Social Soil: The Power of Social Media in Agriculture

*Welcome to Social Soil - a series of social media posts for farmers. Whether you're a seasoned social media veteran or just trying to start, we want to help farmers with their "ag+advocacy" skills ("AGvocacy") so together we can promote Nebraska corn and agriculture.*

In our Social Soil series, we’ve talked about how farmers and ranchers can use Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogging, videos and 2016 social media trends to help our whole industry tell its story.

So how does the power of social media really share the story of what farmers and rancher do?

Social media is all about people. It is a way to build relationships, share information and connect with diverse audience of people you may never meet in real life. So, interacting on social media, whether it is Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, allows you to develop a community and share your story in a way that was never possible before. The general public still has faith in farmers and ranchers, but some are still wary of modern farm practices. It is important that agriculture unites and it has a chance to tell its side of the story. Social media is one way to make your voice heard in the 98% of the population that don’t raise food.

A great example proving the power of social media in agriculture is the AgChat Foundation. Started with engaged conversations on Twitter with the #AgChat hashtag, it has grown into a community where agriculture works together to touch millions of people only connected with farms because they eat. The Foundation is designed to serve as a conduit for those farmers and ranchers as it empowers them to become agvocates.

#AgChat is a moderated conversation that is hosted weekly on Twitter that covers topics from animal welfare to perceptions of farming to communications to agronomy to USDA programs, etc. The goal is to have an open dialogue where everyone is included who uses the hashtag. #AgChat has a sister chat - #FoodChat - a monthly conversation tailored more specifically to the interests of consumers, nutrition professionals, foodies and influencers of food choices.

The best way to utilize the power of social media as a farmer/rancher is to share about and have conversations about what you know best. Maybe you are a guru with using drones, or know every weed there is known to man in your head, or you can easily talk about why you use antibiotics with your cattle. Whatever it is, try to focus in on using your skills and knowledge of this topic to your advantage.

One agvocate, Dr. Channa Prakash, took home the Borlaug CAST Communication Award at the World Food Prize for his use of social media to share agriculture facts. He is a guru on ag biotechnology, so he manages a reputable Twitter account under the name of @agbioworld and focus on those messages.

“You’ll be surprised as to how quickly you’ll become well known or popular in a way,” Prakash said in an agriculture.com interview. “It depends on the messaging, your passion, and your knowledge of the issues.”

Prakash’s tips for social media success:

1. Jump right into it! Begin posting about what concerns and excites you.
2. Begin developing a like-minded audience.
3. Take note of what issues consistently come up.
4. Create a hashtag to help others connect to your platform.
5. Enjoy popularity.

Prakash’s tips can easily be transferred to creating videos to share on YouTube or Facebook, or pictures to put on Instagram or Pinterest.

How will you utilize the power of social media? Learn more here: Power of Social Media in Agriculture.

Social Soil: Twitter

*Welcome to Social Soil - a series of social media posts for farmers. Whether you're a seasoned social media veteran or just trying to start, we want to help farmers with their "ag+advocacy" skills ("AGvocacy") so together we can promote Nebraska corn and agriculture.*

Twitter is a funny beast. When it first came out, people said, “It’s just a fad.” Today, however, Twitter is a different story. It is becoming more popular than Facebook for many demographics, especially youth and millennials. As of the second quarter of 2015, the microblogging service averaged at 304 million monthly active users. At the beginning of the 2014, Twitter had surpassed 255 MAU per quarter.

Many ag groups and individuals are doing a great job on Twitter, using its 140-character limit by maximizing the potential with hashtags, photos and links. “Hashtag??”, you ask?

Yes, a hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages on a specific topic. When you put a # in front of a word, that word becomes linkable and searchable. So you can click directly on that word and it takes you to what everyone else is saying about that topic. For example, if you put a # in front of the word, “water” like #water, it shows you what the Twitterverse (aka, everyone on Twitter) is saying about water. So you might want to get more specific and put #wateruse or #waterefficiency if you’re going to talk about irrigation and the efficiencies you’re seeing.

