The Alliance to Feed the Future has announced that Diana Prichard is the second recipient of its Communicator of the Year Award. The award, given in collaboration this year with the American Meat Institute, recognizes effective and innovative new voices that are enhancing the public dialogue about modern food production through multi-channel communications, including social media.
Prichard, a farmer and mom who owns a small farrow-to-finish hog operation in the heart of Michigan’s farm country, was bestowed the honor on December 10th at the 16th Farm Journal Forum at the Loews Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Growing up in rural Mid-Michigan, Prichard is now a first-generation hog farmer, as well as a freelance writer, photographer, speaker, and filmmaker.
Prichard says that her interest in communicating about agriculture stems from her own experiences building a farm. “When you’re selling products directly to consumers, you have this constant line of communication open with them about what messages they’re getting about food. From the very earliest days, people were asking us to guide them. I always felt like I had a responsibility to provide answers that were true to the best of my ability. I turned to writing to distill what I was learning in farming simply because it was the most natural for me.”
Prichard adds, “Most people in the farming industry were born farmers and are learning to become communicators. I was born a communicator and am learning to become a farmer. For reasons that often allude even me, I’ve been accepted and welcomed to the farming community as if I were always here. To me, that acceptance, like this award, really speaks to the premium the agriculture industry places on open dialogue.”
