Thoughts on the topic, Producers and the Public

[Auburn_Ag]

I will be attending a meeting pretty soon where the topic will be on educating the public about agriculture. Please read the sentence below and share your thought with the board. This topic affects everyone in the Farming and Ranching industry.

How can we as agricultural producers reach out to the public to gain their support on important issues impacting agriculture?
1. Environmental
2. Animal Welfare
3. Food
4. Collaborating with other industries.

 

[HerefordSire]

I will be attending a meeting pretty soon where the topic will be on educating the public about agriculture. Please read the sentence below and share your thought with the board. This topic affects everyone in the Farming and Ranching industry.

How can we as agricultural producers reach out to the public to gain their support on important issues impacting agriculture?
1. Environmental
2. Animal Welfare
3. Food
4. Collaborating with other industries.

Pool funds and advertise.

 

[grannysoo]

What's agriculture got to do with anything? All of the kidlets know that food comes from Wally-World....

The youth is where the knowledge needs to be applied.

 

[Jogeephus]

That's going to be a hard sell if we continue to attempt to educate the general public with facts instead of emotions and feelings like the anti's have. They have done a wonderful job humanizing everything from pigs to fish giving them cute names and funny personalities even making movies about them.

To start with, I think we should continue to get the facts out cause eventually lies will hang the antis and the facts need to be readily available when the noose tightens. Secondly, I would like to see less of our Checkoff dollars spent on ads in cattle magazines and more at events such as outdoor cooking events and the like. Never understood the idea of preaching to the choir.

 

[larryshoat]

That's going to be a hard sell if we continue to attempt to educate the general public with facts instead of emotions and feelings like the anti's have. They have done a wonderful job humanizing everything from pigs to fish giving them cute names and funny personalities even making movies about them.

To start with, I think we should continue to get the facts out cause eventually lies will hang the antis and the facts need to be readily available when the noose tightens. Secondly, I would like to see less of our Checkoff dollars spent on ads in cattle magazines and more at events such as outdoor cooking events and the like. Never understood the idea of preaching to the choir.

In the industry we are still looking for a place to start. I think your post is right on the money, they are so much better at the public relations game than we are. Going forward we will have to get better, much better at getting our side of the story told. Jogee, good thinking, good post.

Larry

 

[alacattleman]

I will be attending a meeting pretty soon where the topic will be on educating the public about agriculture. Please read the sentence below and share your thought with the board. This topic affects everyone in the Farming and Ranching industry.

How can we as agricultural producers reach out to the public to gain their support on important issues impacting agriculture?
1. Environmental
2. Animal Welfare
3. Food
4. Collaborating with other industries.

kill peta members

 

[Auburn_Ag]

What's agriculture got to do with anything? All of the kidlets know that food comes from Wally-World....

The youth is where the knowledge needs to be applied.

You are correct grannysoo.However, I feel that we are to blame for this. I am sure that when my Granddad returned from World War II and was raising his family on the farm, raising cattle, hogs, corn and had poultry houses. I am sure he never gave it one thought that in 60 years or more that children of this Great Nation would not know where there food and fiber came from. We have allowed it by letting the school system do it. For the most part we of the farming and ranching community are good people and we have set back and let the voices of few be heard louder than ours. Mainly because, like my Granddad and a lot of others out there thought that the voices of few were nuts! Those nuts have grown in large numbers over the years.

I agree with Joe, that we have tried to sell FACTS to the general public for too long. I am sure we have reached some people but not many. Rarely do facts over ride emotion, Peta and these other organization know this and have used it to their advantage. Their idea of a farmer is an old guy with overall and a shock stick frying the heck out of a down cow. Well I don't even on a shock stick! I believe that we need to use the check off dollars to educate in areas that we never have before. When I say educate I mean do it with emotion, make it fun and slip facts in on them when they are not looking. I think we need to educated young children. My suggestion is to get in touch with a teacher, I am sure you have at least one teacher contact, see if you can help with a class science project. If it nothing more than growing corn in a flat.

None of this is going to be easy, it never is. I have started trying and doing my part and have been a 4-H beef club advisor now for a little while; we have kids that have never even been around a cow before. I live in what I still call rural AL, where I know the kids have to see a cow from at least the bus. We are currently learning breeds and parts of cattle; I also am trying to find a good and suitable book to read to a class during National reader's week.

I know I have gotten off the topic somewhat, but that's my two cent worth.

 

[HerefordSire]

It only takes one person. Look for the Billy Graham rancher.

 

[novatech]

What's agriculture got to do with anything? All of the kidlets know that food comes from Wally-World....

The youth is where the knowledge needs to be applied.

You are correct grannysoo.However, I feel that we are to blame for this. I am sure that when my Granddad returned from World War II and was raising his family on the farm, raising cattle, hogs, corn and had poultry houses. I am sure he never gave it one thought that in 60 years or more that children of this Great Nation would not know where there food and fiber came from. We have allowed it by letting the school system do it. For the most part we of the farming and ranching community are good people and we have set back and let the voices of few be heard louder than ours. Mainly because, like my Granddad and a lot of others out there thought that the voices of few were nuts! Those nuts have grown in large numbers over the years.

