What do all of these things mean to you? Everyone uses social media in different ways and for many different reasons. However, everyone can agree on one thing – social media has changed the way that our world communicates, and it is not going to go away. 470,334,100 people are on Facebook today. That is more than the population of the entire United States. Not only that, but these 470,334,100 people all have access to what you say.
I don’t want to bore everyone with facts and statistics, but these are pretty compelling numbers. The fact is that social media is gaining power, and all of that power is available to everyone. People want their news, information, and entertainment when they want it, where they want it, and at the click of a button. Anything you want to know is on the internet and in social media in some form or another. That being said, the agricultural community can’t be left behind. If people want to get on their iPhones for 5 minutes while they are walking from the parking lot to their office to get their news for the day, agriculture needs to be right there with them. No one wants to go looking for facts anymore, they want it to come to them, which is what the community of agriculture needs to do. We need to go to the general public with our message, and do it in a way that people will find easily.
Here’s an example: The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is fighting with farmers and producers about what they think “animal cruelty” is. They think that our practiced and proven methods of farming and raising livestock are wrong because the cows don’t frolic in twenty acres of pasture every day. They are getting so much good press for their messages that the uninformed will believe them easily, because it is easy to believe a cause that claims to be helping animals. Any farmer you talk to will know about this fight with the HSUS and will have plenty to say. But that’s just it, not enough people are saying it! We have the power through social media to give our side of the story, and to educate the misinformed. We have a great message to tell, and now it is our job to use social media to our advantage and tell the world about agriculture. If that doesn’t have you convinced, this article might. In short, this explains how the HSUS is tagging agricultural videos as porn to get less people to hear our message.
That being said, there’s room for lighthearted and fun education on social media too. Not everyone wants to get involved in heated debates about these issues; some don’t think they have any reason to be concerned. But those are still people that we need to reach with our message. As an intern at IL Corn, I understand the issues that farmers face today. I also understand how people my age think, and it is my job to reach them and everyone else with our message. Corn is not something that people get excited about unless we make it exciting. For example, the IL Corn summer interns have been making videos that have overlaying messages about corn and agriculture built into them. People watch videos because they are quick, easy to watch, easily accessible, and they don’t have to put forth any effort to hear the message. So we give them entertaining and educational videos that they can learn from. Occasionally, someone will stumble across a parody movie we have made and watch it because it looks funny. As a result, they learn something they didn’t plan on learning. When that happens, we have accomplished our goal. We just finished our first video that does just that.
Social media will never go away. It is here to stay, and everyone has a future with social media whether we go looking for it or not. I personally did not want to get a Twitter account because it seemed like a crazy fad that would soon die out and it seemed annoying to me. When I started this job I started one up, and I have already learned things I never would have dreamed of because I never would have gone looking for it, but there it was, just being handed to me. That is the power of social media. It is all there for the taking, we just have to be giving the information for people to take.
Kristie Harms
Junior at the University of Missouri
ICGA/ICMB Summer Intern
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