Farms: Vance Crowe on social media: Capture wonder & watch spread

How do farmers out-compete the fear mongering over modern agriculture that is rampant on social media? Vance Crowe, Monsanto’s director of millennial engagement, advises Farm Bureau members to fight fear and anger over widely misunderstood — and often politicized —topics such as biotechnology with fascination and wonder found on everyday farms. In a nutshell: Find what you do that others don’t know anything about. “What is it you have to share that can fascinate the public? There’s so much that goes on in a farm operation that if you can find what it is that you do that people don’t know anything about, not only will they listen to your ideas but they’ll spread them for you,” said Crowe. “That’s the most important thing to be able to get ideas to cross over that giant mountain between agriculture and consumers.” One strategy to accomplish this is to use memes (images with captions, short videos, etc.), suggested Crowe during his keynote communications presentation and social media workshop at the 2016 Michigan Farm Bureau Growing Together Conference in Kalamazoo. One of Crowe’s favorite examples is a YouTube video called How Much Glyphosate Do Farmers Use? by farmer Brian Scott, who in a visually compelling way, shows just how little glyphosate — 22 ounces — is used to manage weeds on a single acre. (Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkRSV_mF7hw) But key to using memes is also building trust among social media followers. As Crowe explains, people become so emotional online because they’re defending their trusted group, not necessarily the science. Farmers should try to build trust so that when consumers have deeper questions or become more concerned that they think of the Farm Bureau member as someone in their trusted group and someone whom they can turn to for answers. “What you’re trying to do is build trust so that… they think of you as somebody who’ll give them ideas — memes — that they’ll be willing to share,” said Crowe. What makes good memes? Crowe says farmers should ask themselves: What don’t consumers know about farming, but what would they welcome hearing about or seeing? “When you think about agriculture only being 2 percent of the population, 98 percent of the population has no way to get a photo of a cow-calf operation. They have no way of seeing what it’s like when corn first starts emerging from the soil or some of challenges with getting a planter put together,” he said. “Those are the kinds of things that if you share with the general public they’re going to want to see that and find it interesting in a way that if you don’t share those photos they won’t know anything about it.” Follow Crowe on Twitter @VanceCrowe.