Jenny Schweigert is a small farmer, agricultural advocate and a very well know agricultural communicator.  Jenny has also faced challenges due to Crohn’s Disease that threatened her life and put her on the sidelines of her ag communications business for several months.  In today’s episode Jenny and I catch up and have a great conversation about meaningful agricultural advocacy and communication.  Jenny first appeared on the Off-Farm Income Podcast in 2015 in episode #50.

The original show notes from that episode are below:

2015 SHOW NOTES

ADVOCATING FOR AGRICULTURE:

Advocating for agriculture is very important for all of us, regardless of our place in the agricultural system.  If you are a hog farmer or a hog manure distributor, it is very important that the general public has accurate and true information about what you and the rest of the agricultural community does.

There are several people on social media; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., etc. that are spreading information about agriculture that is biased, not true or at least slanted.  This harms everyone who works in and relies on agriculture for a living, even though what is really going on is quite a different story.

In any industry where there is high scrutiny nobody seems to catch the day to day positive things that are going on.  However, as soon as there is a mistake or a bad moment that can be taken out of context the media and others can and will run with it for the purposes of their own agenda.  At the very least the day to day, great things that are going on in our industry are not “newsworthy.”

In my previous career as a police officer this was very true.  Police officers are doing great things on a daily basis to help others.  In their off-time I have never seen any group more eager to get involved in giving and participating in events and boards to benefit the less fortunate.  However, you do not see that reported on the news.  But, when a police officer is involved in a use of force that looks bad, the media and several others on social media will report it over and over, showing only the perspective that furthers their agenda.

Ultimately, police departments around the country have taken to social media to combat this.  They are giving out the actual information on stories before somebody else can tell their version of the story.  They showcase the great things their officers are doing through social media and press releases.  This is how the combat the mis-information or at least lack of recognition of the positive things police officer are doing.

For farmers and ranchers, this is no different.  We have to take advantage of the technology that is available to us to tell our story, so that somebody with an agenda doesn’t tell it for us, with their spin.  The problem is that we are a stratified group of individualists.  We are not organized, and we are not necessarily the types that spend their spare time on social media.  We have to change that.  We have to look at providing public information as part of the job.  We must be our own “PIO’s” or public information officers.

Jenny Schweigert and the AgChat Foundation have made it their mission to help farmers and ranchers learn to share their stories on social media.  They are very active trying to get the word out about all the wonderful things that farmers and ranchers do.  They do this in many different ways, culminating with a national conference that brings it all together.

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