This allows for short, concise content and the ability to grasp a person’s very short attention span.

CropLife came out with a great list of the 20 must-follow Twitter accounts for agriculture, so if you want valuable agronomic advice, practical tips or breaking news, they’ve got you covered – check them out here. When you see a person's name - or handle - on Twitter, it will start with "@".

A couple of important points to know with Twitter is that any Tweet that you see from someone you follow, you can Retweet. This is basically like forwarding on a message to all of your followers. So whatever you Retweet, the people that follow you will see. You can also Direct Message (or DM) someone that you follow if you wanted to send them a personal message that no one else can see - much like an email. But this too has to be 140 characters.

If you're just getting started with Twitter, we recommend you following the great people on the CropLife list. Then of course follow the Nebraska Corn Board, @NECornBoard, and Nebraska Corn Growers Association, @NeCGA! Then try using Twitter to share what you're doing on your farm or issues that are important to you. Nebraska Corn Board member and Tweeter-Extraordinaire, Brandon Hunnicutt is a great example, be sure to follow him at @cornfedfarmer.

Read other Social Soil posts here!

Corn harvest conversations

With the use of new technology - on the mobile phone and with GPS-driven combines - farmers are finding new ways to communicate during harvest.

Murdock #Nebraska #corn piling #harvest14 pic.twitter.com/5YMDNUTjui
— Matthew Wiegand (@mjwiegand) November 2, 2014 

And it's easy to follow the conversations with hashtags like #harvest14 or #cornharvest on Twitter.

Plugging along SE Nebraska #harvest14 #neharvest14 #corn #farmlife @Case_IH pic.twitter.com/NVu5Lw7Y4e
— Chris Niemann (@NEIMoses) October 27, 2014

By sharing images and short and quips, farmers are sharing more about the FARM TO FOOD story than they might realize. Anyone can find these tweets and by seeing the story from the actual farmer, it makes farming and food production  much more credible.

Listening to @Huskers pregame on radio while picking corn. I love fall in #Nebraska . #GBR #harvest14 pic.twitter.com/iXMNzkwF7x
— Josh Cool (@jcool0754) October 25, 2014

As of Monday, corn harvest in Nebraska was 91 percent complete, near 90 last year and 87 for the five-year average. Even though we are closing in on the end of November, harvest is still in full swing and near the 5-year average. With snow earlier this week, it slowed harvest some, but it didn't slow farmers too much as they are still persevering.

Just another day of #corn harvest in #Nebraska! Favorite time if the year! #harvest14 pic.twitter.com/hIhirdvU1q
— Lance Atwater (@latwater1) October 17, 2014

And when harvest is complete, farmers can use online resources for quick tips.

Is #harvest14 complete? Here's a to-do list before you park the combine for the winter: http://t.co/DwqKpHvNVv
— Farm Journal (@FarmJournal) November 19, 2014

Good luck to Nebraska farmers finishing up harvest!

Lost in the Food Fact Clutter?

Contrary to popular belief, straightforward answers to your farming and food questions do exist. Now, consumers can find answers in one location as a result of www.FindOurCommonGround.com.

The website has transitioned from informing audiences about the CommonGround program to providing a resource for consumers on many of the most popular food and farming topics. As CommonGround sorts through the questions and some of the misconceptions consumers may have, the program’s volunteers will provide visitors with a combination of firsthand accounts of what happens on their farms and scientific research.

The enhanced site will introduce visitors to farmer volunteers such as Nebraska’s nine volunteers. It also streamlines its focus on the top eight issues consumers ask volunteers about food. Those issues include:

• Animal Welfare
• Antibiotics
• Corporate Farms
• Food Prices

• GMO Foods
• Hormones
• Local/Organic
• Safety

From research to recipes, CommonGround volunteers hope to help visitors will find the answers to their important questions about food.

