The Animal Agriculture Alliance, a member of the Alliance to Feed the Future, is kicking off a new initiative called, “Real Farmers Real Food.” The initiative has special support from 2011 Miss America Teresa Scanlan. See her video below and feel free to share out links via your networks!
Want to tour a farm but too busy to travel? Check out the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s collection of farm tours on the Real Farmers Real Food website and see how farms across America produce safe, nutritious and affordable food.
The average American is now at least three generations removed from the farm and most of us are dependent on grocery stores to supply almost all of our food needs. This disconnect has led to many misconceptions about today’s farms. Too often, the public hears more from agriculture critics than from the people directly connected to it. The Animal Agriculture Alliance asks you to show your support for America’s real farmers and ranchers – large and small – who work every day to make our American-grown safe, nutritious and affordable food supply a reality. As the need for food production increases, the work of farmers and ranchers should be celebrated—today and every day. Farming is a business, but it is much more than that. It is a calling that forms the bedrock of our economy and society. Stand up for consumer choice. Stand up for the American farmer and rancher. Show your support by signing the below pledge.
“I sign this pledge to show support for the dedicated, hard-working farmers and ranchers of America – large and small – who provide a safe, nutritious, and affordable food supply for me and my family. I understand and respect the importance of both protecting our food security and ensuring consumer choice for future generations.”
I got Kay Johnson Smith, Executive Vice President, Animal Agriculture Alliance, to wrap things up from the Stakeholders Summit. She says that the speakers focused on positive, proactive ways “we can reach the public and invite them in to our businesses without jeopardizing bio-security and food safety concerns.” She mentioned one speaker from a company that has live web cams of their hog barns to show the public what they’re doing.
Kay is looking forward to next year’s Summit which will be during the first week of May. I hope to be able to make it!
The new Chair of the Animal Agriculture Alliance is Dr. Chris Ashworth, Elanco Animal Health. During his term he want to further distribute the message about how safe, affordable and abundant food is to citizens all across America. That includes showcasing farmers who produce pork, poultry, beef and fish. He says “We want to be able to make it even more safe and more abundant in the years to come.”
Chris says there has been a lot of energy in this year’s meeting. That tells him that they’re very engaged in the program. In his summary comments he wants the people participating to think about the challenges in a long term sense. He sees a bright future for American agriculture.
What is the perception of farmers and ranchers? That’s the broader question that was being addressed by participants at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit according to Mary Kay Thatcher, American Farm Bureau Federation. She was one of the many people I had the pleasure to speak with.
One of the things she got out of Frank Luntz’s presentation had to do with communicating effectively with non-farm people. She thought he gave great advice that included, “His whole thought process about making sure when we make comments to people, we don’t just jump in to our expressions of concern but we give them a little credibility first and say things like, “I get it, I see where you’re going,” and give them a chance to pause and then we can come up with our 45 second elevator speech.” A take away for her was the need to do better helping states deal with the threat that is coming from animal rights groups.
Mary Kay also brought up the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance which AFBF is participating in and says it’s off to a great start. But like any other group dealing with these issues she says it will important to supply good information, messaging and coordination to state groups.
At the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit we got an international lesson from Jim Sumner, President, USA Poultry & Egg Export Council. Jim says we have to look out for our own government policies and regulations or “we’re going to end up as bad or worse off than our friends in the European Union.” Let’s face it, regulations have been burdensome for a long time and they haven’t gotten better. In fact, he says it seems like the government doesn’t want to listen sometimes.
Jim says we need to address consumers so they better understand animal agriculture. He uses our cheap food costs as something that consumers need to realize and he doesn’t think the general public does. This was Jim’s first meeting with the Animal Agriculture Alliance and he calls it a “very dynamic group.”
Safer, healthier, convenient and cleaner. Those are words that Frank Luntz, Luntz Global, wanted people to take away from his remarks at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit.
I was able to ask him one question afterward while he was signing books and that was what he hoped participants took away from his presentation. His answer, “I think it’s essential that they use the most effective words and phrases that connect to the America people in where they live and how they live. That you talk about not just affordability but convenience, safer, healthier, cleaner. When you show that you’re doing it so much better now than before and you’re going to do it even better in the future than you did it now, that’s success. That’s good communication. That’s what I hope they take away from my presentation.”
Frank shared results of survey work he’s done that show how people of various demographics respond to certain words or phrases. It was very eye opening. For example, he found that people really don’t care much about the word sustainability. It just doesn’t have a meaning that’s clear since there are countless definitions. He recommended not using that word in marketing efforts. Here are some other tidbits that stuck out for me:
Imagine is most powerful word in English language.
You create miracles everyday.
Consumers take responsibility for their own nutrition. They don’t depend on the food industry.
Convenient is the word that makes consumers most interested in product.
Only people under 30 or who went to Berkely like “organic.” Although he does think this category of food product will grow.
