This Farmer’s View on our Biggest Success

As we conclude the birthday celebrations for AgChat Foundation and #AgChat , we want to thank everyone in our community that supports our mission of empowering farmers and ranchers. While AgChat Foundation is about the tools, it is your stories and your passion that make these tools powerful. Keep up the good work and we will continue to connect with you on your favorite platform. Much to our president’s delight we are now on active on Google +

By: Darin Grimm, board president

This Farmer’s View on our Biggest Success

So, AgChat Foundation, that silly little social media thing that has consumed far two many hours of my recent life (just ask my wife…) is  turning two years old this week.  It’s a good time to step back and ask:  Have we accomplished anything?  Has this effort been worth it?  Outside of having far better insight into what farmers around the country may be having for breakfast,  what good has been done?

As I sat and pondered these questions, the obvious things came to mind – helping farmers tell their stories, teaching folks how to use the dizzying array of tools and technologies out there, efforts towards reaching out to those outside of agriculture.  All these have been good, successful, and most importantly ongoing efforts, but at the risk of being mis-understood, none of them are particularly noteworthy, unique, or special.  There’s a large and growing number of organizations involved in many aspects of telling the farm story.  As an officer of the AgChat Foundation, I look on them as partners, not competitors.  There’s so much work to do, it’s exciting to see so many focused on sharing the story of the miracle of modern agriculture.

So what sets the AgChat Foundation apart?  What makes us unique?  The answer is clear, AgChat Foundation represents ALL of agriculture.  You see, whether your a chicken, dairy, corn, or cotton farmer, whether you tap trees for maple syrup sold at your own retail store or grow soybeans for Japan.  It doesn’t matter if your organic or conventional, very large or small and part time, whether you call yourself a farmer or have some other role in the ag industry,  AgChat represents YOU!  I believe it’s critical that as part of your plan for sustaining your business, you see the value in  connecting, learning and sharing with those who depend on you for the food that sustains them.  As a Foundation, we are focused on helping you make those connections through social media platforms, and I believe bringing together the diverse agriculture people involved in making that happen is our  greatest strength.

No other organization works so diligently to represent all of agriculture, not just those that may chose to be members of our effort, not a specific commodity, region (well.. North America I suppose), production practice, or shoe color.  No, AgChat Foundation at it’s core is about ALL of agriculture, and giving voices to every one of the individuals involved!

With that goal, I think we’ve succeeded tremendously, and I look forward to bringing even more of the ag community together, working together to share the story of the diversity of American agriculture far into the future.  When you look at the task before us, I think it’s safe to say we’ve only just begun.

Thank you again to everyone who wakes up everyday to not only care for animals and the land, but also allow non farmers the chance to see into  your farms and ranches via social media. Here are several other note worthy posts by AgChat Foundation board and advisory board members:

Marie Bowers: How Twitter Changed My Life

Jan Hoadley: What Difference Does Three Year Make

Michele Payn-Knoper: Dream big for a better agriculture

Janice Person: Reflecting on the #AgNerd Movement

Chuck Zimmerman: Third Anniversary of AgChat

Growing an Agvocacy Community

By: Darin Grimm, board president

AgChat Foundation turns two years old this week.  It’s been an incredible journey, and an inspiration to see the positive difference that so many have made!  

Our signature events the first two years have certainly been our annual training conferences.  And here’s the twitter lists of those that have participated in 2010 and 2011.  We hope to see you at our recently announced 2012 conference!

What’s been most inspiring to us as an organization is the passion and commitment of so many individual agvocates.  It’s a near impossible task to try to list all the accomplishments, all the successes, all the inspirations that have happened.  And it wouldn’t be fair anyway, for we understand that the ag community is not only much bigger than an individual, but much bigger than any one organization, including ours.