Have a question you want answered? CommonGround will not let it go unanswered. Find CommonGround Nebraska online:

• Website: www.FindOurCommonGround.com
• Blog: www.CommonGroundNebraska.com
• YouTube: CommonGroundNE
• Twitter: @CommonGroundNE
• Twitter Hashtag: #CGConvo
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/CommonGroundNebraska

CommonGround is a farmer-driven movement funded by the Nebraska Corn Board and Nebraska Soybean Board.

Thanking consumers on CommonGround

The holiday season is a time to be thankful and CommonGround volunteers are thankful for the consumers who purchase the food that their families produce on their farms.  Tuesday night, Iowa and Nebraska CommonGround volunteers came together to “Thank Consumers” at Anthony’s Steakhouse in Omaha. 

The evening offered an opportunity for moms, dads, dieticians, bloggers and friends to openly discuss facts about farming and food with the women who are helping to produce it on their family farms.  They also had the opportunity to get their nutrition and food safety questions answered by Dr. Ruth MacDonald, Department Chair of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University. You can catch tweets from the event with the hashtag, #CommonGroundDinner.

Nutrition, food and how food is raised are hot topics right now, and the conversations that happened during dinner could have probably gone all night long.  The goal of CommonGround is to create conversations about food and farming. Between the volunteers and Dr. MacDonald, they were able to answer some great questions from everyone in attendance.

Iowa CommonGround posted some great videos of Dr. MacDonald’s response to questions like pesticide use in fruits and vegetables, hormones in our meat and the safety of GMO’s. Watch her video below or go to their YouTube page.

We are very thankful for all of the consumers that came to the event as well as CommonGround volunteers who took time out of their busy schedules to come and meet with consumers.  Farmers are truly thankful for the consumers who purchase our products at the grocery store.

We want to also thank Dr. MacDonald for taking time out of her schedule to come and answer some tough, yet pertinent questions from everyone who came to the event!

Read more about CommonGround Nebraska on their blog.

Farming a blog

Blogs are becoming widespread to a group of people we often like to write about: farmers!

Farmers in Nebraska, like Randy Uhrmacher, are using social media to interact with his customers – or “anyone that eats” – like he says on his blog, Cornfrmr: Random thoughts of a Nebraska corn/soybean farmer. Randy also has a farm Facebook page and twitter account (@Cornfrmr) that he share messages, pictures and updates about his life on the farm – and even being NASCAR fan.

Randy does a great job at sharing not only pictures of planting and equipment, but the true issues that surround agriculture today. He recently blogged about things we take for granted, like tires, to put food on the table, and another blog faces the anti-ag issues surrounding modern agriculture production.

Another Nebraska farmer, Ryan Weeks, is a fifth generation family farmer who blogs about his farm and raising the world’s food, feed, fiber and fuel on the same acreage settled by his great-great grandparents in 1892, on his is blog, Days of the Weeks.

Ryan also has a farm Facebook page and twitter account (@HuskerFarm). He shows some great pictures and explains why they do what they do on their farm, as well as other media, like podcast interviews on the advantages of autosteer and other technology.

I'm sure Randy and Ryan could tell you more about their positive experiences of using social media to educate consumers and producers alike. What are you doing to share your farm story?

Nebraska agriculture featured on NPR's All Things Considered

National Public Radio's All Things Considered program spent some time last week in Nebraska visiting farmers, an ag economist, bankers and others to discuss the farm economy, grain prices and technology – even including a moment talking about Twitter.

The story "What Recession? It's Boom Time For Nebraska Farms" ran today - follow the link for an abbreviated written report and full audio, or click the embedded play button below. It's a good report by Robert Siegel and crew.

Brandon Hunnicutt and his wife, Lisa

Included in the report is Brandon Hunnicutt, a family corn, soybean and popcorn farmer from Giltner – aka @cornfedfarmer on Twitter. The report notes Hunnicutt's family, which includes five children and his wife, Lisa, and the farm they operate with his father, brother and cousin. It describes how they have invested in technology and facilities to help them be successful.

