Advice on How to be a Better Advocate for Agriculture

When it comes to advocating for agriculture, it doesn’t always come easy when you’re first starting out. Maybe you’re a first-generation farmer or rancher still learning the ropes yourself, trust us, we know firsthand, the thoughts, and feelings you might have when it comes time to make your first post on social media. At the end of the day, what helps us the most is remembering that our efforts are an important part of promoting not only our lifestyle but a sustainable and healthy food system. 

Here is How you can be a Better Agriculture Advocate

With several years of advocating experience behind both Natalie and Tara, here are some of their biggest tips on how to get started or take your advocating to the next level.

Build a Foundation

Building a foundation for yourself and your advocating efforts is crucial. If you’re just getting started sharing online, then think of it as creating your own personal brand. What’s so important about building that foundation is that it gives you a platform to stand on and a framework to create and share content. For example, a beef producer might not necessarily share the same type of advocacy posts as a crop farmer. Find out the type of posts (maybe you share humor posts, statistics, etc) that feel the best to you and that you can confidently share with your audience and build from there. 

Do Your Homework

We can’t stress this enough, know the topic you’re going to be sharing about! Tara shares in Module 13 of our Elevate the Online Course about how being unprepared can lead to an open door for activists to hop in your comments. If you’re sharing an article, read up on all sides of the story so you have the full picture and can be confident about posting it. One thing that most people forget is that you are allowed to set boundaries in your comments. If you’re not comfortable answering them, then have your assistant respond with your sources or a short response. Don’t be afraid of your comment section, learn how to set boundaries within them. 

Get Local

Another thing you can do is reach out to farmers or ranchers in your community to get a different perspective and learn about their experiences and challenges. Through this, you can gain an understanding of their specific needs and issues and can use that information to advocate for them in addition to sharing your own story. This will also help you build relationships and create a network of advocates in your area.

Be Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable 

Being an advocate doesn’t come comfortably. There will be several times in your advocating career when you will be doing something for the first time. Your first post? Will seem like you’ve conquered a mountain. Your first speaking opportunity? May or may not be a complete blur, but it’s important that you learn with each new opportunity and make the next one better than the last. 

Open Your Doors for Others to Learn

While Farm Tours may not be a viable option for everyone, this is a great option for those that want to share their ag story on a local level. This is great for direct-to-consumer businesses, or even larger farms and ranches that want to share what they are doing with others. Tara has had several opportunities where she has appeared on the weather channel to talk about dairy sustainability on her family’s dairy farm.

Advocating online is still fairly new in the world of agriculture. One of our main goals through Elevate Ag is to help producers find their voice to share online by providing online resources and a community of others just like you who are on their own journey of advocating. If you want to join us, you can join our free Facebook Community below, or if you are interested in learning more about the tools we have available here. Thanks for being here, it will take all of us to Elevate Ag.