Farmers and others in agriculture are just like everyone else these days. For the vast majority of us, computer usage is becoming a part of our everyday lives, if it hasn’t already taken it over!

That’s why the Southern Peanut Farmers Federation made the decision to use the new media tools of blogging and podcasting to reach out and provide information on this year’s Southern Peanut Growers conference to anyone and everyone who has access to the World Wide Web on spgc.wordpress.com.

Joy Carter with the Georgia Peanut Commission, who is also editor of Southeastern Peanut Farmer magazine and responsible for outreach to media and growers, came up with the idea of using the blog for conference coverage.

“We wanted to open the door for more farmers and industry representatives not able to attend the conference to be able to see who the speakers are, see photos from the conference and hear more about issues within the peanut industry,” Joy said. The website is also being promoted to agricultural media who can download the photos and audio to use.

Joy says the Georgia Peanut Commission has also had great success in educating producers about legislative issues with AmericanPeanuts.com.

Listen to an interview with Joy here: spgc-joy.mp3