blogspot.com/2009/08/dairy-awareness-moo-ving-on-up-in.html

Prices eventual did go up. Was it because of the #Moo? Probably not. But it help dairy farmers learn how to utilize social media as a tool.

AgIowaWhy: to bring ag social media people together to learn and share plus help promote agriculture to non-ag population.Action: leverage the 140 brand and crate a physical event in a large ag focused state (Iowa). Share info via live event, Twitter, and web site.

http://140conf.com/agiowa

Why: Zweber Farms is a family farm that made the decision to be organic. How do they tell people about it?

Action: Create a blog, start using twitter, take pictures, utilize Facebook, go to events to share what they are doing. Tim Zweber tweets from the tractor and Emily writes blog posts and connects on Facebook.

http://zweberfarms.com/

Becoming a certified organic dairy farm is hard work. It takes a minimum of 3 years and you still have to make money during that time. Zweber farms joined the Organic Valley Coop, raise and sell sustainably raised chicken, pork and beef directly to customers.

Why: Create a profitable ag digital media company

Action: Be willing to try almost anything, technology wise and marketing wise to build the business. Build platforms on WordPress, Flickr, and connections within the ag industry.

http://agwired.com/

Chuck and Cindy Zimmerman used to own real radio antennas and live on a deadline defined by networks and traditional media. Then Web 2.0 arrived and they sold out old media and jumped on new media. Factoid: AgWired has over 120,000 flick images from over 500 events. He aims to help his clients with visual coverage of an event and provide the pictures for use by all through Flickr. His photo database is a who's who of agriculture.

SXSW

Why: Elevate the understanding of agriculture with a tech savvy crowd

Action: Design and submit SXSW proposal and then engage core support crowd to provide supporting votes. Show up and hang on!

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2011/events/event_IAP5858How Farmers Get Serious Business Done With Mobilehttp://schedule.sxsw.com/2011/events/event_IAP5986Agvocacy 2.0: Adding a Human Voice to the Farm

Getting two ag related panels at SXSW was no simple feat. Planning, organizing voters, and getting there took time, commitment, and dollars. But the teams arrived and shared who they are and what they do.

Why: with less than 2% of the US population actually growing food, there is a disconnect to understanding who does produce food.

Action: create a campaign on Twitter around #FoodThanks, utilize a landing page to share info on how to participate, include Twibbon on Twitter avatars, and talk with people to encourage them to blog / thank farmers for our food.

http://foodthanks.com/

Why: There is a lot of information about genetically modified organisms that the public believes yet is not true.

Action: Build a blog around science experts and interested parties to share what happens in science and research. Create a face with FrankNFoode on Twitter and in real life to help educate people on the science.

http://www.biofortified.org/

Why: Many people are not familiar with farming and the work it involves. Young people have energy and a belief they can make a difference.

Action: "Together, our generation can make a difference." through concerts, design, Social Media, Selling T-shirts at events, talking to many people, using social media

http://www.ilovefarmers.org/about.html

This is a student run non-profit out of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA. They organize around other events, cater to the needs of young people (music, T-shirts, food), and bring youthful energy where ever they go.

Why: To empower farmers and ranchers to connect communities through social media platforms.

Action: setup events to bring social media training to farmers and ranchers in large and small groups.

http://agchat.org/

AgChat got its start as an experiment on Twitter, creating a Twitter chat around food and agriculture. It evolved into a group of farmers and ranchers who wanted to help spread the word on how to use social media to bring agriculture’s voice to a larger audience.

Telling a great storyWhat is happening?

Contact Information

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