@MorethanOrganic
Communications for organic food providers.
MtO
Into It?
|
|
So the drive to sustainable food is beginning to appear on the general public´s radar - all the pan banging has created enough noise to get us this far. That´s positive, a move in the right direction, but how do we develop our cause - make it tangible enough to kickstart some real change, real momentum? How do we really get our claws into some deep societal action?
Twitter as a connecting tool is good, but we´re harnessing all this connective energy without a clear way to channel it into tangible action. This lack of direction is partly because on Twitter, we´re all too preoccupied building our own personal profiles. I´ve noticed myself doing it often enough: becoming defensive when someone begins to threaten my percieved territory or area of expertize. We need to get this sorted right now - certain people are particularly good at communicating certain topics because that´s where their passion lives, however if we don´t come together to create a whole movement, we will just end up squabbling amongst ourselves and achieve little meaningful change.
Everyone who is interested in our cause has a role to play in driving this movement forward - each person has their own skill or approach that we can collectively harness to drive the whole movement!
Those people interested in driving this movement forward could come together to define what we collectively want to achieve over the next 6 or 12 months. How are we going to get there? Who will focus on what area? How will we measure progress?
Taking transition to sustainable farming as an example:
1. Who is best to communicate the demand or need for the food? How do these people reach new audiences?
2. Who can communicate the benefits of attracting new people into sustainable farming? How do we reach these people?
3. Who knows about land availability, real estate, laws?
4. Water - who knows their stuff?
5. Finance - community based, micro loans, sponsorship - how can we make them more available & tangible?
6. Food system politics - who is driven enough to communicate ideas and affect change in this area?
7. Food/ farm marketing & PR - who is willing to stick their neck out and push forward new ideas?
I´m not interested in stepping on anyones toes: I know you´ve all got your own long term goals, but maybe you can see that propelling this movement forward will develop our individual goals at the same time - much faster than what we could achieve on our own.
What´s your view?
Categories: None
Post a Comment
Oops!
The words you entered did not match the given text. Please try again.
16 Comments
I am astonished at how difficult it has been to get organic consumers to support a brand of local dairy items we put into retail last April. I guess you vote with your pocketbook.
I thought that consumers would embrace a local, organic dairy brand that supports 20 small organic family farms. I was wrong.
Instead, private label brands (store brand) continue to flourish. Please understand that private label "organic" milk is produced on large factory farms out west and then trucked into the northeast.
So i guess buying organic isn't enough...we need to make sure we know where the stuff is coming from and who it is supporting (Dean Foods).
You're asking great questions, and I'm curious to hear how others answer. To recap some of what I was saying, there are scores of non-profits and strong NGOs, regionally and nationally, addressing the issues you've bullet pointed above. American Farmland Trust, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Food & Water Watch, Cornucopia Institute, National Organic Coallition, Sustainable Farming Association, Organic Consumers Association, Leopold Center, Land Stewardship Project, Sustainable Ag Research and Education, Midwest Organic Sustainable and Educational Services....this is just a scratch upon the surface. The sheer volume of them is a testament to the fact that the sustainable food and farming movement has many layers, many fronts, and NEEDS many, many NGOs and other groups in order to advance sustainable farming and undo the damages of intensive farming.
My concern is not so much how to unify these groups under one voice or purpose, but to connect and/or help them. My own sense is that the above groups and many many others are doing brilliant work, but they aren't getting the word out to a broad enough audience. Many reasons for that: Trimmed budgets, lack of labor force, and a lack of understanding about using social media to their considerable benefit.
Personally, I think one of the best things we can do, those of us who have a facility with social media, is to act as mouthpieces FOR these groups (and FOR farmers in our regions, for that matter), to get the word out about what's happening on the legislative front and how people can help, what opportunities exist for farmers (grants, etc), what market opportunities exist, and what groups could benefit from partnering with ambitious marketers/farmers/ entrepreneurs/etc.
One thing that strikes me in particular is the insular nature of the conversations that take place. In my case, progressives support one another and exchange arguments or insults with back and forth with conservatives. In one case, we?re just preaching to the converted and in another case, we?re wasting text trying to convince stubbornness.
Over the past few weeks, I?ve been following trending topics and posting to them. For example, for ?WaterWednesday?, I made a series of tweets mentioning water poverty and relating to the ?ItsNotOkay? topic. Indeed, when doing this, I was flooded with retweets from people I?ve never heard from before.
My point is that, unless we?re willing to reach to people that do not typically participate in our conversations, we are not really doing much accept making one another feel good about our opinions. Be creative and polite, but reach out.
I would love to see us be a success so we can all point to our success as a model for others......
Zachary Adam Cohen says...
yo, good piece, we all need to get the heck over ourselves and band together. No one's personal brand or pet project is going to do it on their own, and even if they or it does, the results will be lackluster. The ability of one or two people to provide enough content is simply not there. Let's band together, like, er NOW
I think that makes the most sense to me. The question is how to do it in an organized and effective manner.
Zachary Adam Cohen]
yo, good piece, we all need to get the heck over ourselves and band together. No one's personal brand or pet project is going to do it on their own, and even if they or it does, the results will be lackluster. The ability of one or two people to provide enough content is simply not there. Let's band together, like, er NOW
[/Zachary Adam Cohen]
Stunetii says...
Stunetii - Richard -Thank you. Completely with you on this point below. Discussing the latest books in our nice comfortable enclaves is very supportive & cosy, but it aint achievin very much!
My point is that, unless we?re willing to reach to people that do not typically participate in our conversations, we are not really doing much accept making one another feel good about our opinions. Be creative and polite, but reach out.
dean@getnymilk.com says...
I think I may be one of those guys......farmer/entrepreneur/marketer who needs help using social media and all tools to let consumers know about our products and our mission.
I would love to see us be a success so we can all point to our success as a model for others......
I think that makes the most sense to me. The question is how to do it in an organized and effective manner.
[/Mike Lieberman]
Stunetii says...
I'm going to make a general comment, not related to anything organic in particular. I identify with much of what is said, especially those parts about preoccupation with building a personal profile.
One thing that strikes me in particular is the insular nature of the conversations that take place. In my case, progressives support one another and exchange arguments or insults with back and forth with conservatives. In one case, we?re just preaching to the converted and in another case, we?re wasting text trying to convince stubbornness.
Over the past few weeks, I?ve been following trending topics and posting to them. For example, for ?WaterWednesday?, I made a series of tweets mentioning water poverty and relating to the ?ItsNotOkay? topic. Indeed, when doing this, I was flooded with retweets from people I?ve never heard from before.
My point is that, unless we?re willing to reach to people that do not typically participate in our conversations, we are not really doing much accept making one another feel good about our opinions. Be creative and polite, but reach out.
So I'm just going to put this out there. I've used Ning to create an online platform for discussion, events, etc. for the Brooklyn Food Coalition. It's far from perfect and still needs a lot of work, but I would love to see something like this work specifically for sustainable ag.
You join the network, create a profile, start a blog, post news about your farm, start discussions, post videos from your farm, post calls to action--and it's all visible and accessible to the public. We produce a Facebook fan page to increase exposure. We Tweet the hell out of it.
If I built it, would people come?
By the way, what platform is this? Are you using Wordpress?
Oops!
Oops, you forgot something.