You can meet a lot of America’s farmers right here on AgWired if you follow along regularly. But if you’d like to meet a whole lot of them very quickly then you might want to look at the the new YouTube Channel from the Center for Food Inegrity called “Meet America’s Farmers.”
The channel was developed to offer consumers the opportunity to observe the commitment of today’s farmers to raising safe, healthy and affordable food.
Now, individual farmers and farm organizations are invited to create their own videos for the channel, using a shared values approach to connect with consumers. The goal is to create a variety of videos featuring America’s farmers, allowing them to share their stories and “open their farms” to consumers who are interested in better understanding how their food is raised.
CFI research indicates early adopting consumers want more information about how food is grown on the farm. Consumers who participated in the research specified videos hosted by farmers would be highly useful and help build their confidence and trust in today’s farming. Creating this new channel greatly expands the number of consumers exposed to the farm through such videos. The 146 videos currently on the channel feature 79 different farmers from 12 states and 16 commodity groups and were shot and produced for use during Farmers Feed US programs over the past three years.
CFI has also written guidelines to provide farmers with criteria for developing their own videos, which can be found on CFI’s Farmer Resource Center (www.cfiengage.com). CFI will also furnish Flip cameras and support to individual farmers interested in shooting their own videos.
Those interested in more information about how they can contribute to the “Meet America’s Farmers” YouTube channel can contact Mark Crouser at Mark.Crouser@foodintegrity.org.
I picked out one of the videos on the channel that features our good friend, Andrew McCrea. Here’s what he says about farming.
The best thing about being a farmer: Being around family, bringing kids with you in the combine or tractor and giving them rides on the horse, and living in the country. It’s hard work, but a good living.
So what do you think about this effort?