Yet All Things Considered dived into the grain prices and related ag economy as a whole, with economist Ernie Goss of Creighton University; Kelly Holthus, president of Cornerstone Bank in York, farmer Clint Jensen,who serves on the local advisory committee to the Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency, and others.

In essence, the report notes that the ag economy is in better shape overall because of good demand for grain and a number of other factors that result in higher prices overall. Those higher grain prices and the economic activity they create then trickle through to many other businesses.

While Siegel didn't talk about Nebraska's economy in general, without the strong ag base we have, the state would be in a considerably more difficult position today. Agriculture drives our economy and there are tremendous benefits to helping keep Nebraska agriculture going strong.

Harvest Public Media and Nebraska Public Radio's Clay Masters (@ClaytonMasters) spent some time with Siegel and the other NPR folks on the trip. He wrote a blog about a portion of that here.

NCGA Social Media Training Webinar Series Begins Jan. 20

Today’s growers have a whole new set of tools to use on the farm when it comes to communicating the importance of what we’re doing, and it’s vitally important that we know how to use these tools well and that we have then at hand when we need them.

Throughout 2011, the National Corn Growers Association will hold a series of hourly webinars – online tutorials – to help our members and others learn how to use some of these tools, such as Facebook and Twitter. This series of monthly webinars is provided free, courtesy the generous support of Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont Business.

The first webinar of the National Corn Growers Association 2011 Social Media Training Program will take place at 10:30 a.m. CST Thursday, January 20. The program is generously sponsored by Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, and is the first of 12 free hour-long online learning sessions that will be held monthly through 2011.

The Jan. 20 webinar will address the goals of the series, and why growers should take the time to participate. Presenters will define the objectives and review the “return on investment” of engaging in social media and how it fits within the context of agriculture. Instructors will also review how it is being used successfully by others in the industry and show participants how they can track their personal social media success.

Follow-up webinars are planned for February 17, March 17, April 28, May 19, June 16, July 21, August 18, September 15, October 20, November 17 and December 15. Times for these will be announced prior to the webinars.

Click here to register for the January webinar.

Click here to sign up for NCGA’s e-mail list, to be notified before each upcoming webinar, so you can register, and to receive important updates throughout the year. Important: Under “Your Interests,” please make sure to select “Social Media Webinars 2011.”

Once these webinars are completed, they will be archived at the NCGA Online Learning Center.

NCGA in Social Media
http://www.facebook.com/corngrowers
www.twitter.com/nationalcorn
www.youtube.com/nationalcorngrowers
www.flickr.com/photos/ncgapictures
http://www.corncommentary.com/

Pioneer Hi-Bred in Social Media
www.facebook.com/pioneerhibred
www.twitter.com/pioneerhibred
www.youtube.com/user/PioneerHB

Nebraska farmers not only work dirt, they work agvocacy!

Last Friday transpired a “first” for several Nebraska farmers – they engaged in social media! Farmers and individuals involved in agriculture met up from across the state in Beatrice, Nebraska to participate in the Social Media Training Workshop, conducted by Michele Payn-Knoper, founder of Cause Matters, Corp. and AgChat Foundation. This workshop was coordinated by the Nebraska Corn Board and Nebraska Corn Growers Association and was sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association’s Image and Activism Campaign Project.

Michele is one of the foremost experts on using social media tools to get positive messages out about agriculture. She started out the session explaining the importance of farmers using social media to agvocate and the power that conversations within social media hold.

“Are you concerned about how the media is portraying agriculture, and how consumers view where their food comes from?” Payn-Knoper asked. “Because the conversation is happening, whether you are there or not.”

Real headlines in today’s online communications and news articles read, “Dirty Corn Ethanol”; “The Vulgar Truth about U.S. Meats”; “Is the Ethanol Industry Failing or Flourishing?”; “Corn industry brazenly turns Gulf disaster into marketing opportunity”; “Why High Fructose Corn Syrup is Bad For You”. These journalists are reaching people with their messages, and consumers believe them! This is why it is so important to get the real voice of agriculture heard.

