One of the biggest jobs facing agricultural producers these days is trying to tell their stories to consumers. With only two percent of Americans involved in production agriculture, their voices have a tendency to get lost in all the commotion.
"To put that in perspective," says Susan Allen of Dairy MAX, "there are more people in prison than there are growing our food and, of course, that creates a challenge for us." She spoke recently with Radio Oklahoma Network Farm Director Ron Hays and she will appear on this weekend's "In the Field" segment on News 9 about 6:40 a.m. Saturday. (You can listen to the full interview by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.)
Allen says that while many people can trace their roots back to relatives who made their living on farms and ranches generations ago, their knowledge of modern agricultural practices is limited and they truly want to know more about how their food is raised. The good news is, Allen says, people trust farmers.
"Famers rank really, really high in consumer trust. They want to know a farmer. In fact, farmers rank higher than clergy on the trust scale. So we take that opportunity and introduce people to farmers with things like our campaign 'Our land. Our cows. Our passion.'"
Allen says that campaign is a way of reaching out to the public and putting them in touch with what it's like to live and work on a dairy farm today.
"For the general public, we've created things like virtual dairy farm tours. We went to dairy farms right here in Oklahoma, one in Minco, the Macomas Dairy, and one in Okarche, M6 Dairy, the Meyer family and we created videos to let people see what the milking parlor looks like, to see how they interact with their cows."
The virtual tours are available at www.dairymax.org and Allen says the most important thing is that the dairy farmers tell their own stories.
Another avenue that has been proving valuable is social media. Allen says that Dairy MAX has been training farmers how to use such outlets as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to effectively connect with consumers.