Saturday, January 15, 2011

Does Agriculture need a spokesman?

At the Farm Bureau annual meeting press conference, Mike Rowe  was recently asked if he would be willing to be a spokesman for American Agriculture.  His response – he doesn’t think we need a spokesperson; what we need are advocates, many of them.  He believes that we, the American farmers and ranchers, are the spokesmen and women that the industry needs.

Mike Rowe explained that the farmers and the ranchers are the professionals who feed 3 million people 3 times a day – we should be the ones telling OUR story! 

He will continue to be a supporter of American Agriculture and will help us tell our story, but he doesn’t want to do it in a traditional way. People don’t respond well to speakers behind a podium; he thinks we need to be everything but traditional in order to catch the attention of the 3 million people our industry feeds every day.  He used the example of his Dirty Jobs episode where he castrated a lamb using his teeth because it was the way the people in Colorado did it…now that will start some conversations!  (although he was not advocating that all of you should go out and castrate a lamb with your teeth…)

Tomorrow, I will tell you about gentleman named Troy Hadrick who took 54 seconds to share his story in response to Yellow Tail wine supporting HSUS.

In the mean time…I want to encourage all of my readers to brainstorm ways you can tell you story; maybe it’s visiting a local grade school, starting your own blog, posting a video on YouTube…ANYTHING!

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