Michele shared some important facts with the participants about social media and networking. According to Jupiter Research, social networking users are three times more likely to trust the opinions of peers over advertisements when making decisions. This leads to the fact that what farmers do is novel to most consumers and that farmers are a trusted source of information about where their food comes from. The average American consumer spends 2.7 hours per day on the mobile web, which allows for a great audience for farmers to put out positive messages about agriculture!

Michele also set some ground rules for agriculturalists using social media:
1. Be 100% authentic and transparent.
2. Build a community around your purpose for engaging in a social network.
3. Understand that your updates are a novelty to 98.5% of U.S. population.
4. Expand beyond agriculture; test messages and ideas in new circles of connections (i.e. If you like running, connect with other runners in social media which gives you a broader audience to share your positive agriculture messages.)
5. Engage in conversation with your community. (i.e. Don’t just be a listener to read what others are saying about agriculture – contribute your ideas!)
6. Put a face on the plate, helps consumers relate. (i.e. Choose a picture of yourself instead of your farm equipment or field.)

In the morning portion of the workshop, participants were introduced to the essentials about facebook and those who didn’t already have an account got hands-on help signing up. In the afternoon, participants learned all about twitter and everyone who didn’t have twitter signed up and started “tweeting” on the spot! Tweeps at the workshop who started twitter before included: @mpaynknoper, @rrjanousek, @NECornBoard, @Ag4Front, @NeCGA, @Cornfrmr, @NESoybeanBoard, @megamaru, @nebrnancy, and @cornfedfarmer. New tweeps after the end of the day included: @NE_AFAN, @kyleregelean, @bzanga, @farmproud, @kaggdaddy, @farmdrg, @weselyfarms, and @kathyu13.

Michele gave Nebraska a compliment that we had some of the most tech-savvy farmers in all the workshops so far she’s seen. But that just allowed her to challenge the group to continue using social media for a bigger and broader voice for agriculture!

To read more about Nebraska Corn’s efforts in social media, visit these websites:
www.nebraskacorn.org/
http://www.necga.org/
http://www.nebraskacorn.blogspot.com/
www.twitter.com/NECornBoard
www.twitter.com/NeCGA
www.facebook.com/NebraskaCornBoard
www.facebook.com/NeCGA
www.flickr.com/photos/NECornBoard
www.YouTube.com/TheCobSquad
Nebraska Corn Board on LinkedIn

Agvocacy at its best; AgChat Foundation

Nebraska farmers, and farmers around the United States and Canada are getting more involved with agriculture advocacy – online!

The weekly AgChat Twitter conversation was started for farmers and consumers alike as an open forum to answer questions about agriculture and food production. This new form of social media for those in agriculture has helped energize and inspire many farmers to engage online to agvocate for their industry using social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook.

Agriculture advocate and public speaker, Michele Payn-Knoper started AgChat one year ago, and this venue has led into a great resource for both farmers and foodies. Now it is bigger than ever.

This week, the AgChat Foundation was announced via Twitter as a way to connect people on both sides of the food plate.

This farmer led group “is designed to empower more farmers to leverage social media as a tool to tell agriculture’s story. The Foundation will educate and equip farmers and ranchers with the skill set needed to effectively engage on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, Linkedin and other social media services. It will give them knowledge to unlock new tools to effectively tell their story. Research shows that social media is a growing opportunity for farmers to have a stronger voice in educating people about the business of growing food, fuel, feed and fiber.”

The Foundation will host a Board of Directors and an Advisory Board, both farmer led. Nebraskans Zach Hunnicutt, farmer from Giltner, and Brent Pohlman, Midwest Labs in Omaha, will be serving on the Advisory Board for the Foundation. To see the list of Board of Directors and Advisory Board, see this Agwired.com post.

Please read more about the AgChat Foundation and check out the Fan Page on Facebook.