I agree with Joe, that we have tried to sell FACTS to the general public for too long. I am sure we have reached some people but not many. Rarely do facts over ride emotion, Peta and these other organization know this and have used it to their advantage. Their idea of a farmer is an old guy with overall and a shock stick frying the heck out of a down cow. Well I don't even on a shock stick! I believe that we need to use the check off dollars to educate in areas that we never have before. When I say educate I mean do it with emotion, make it fun and slip facts in on them when they are not looking. I think we need to educated young children. My suggestion is to get in touch with a teacher, I am sure you have at least one teacher contact, see if you can help with a class science project. If it nothing more than growing corn in a flat.

None of this is going to be easy, it never is. I have started trying and doing my part and have been a 4-H beef club advisor now for a little while; we have kids that have never even been around a cow before. I live in what I still call rural AL, where I know the kids have to see a cow from at least the bus. We are currently learning breeds and parts of cattle; I also am trying to find a good and suitable book to read to a class during National reader's week.

I know I have gotten off the topic somewhat, but that's my two cent worth.

You can do all the book learning you want but nothing will ever replace touch and feel for kids. Give them a field trip, then they better understand the book.

 

[grannysoo]

You can do all the book learning you want but nothing will ever replace touch and feel for kids. Give them a field trip, then they better understand the book.

And start with your own kids and their friends. They need to know where the stuff inside that Big Mac or Whopper comes from. If you start them at an early age, it's not a big deal. Just make it a fact of life. We're here to eat Bambi, or Petunia, or Susie, or whatever else you may have named the deer, pig, cow, or whatever.

It's not going to happen overnight. It normally takes about 15 years to change perception and behavior in society.

 

[john250]

I'm going to generalize a little. Farmers have personality traits which make us good farmers. Those same traits don't make us real good at public relations.
As Jogee says, we are also crippled with facts.
Try telling a room of hooting hollering CAFO opponents that it will add to the tax base and be a benefit to the community.
One word, "s h i t" , trumps every logical argument in that setting.
Our opponents promise eternal life, blue skys and happy hogs. How do you oppose people whose promises have no base in reality?

 

[grannysoo]

Our opponents promise eternal life, blue skys and happy hogs.

You left out the virgins. :lol:

 

[Howdyjabo]

I say all farmers using methods they attack, quit en mass for one year- that will bring a dose of reality even to the PETA nuts.

Maybe thats what is needed- a documentary to show what would happen globaly if they actually got what they wanted.
Its working on the horse nuts- only they had to see the results first hand.
Still reminds me of the tree nuts in the 80's- went anti paper to "save the trees". What it ended up doing was killing the pulp market and several thousand acres of trees were sold- and of course they were cut down never to be again.

 

[Jogeephus]

I say all farmers using methods they attack, quit en mass for one year- that will bring a dose of reality even to the PETA nuts.

Maybe thats what is needed- a documentary to show what would happen globaly if they actually got what they wanted.Its working on the horse nuts- only they had to see the results first hand.
Still reminds me of the tree nuts in the 80's- went anti paper to "save the trees". What it ended up doing was killing the pulp market and several thousand acres of trees were sold- and of course they were cut down never to be again.

That is a fantastic idea! Just like the documentaries like Life after People. That show was interesting and made you think. Of course how well could our target audience think with their minds muddled with organic ganja and dragon scales?

 

[HerefordSire]

I say all farmers using methods they attack, quit en mass for one year- that will bring a dose of reality even to the PETA nuts.

Maybe thats what is needed- a documentary to show what would happen globaly if they actually got what they wanted.Its working on the horse nuts- only they had to see the results first hand.
Still reminds me of the tree nuts in the 80's- went anti paper to "save the trees". What it ended up doing was killing the pulp market and several thousand acres of trees were sold- and of course they were cut down never to be again.

That is a fantastic idea! Just like the documentaries like Life after People. That show was interesting and made you think. Of course how well could our target audience think with their minds muddled with organic ganja and dragon scales?

With the price of decent cameras these days, a documentary sounds pretty good, aka Michael Moore style.

 

[Auburn_Ag]

There are some people that have already started on a small scale, posted videos of their farm on youtube. The one that i am thinking of is a lady, that her and her family live on a hog farm.

 

[farmwriter]

I see alot of videos and photos on facebook from groups like Animal Ag alliance and Farm2U, but I wonder how much of that is preaching to the choir, too. How many people are really converted or awakened by those messages? I'm skeptical of those efforts. Not that I'm against them, but I do wonder how effective they really are.
And I absolutely do not advocate making schools bare the burden. Kids are brainwashed enough by all the crap that parents won't take responsibility for. I taught, and I saw it. But my complete disdain for public education is another topic...
I wish I had an answer, but I agree with what some others have posted - stop advertising in the dang cattlemen's mag, and maybe give people a glimpse of what would happen if the anti-ag loons got their way.

 

[Jogeephus]

Years ago we had and national eco group giving our industry a little grief so I joined them and went to their meetings to understand what they were about. Learned they were actually good people just misdirected. When the opportunity presented itself I spoke up and corrected some erroneous info. Later I organized a field trip one weekend and invited everyone to come. There I listened, corrected and gave information - tactfully. They later asked if I would write an article for their magazine. I agreed on the condition that they could not edit it without my permission. This was done and it was later printed.