Promoting food production requires 'agvocacy'

There is a new buzzword to define advocacy for farmers and other agriculture producers — agvocacy.

Agvocacy was a topic eagerly embraced by the audience at the Heart of the Farm conference put on by the University of Wisconsin-Extension offices in Shawano, Oconto and Marinette counties Friday at The Main Event in Cecil.

With agriculture a major industry in northeast Wisconsin and across the state, today’s food producers are looking for ways to connect people to where their food comes from.

Amy te Plate-Church, manager for alliances and industry relations at Cooperative Resources International, grew up on a dairy farm in northeast Iowa and knows exactly how her food is grown and raised. However, only 2 percent of Americans work and live on farms today, she said, so getting the word out on how animals and plants become food is critical.

Despite most people never setting foot on a farm, food buyers still want to connect the food they eat with the face of a person who grows it, te Plate-Church said.

“There’s a new hot thing (to benefit agriculture advocates) every week or two,” she said. “Maybe it’s opening your farm to tours. Maybe it’s getting into the classrooms, or maybe it’s social media.”

Every state with animal agriculture has been hit with negative undercover videos showing animal abuse on farms, te Plate told the audience. One video of a farm in Ohio has been viewed on YouTube more than 344 million times since it was posted in 2010, she said.

Despite the bad news, which te Plate said is outweighed by the good, farmers generally rank high in trust. Still, ignorance of how farms operate makes it easy to shock people when animal rights groups allege abuse of cows or other farm animals, she said.

“We can’t start agvocacy efforts when a crisis happens,” te Plate-Church said.

Judy Peterson, a farmer from Lena, has had many children visit her farm, and she recommends trying to explain farm activities and practices in simple terms.

“Some children came to our farm, and our cows were in a freestall barn, not outside,” Peterson said. “They asked, ‘Why don’t they go outside?’ and I said, ‘What more could they want? They have free access to a salad bar, and they get to lay on a sandy beach all day.’”

Sarah Mills-Lloyd, agriculture agent for Oconto County, agreed that it is important to make sure what the public is told in a way that doesn’t make farmers look like they’re in the business to make a profit.

“They don’t want to know that you’re profitable, but that it’s your livelihood,” Mills-Lloyd said. “It’s not what you say but how you say it.”

Another new term that helps to promote agvocacy is the term “felfies,” a subset of selfies, when people take photos of themselves. According to te Plate-Church, some farmers are taking photos of themselves with their animals to create personal connections with the people who visit farm websites and other sites that promote agriculture.

Social media is a vital tool for ag producers today. Mary Lou Kugel, of Shawano, noted that she uses her Facebook page to get the word out about area farm activities such as Brunch on the Farm.

Anyone can engage in agvocacy, te Plate-Church said. She noted that 4-H members at a county fair can explain why they’re shearing a sheep, and adult farmers can explain practices such as dehorning and tail docking.

“We don’t have to be celebrities to make a difference,” te Plate-Church said.

Above anything else, it is important not to be confrontational in agvocacy, she noted. It might seem natural to want to stand up for agriculture in a defensive way, but in the end, some people will stick to their differing views no matter what, te Plate-Church said.

“We won’t change everybody’s mind,” she said. “What we’re working to do is to change that vast majority — maybe 60 percent — of people in the middle who just don’t know. We’ll be more successful if we take a step back and treat it like a conversation.”