The Christian Science Monitor published an article today that includes two people from the AgChat Foundation’s Board of Directors. The first couple of paragraphs are below. The article can be read in its entirety on the CSMonitor site.

JeffFowle: “Back to baling again. Dew is perfect! #hay10 #agchat”

TroyBeast: @JeffFowle “you’re baling hay at one in the morning?!”

At any time of day or night, Jeff Fowle is liable to whip out his Android smart phone and post a message to his growing base of readers. It can be about raising Angus cattle and Percheron draft horses; irrigation problems on his Etna, Calif., ranch; politics; or the reason he bales hay around midnight when the dew is uniform but not too heavy. He tweets from his office, his tractor, even from horseback.

“I can ride my horse w/o hands and bridle,” explains Mr. Fowle via Twitter, where he has 24,000 followers. (He also posts on Facebook, Buzz, and other social media.) “All leg and seat position and pressure.”

The fourth-generation farmer and rancher is part of a growing coterie of “ifarmers,” who are using new media to communicate with consumers and other farmers directly. Many use it to build their business. Fowle started using social media last year to educate people about agriculture and, as he phrases it, “put a face back on the plate.” By reconnecting with consumers, ifarmers are personalizing a food chain that over decades has grown more complex, globalized, and impersonal.

via Economy 2.0? Meet ‘ifarmers’ – they plant, tweet – CSMonitor.com.