When Michele Payn hears and reads what’s being said about farmers and ranchers, she finds something missing: the voices of farmers and ranchers.
And she insists that it’s time they speak up.
Speaking at the recent Utah Farm Bureau annual convention in Layton, the farm and food advocate and the author of a pair of books about farming stressed that the Human Society, PETA, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and other organizations are using social media and other means to have millions of conversations that influence what consumers believe about farms and ranches.
For example, she said, those groups will happily tell people that farmers and ranchers are abusing animals, pumping them full of chemicals and other claims that she flatly calls lies.
When she sees their social media posts, “there is no question whatsoever that the lies being told by animal rights organizations … are going to impact you over the next five and 10 years,” she told the crowd. “You think they’re posting pretty pictures from Utah’s farms and ranches? You see, the story of agriculture is being told without our voices there.”
That story being told through social media stories and images focuses on issues such as animal welfare, hormones, antibiotics, chemicals, biotechnology, food safety, sustainability and land use. Payn asked the audience who was leading the conversations about them. “Activists!” responded one audience member.
“Activists, such as people eating tasty animals, correct?” Payn said. “All right, folks, it is fair to say that, no matter how strong Farm Bureau is, that we’re not leading the conversation as farmers and ranchers.
“When you consider the influences of what’s happening in agriculture over the past decade, I think it’s probably fair to say that when you look at these [activists’] images, there is no question whatsoever that your livelihood is at stake.”
Payn, the author of No More Food Fights and Food Truths from Farm to Table and who lives on an Indiana farm, contends that because of activists, the public is misinformed about agricultural issues. Having farmers’ and ranchers’ voices heard and believed has inherent obstacles. Most consumers have not met a farmer or rancher. A Michigan State University study indicates that 75 percent of U.S. consumers have not been on a farm or ranch in the past five years. “The reality that we have to face in this country is 1.5 percent of our population is on a farm or ranch; 98.5 percent is not,” she said.
But farmers and ranchers can build trust with consumers if they are able to connect in person or online, first by pointing out ways they are similar.
“We have to connect as humans first, farmers and ranchers and agriculturists next. Humans first, every single time,” Payn said, adding that doing so at a farmers’ market is “such an opportunity to be able to connect and relate to them on a personal basis that many of us don’t experience.”
Farmers and ranchers need to avoid attacking consumers who have pointed questions but instead need to answer basic questions about why they do the things they do. Consumers will tune out an answer that starts with “science, more science and even more science backed up by data and research,” she said.
Studies indicate that people generally trust farmers but not farming, she noted.
“And yet, we sit up in all of our brilliance and we say, ‘Stupid consumer, let me educate you.’ How does that come off?” Payn asked. “Pretty darned arrogant.”
Instead, she suggested that a respectful, conversational manner — sprinkled with some understanding —works better.
“It takes a highly contentious, highly emotional subject and it makes people go, “Huh. Really?’ and then you have an opportunity to have a civil conversation,” Payn said. “If we can talk about food being raised the right way, by the right people, for the right reasons, then we can be able to relate to folks.”
If farmers and ranchers feel the impulse to get into a smack-down with someone in public or especially online, Payn said they need to avoid insulting them in public. “The world is watching, because the conversation is always bigger than the person you are having it with,” she said.
Payn acknowledged that jumping onto social media to spread the word about the good that farmers and ranchers do might make some of them uncomfortable.
“The humility is admirable and engrained into our culture, true?” she said. “And as long as we believe we are ‘just a farmer’ and ‘I don’t have any business getting anywhere near a microphone,’ those activist organizations … they win.
“Whether it’s in person, whether it’s online, it’s about reaching out and shaking hands and helping people see that farmers and ranchers are indeed human and that we are raising food the right way, for the right reasons, by the right people. Because, at the end of the day, if we can get those things across, we can have an impact in this conversation. But it’s going to take every single voice.”