Tweeps use social media to connect at Commodity Classic 2010

The largest ever "tweet-up" was held at Commodity Classic this week for all those in agriculture who are using social media, like Twitter, to promote ag. The "tweet-up" was simply a meeting for those on twitter -- also known as a "tweep" -- to actually meet in person and connect with people who we all know in the twitterverse.

Many of the tweeps there already knew each other by their twitter handle (i.e. twitter name, such as @NECornBoard), so in introductions, we took time to learn each other's real names and what their role is in agriculture. There was also interesting discussion on how each tweep was using social media differently in their respective fields of agriculture.


(Photo tweeted by @agchick)

Nebraska was well represented by having the largest population of tweeps there! In no particular order (and if I missed someone I apologize!): @NeCGA, @MikeHowie, @SustainableGreg, @megamaru, @iamafarmer2, @cornfedfarmer, @NebrNancy and @ag4front.

All week at Commodity Classic, Twitter-users used the hashtag, #Classic10, to link all of the information that was tweeted from the convention. Tweets from the Classic included: California’s Secretary of Ag, Kawamura’s address to corn and soybean delegates; U.S. Secretary of Ag, Tom Vilsack’s comments to producers; workshops about crop, fertilizer and financial management; and even fun facts and pictures from the trade show were tweeted and related using this insignia.

To view the conversations and notes from #Classic10, click here.

Want to see some pictures from Commodity Classic? View the Nebraska Corn Board’s Flickr photostream here, or AgWired’s photostream here.

Top Tweets for Nebraska Corn Board

For under year of Tweeting between the Nebraska Corn Kernel blog authors, the Nebraska Corn Board has been able to establish a status among other ag news sources for reputable information, facts and stories of agriculture in Nebraska, across the nation and even have international followers.

Providing tweets to our followers with web links allows us to track how many viewers are reading the information.

This is valuable to show what our followers are most interested in and to provide more of that specific information. For those on Twitter not tracking their tweets, I would suggest using bit.ly, as you can easily copy in the link (which then shortens it), and use the shortened link in your tweet. You can use this site to go back and see how many times someone clicked on that link.

Here is a list of our Top Tweets in which viewers read the most for 2009:
1. Good read: “It’s Time for Farmers to Tweet!” http://bit.ly/6DivFX

2. Study: Raising pigs indoors healthier for animals, people http://bit.ly/4SeFgr #oink

3. #HSUS ‘Rescues,’ Forgets Baltimore’s Horses http://bit.ly/5wlC3L

4. Register 4 @NECornBoard and @NEDeptAG webinar on Advantages of Feeding in #Nebraska, December 16 at 12:30 CST http://bit.ly/58EXrc #livestock

5. ~5% of #corn crop goes to make food ingredients, chemicals, fabrics & plastic. #cornsTALKwed http://bit.ly/7rbJkM

6. Technology, knowledge improve water management and irrigation across #Nebraska http://bit.ly/6rzj0C

7. You can’t have Christmas without Corn! Read the newest blog post on the holiday season. http://bit.ly/7Vdyzs

8. Podcast: Farmers can reach out and tell their story http://bit.ly/5xSFBQ

9. Nebraska Produces Record Amount of #Ethanol. http://bit.ly/4rDDpI

10. #Beef made the list to 25 Ridiculously Healthy Foods http://bit.ly/7EJAxF #food

11. Bogus Times, Grist articles on HFCS add to echo chamber http://bit.ly/8s2Mol

12. Testimony presented on corn checkoff http://bit.ly/IjF05

13. September proclaimed Renewable Fuels Month in Nebraska http://bit.ly/Q94QO

14. What is the corn checkoff? http://bit.ly/7kMFT

15. Corn genome sequence - 'wiring diagram' - being released http://bit.ly/3Q5suZ

16. Nebraska Ag Classic includes topics on social media, dealing with animal rights groups http://bit.ly/41GChy

17. Nebraska corn 48 percent harvested http://bit.ly/1HgOLH

18. Chief Ethanol Fuels turns 25 http://bit.ly/ATD7A