Soybeans came up on the program at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit in the form of Aaron Putze, Director External Relations, Iowa Soybean Association. He thinks it’s time to reflect on blessed we are in this country to have abundant food and thank the people who produce it. He gives a startling statistic that forty percent of the food produced in the United States is either spoiled or thrown away! That’s huge. And it’s why the Iowa Soybean Association supported the development of the Iowa Food and Family Project.
The Iowa Food & Family Project isn’t an organization. It’s a movement, one that celebrates the miracle of food and the men and women that provide it.
The Iowa Food & Family Project doesn’t consist of a board of directors. There are no officers or board of directors. It isn’t incorporated.
Instead, the Iowa Food & Family Project is an activity-led initiative that brings together Iowans from all walks of life. They include farmers and farm families, teachers, students, health professionals, food retailers, manufacturers, bankers and lenders, academia, geneticists, agronomists, transportation specialists and people of faith. All those who are involved in the Iowa Food & Family Project believe in the increasingly significant role Iowa plays in feeding and fueling our state, nation and the world. They want all farmers to prosper. They believe that food should be respected.
In my conversation with Aaron he mentioned that he’s on the board of the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. He says USFRA is doing a lot of due diligence right now that includes research and “knowing how to engage in the social environment that exists today that then gives an opportunity to agriculture to become part of the fabric of the conversation.”
Dairy farmer LuAnn Troxel is one of the attendees here at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. She’s also President of the Indiana Professional Dairy Producers. This is LuAnn chatting with speaker, Frank Luntz, just before his presentation this morning.
LuAnn is one of my Twitter (@DairyLu) friends that I have had the pleasure to meet here. She is hungry for the kind of information being presented here about telling the story of agriculture. She wants to be completely open and honest in her presentation of dairy farming. The program has been fantastic according to LuAnn. She especially liked Dr. Frank Mitloehner’s presentation. When she gets home after getting her “catch up” work done, she hopes to maintain and build on connections she has made her.
The S word came up during the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit in a big way during a presentation by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, Agriculture Air Quality Center Director, University of California, Davis. That word is sustainability. He talked about research he conducted that debunked the “Livestock’s Long Shadow” report that was published by the FAO in 2006. That report had major errors with the biggest being miscalculations of data when comparing greenhouse gas emissions between livestock and human transportation.
I spoke with Frank to get an executive summary of his remarks. During his research he found a lot of interesting things and shares some in our interview. One that stuck out for me was his finding that in Mexico it takes 5 dairy cows to produce the same quantity of milk as one in the United States. Our dairies have become models of efficiency and it’s a great story to tell. You can find copies of Dr. Mitloehner’s research online.
Day one of the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit is coming to an end. We’ve got a reception with silent auction to support the organization’s intern program and I’m sure I’ll collect a couple more interviews. We’ll begin again in the morning so you can count on more from here then.
Cattle rancher Debbie Lyons-Blythe talked social media at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. We follow each other on Twitter. Find her @DebbieLB. She was here to encourage people not to be afraid of social media and make some suggestions on how to use it to advocate for agriculture. She starting blogging and considers her blog, Life On a Kansas Cattle Ranch, the center of her social media universe with Facebook and Twitter being some of the planets revolving around that center. She does think there is fear out in the country to use these mechanisms but believes more and more farmers are starting to use social media.
The winner of the College Aggies Online scholarship competition is Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, represented at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit by Jacob Nyhuis. In the photo Jacob is accepting the school’s $750 award. The award also included his costs to travel to the Summit. I interviewed him after the presentation and you can hear him talk about participating in the program below.
College Aggies Online is a joint program between the Animal Agriculture Alliance and the American National CattleWomen, Inc. The goal is to help college students utilize social media tools to share agriculture’s story. The program was started last fall and has attracted 600 college students from more than 50 universities
Members have earned points by posting blogs, photos and videos related to agriculture and by participating in Aggie Homework agriculture advocacy challenges via Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail.
With 765 total points, the individual high score went to Jessie McClellan of the Casper College Ag Club in Wyoming. She will receive a $250 scholarship. Jacob Nyguis of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Georgia came in second place with 655 points and will be awarded $100.
Members of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College’s Cattlemen’s Club formed the top-scoring club with 3,030 points. The group will receive a $750 scholarship and a trip to Washington, D.C. for one representative to attend the Alliance’s Stakeholders Summit in April. Casper College’s Ag Club came in second place with 2,525 points and will receive $300. Other high-scoring schools included Pennsylvania State University, Western Kentucky University, and the University of Missouri.
Protecting and growing agriculture amidst the activist conflict was the topic of the first panel discussion at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. Nebraska Senator Tom Carlson was a panelist and he made it very clear that animal rights activists are not welcome in his state. He says that when these groups come into a state, they don’t know the state and they try to paint all of agriculture with a broad brush. The fact is that farmers love their animals and take very good care of them. He uses an anecdote of how during a winter blizzard farmers were out in the severe weather taking care of their livestock and HSUS was no where to be seen. He also pointed to research that found that ninety percent of people in Nebraska believe the livestock industry is important and ninety four percent trust farmers to take humane care of their animals!