Yet, we celebrate the success of the agvocacy movement, and everyone that plays a role in making it happen.  And to do that, with this post we are going to highlight one member of that community:  Trent Bown.  Trent was in Nashville for our 2011 conference.  Since that time, he’s created the UsFarmGuys website.  Two things stand out about Trent’s work.  First, not only has he highlighted and produced a very quality blog and video of his own farm, he’s also produced and featured videos for three other farming operations, and counting!  Secondly, Trent didn’t do these incredible videos by himself, he had help from his wife, Holly.

Trent’s efforts uniquely showcase the teamwork required to be the best possible agvocate you can be.  While the entire point of agvocacy is all about YOUR story, ultimately the best agvocates learn to share the story of others at times, be it other industries, other farming operations, other ways different than their own.  And agvocacy can be so much better (and more fun!) when the skill sets of multiple people can be utilized together to accomplish our goals.

So thank you Trent, for the inspiration you provide.  I asked Trent if there’s any specific thing he’d like to say and his simple quote was this:  Just get out there and try. You’ll never know what you can or can’t do if you don’t try.

Yes!!!, on behalf of the AgChat Foundation, our board and committee members, staff, and volunteers, that’s our encouragement to you – get out there and try, learn, grow, keep improving, and lets make the next two years of agvoacy even better than the last two!

April 3rd, 2012 – AgChat on Social Media and Agriculture

Social Media and Agriculture This is the third anniversary of the #AgChat twitter conversation and to celebrate, the AgChat Foundation (@AgChatFound, celebrating it’s second anniversary!) gave away a cheese cake from Muddy Paws Cheesecakes (@MPCheesecake) to an #AgChat convo participant. The winner was Scott Smith (@d_scott) in Corvallis, Oregon.

Meanwhile, the topic for this #AgChat was social media and agriculture. It has been three years since #AgChat started and things have changed. What are the tools to use today? How about attitude of those in agriculture to social media? And what the challenges to farmers and ranchers to using social media today?

Birthday Parties Need Cake!

As we continue to celebrate #AgChat’s third birthday and AgChat Foundation’s second birthday, we thought it would only be appropriate if we had some real birthday cake to share!

Tonight, we will be giving away a cheesecake sampler to one of our #AgChat participants. Our friends over at Muddy Paws Cheesecake are giving us (AgChat Foundation) a discount on a cheesecake and we want to reward one person with the gift.  

Here is how you can win:

1. Join the #AgChat conversation tonight from 8-10pm Eastern Time. The topic is “What is needed in Social Media for Agriculture.” Use Twubs.com or Tweetchat.com to  follow the conversation.
2. Tweet at least once during the chat (8-10pm Eastern) using the hashtag #AgChat. We will be using a random winner selection application.
3. We will announce the winner around 10pm Eastern. Winner will need to DM the @AgChatFound account their address within 24 hours. Your cake is being made fresh and we don’t want you to miss out.

Contest rules:

1. Only participants in the lower 48 states can win. Sorry international followers. Shipping a cheesecake across boarders doesn’t work to well.
2. You don’t need to be a follower of @AgChat , @AgChatfound or @MPCheesecake. Doing so will not increase your chances of winning.

FTC disclosure: The cheesecake is being given to AgChat Foundation at a discount and an anonymous donor is picking up the rest of the cost.

Happy Birthday #AgChat and AgChat Foundation!

Happy Birthday #AgChat and AgChat Foundation

This week we are celebrating #AgChat’s third birthday and AgChat Foundation’s second birthday. Both #AgChat and AgChat Foundation could not be successful without the support of YOU, our community. So this week we dedicate to YOU!

Today, we want to showcase some of  YOUR best farm, ranch and agvocacy videos. Have one you want to share? Comment with a  link. Your video may be featured on the AgChat.org website. We will also be selecting a few and giving you some Twitter and Facebook shout out love.

Lastly, join in the birthday celebrations of #Agchat and AgChat Foundation by adding a party hat Twibbon to your avatar. All the cool kids are doing it.

So happy birthday to #AgChat and AgChat Foundation and thank you to YOU our community!