FAMILY FARMERS, FRONT AND CENTER IN IL AND NATIONAL MEDIA

While I'll apologize up front for less meaty content on our blog the past couple weeks, I'll also offer you that we've all been in meetings, at the state fair, and now in our Illinois Corn Marketing Board and Illinois Corn Growers Association Board meetings just drumming up fabulous content and thought provoking concepts for you to mull over in the coming weeks.

During our board meeting today, Senate Candidate and current US Congressman Mark Kirk addressed both boards with your standard campaign speech and then opened the floor for questions.  During that portion, one board member asked that all the family farmers in the room raise their hand.  Of course, the view for those 5 seconds was all hands.

This perception that the majority of farms are owned my corporations like Monsanto, Pioneer or ADM is one of the things the Corn Farmers Coaltion is trying to change.  There's this ad that we've had in DC metro stations, at Reagan National Airport, and in Washington, DC publications like Congressional Quarterly and Politco ...

But there's also a need to create awareness in the homes of farmers throughout IL that this really is a problem.  So there's also this ad that was published in FARMWEEK on Monday, August 23 and will appear in AgriNews on Thursday, August 26.

This is our effort to let Illinois farmers know that this is a real problem - a HUGE problem - and that we are trying to fix it.  After all, the Illinois Corn Marketing Board was one of the first funders of this effort and is still one of the largest funders in the coalition. 

We've made more than 100 million positive impressions (to clarify the marketing lingo, an impression is one viewing.  So these ads have been seen 100 million times, maybe sometimes by the same people, but rarely does one viewing actually hit home anyway.) with our legislators, thought leaders, and others in the DC area and now we're bringing these ads back to IL to put a face on Illinois corn farmers. 

Remember this?  These Corn Farmers Coalition ads are now all over the Normal, IL Corn Crib, teaching people the truth about the agriculture all around them and introducing them to the family farmers that feed them everyday.

Check out the Corn Farmers Coalition website to learn more about what we're doing to set the record straight about corn farmers and US agriculture.  I'm confident that you won't be sorry that you did.

Lindsay Mitchell
ICGA/ICMB Project Coordinator