The Senator believes the mission of the Church is number one and the mission to raise food to feed people follows and is a noble mission. He says activists just want to stop killing animals for food. They really aren’t in favor of the humane treatment of animals for food. He says this conference helps bring out how important it is for different agricultural interests to come together in the face of a common threat.
Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, ranking member, Senate Agriculture Committee, addressed the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. He spoke to a number of issues that included the farm bill and burdensome and troubling government regulations. Sen. Roberts is seen here receiving some cowboy cookie mix from our moderator, Jason Shoultz, America’s Heartland.
I’ll add some audio from his remarks later since I’ve got that recorder in use. However, I did get to ask him one question in the hall on his way out. I asked about anything animal agriculture interests should know when it comes to farm bill discussions and how things were going with efforts to curb unnecessary regulations from the EPA. He says that talking to farmers and ranchers around the country right now they don’t even bring the farm bill up. They’re most interested in regulations which he says they’re dealing with bill by bill. He thinks it’s premature to discuss the farm bill until hearings are held around the country and they determine a “number.”
Dr. Parker says that when she took over as Chair for the Animal Agriculture Alliance her goal was to help further develop the groundswell efforts of both individual farmers and farm organizations to tell their story and not let others do it for them. She says it’s a big challenge to become more of a “voice.” But she’s seeing more and more of what I call agvocating going on at the state level now. She points to the NCBA Masters of Beef Advocacy program as an example. She uses a great family example of how social media has an impact on what people know, or think they know, about where their food comes from. Social media is on the program here by the way.
I spoke with Kay before we got started to learn more about what the Alliance does and get a preview of the program here. She says the AAA is a national umbrella organization that works to connect all stakeholders across the animal agriculture food chain to educate the public and media about the importance of the industry and to protect our ability to raise food in the United States. The Stakeholders Summit provides an opportunity to bring everyone together to make connections and listen to educational presentations. I’ll be conducting interviews with many of them, including farmer participants which will be posted during the next several days.
I’m getting ready for the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. It’s time to head back out on the agriblogging highway.
The Animal Agriculture Alliance will host its tenth annual Stakeholders Summit May 5-6, 2011 in Arlington, Virginia. The Summit will bring together food and farm industry leaders to reflect on the challenges of the past decade and new opportunities to strengthen agriculture advocacy efforts in the future. The Summit is truly a one-of-a-kind event that is attended by a diverse group of decision makers, including representatives from farms, ranches, food processors, restaurants, grocery stores, legislators, universities and government agencies.
My coverage of the event is being sponsored by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and United Soybean Board. I’m looking forward to a great learning experience that will included interviews and photos. But you’ve come to expect that right?
The Animal Agriculture Alliance, a member of the Alliance to Feed the Future, is kicking off a new initiative called, “Real Farmers Real Food.” The initiative has special support from 2011 Miss America Teresa Scanlan. See her video below and feel free to share out links via your networks!
I got Kay Johnson Smith, Executive Vice President, Animal Agriculture Alliance, to wrap things up from the Stakeholders Summit. She says that the speakers focused on positive, proactive ways “we can reach the public and invite them in to our businesses without jeopardizing bio-security and food safety concerns.” She mentioned one speaker from a company that has 
The new Chair of the Animal Agriculture Alliance is Dr. Chris Ashworth, 
What is the perception of farmers and ranchers? That’s the broader question that was being addressed by participants at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit according to Mary Kay Thatcher, 
At the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit we got an international lesson from Jim Sumner, President, 
Safer, healthier, convenient and cleaner. Those are words that Frank Luntz, 
Soybeans came up on the program at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit in the form of Aaron Putze, Director External Relations, 
Dairy farmer LuAnn Troxel is one of the attendees here at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. She’s also President of the Indiana Professional Dairy Producers. This is LuAnn chatting with speaker, 
The S word came up during the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit in a big way during a presentation by 
Day one of the 
Cattle rancher Debbie Lyons-Blythe talked social media at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. We follow each other on Twitter. Find her 
The winner of the 
Protecting and growing agriculture amidst the activist conflict was the topic of the first panel discussion at the Animal Agriculture Alliance Stakeholders Summit. Nebraska Senator Tom Carlson was a panelist and he made it very clear that animal rights activists are not welcome in his state. He says that when these groups come into a state, they don’t know the state and they try to paint all of agriculture with a broad brush. The fact is that farmers love their animals and take very good care of them. He uses an anecdote of how during a winter blizzard farmers were out in the severe weather taking care of their livestock and HSUS was no where to be seen. He also pointed to research that found that ninety percent of people in Nebraska believe the livestock industry is important and ninety four percent trust farmers to take humane care of their animals! 
Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, ranking member, 
The past Chair of the Animal Agriculture Alliance is Dr. Elizabeth Parker, Chief Veterinarian, 
The tenth 
In this week's program you can listen in to my conversation with Bill Howard, Fastline, about their new mobile game app, AgRacer.
