Social tools not making sense? Don’t be embarrassed.

Dream big for a better agriculture

A challenge to dream bigger for agriculture and food conversations to celebrate the AgChat Foundation’s second anniversary. Michele shares words that have inspired her for years. “Because with an idea, determination, and the right tools, you can do great things. Let your instincts, your intellect and your heart guide you…”

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Leveraging the spirit of agvocacy; it’s bigger than you!

1 voice or 115,000? And how do you leverage your work as an agvocate so that it’s bigger than you? Michele highlights a few of her favorite examples of the spirit of agvocacy from the AgChat Foundation’s Agvocacy 2.0 conference in Nashville. She suggests leveraging voices to have greater impact on the conversation about food and farming…

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Farmers Working Together: Paid Big Ag Puppets?

Have you ever been called a prostitute to your work? Michele questions why farmers and ranchers working together are labeled puppets for big ag or factory farmers, rather than seen as a grassroots movement. She believes farmers pooling their resources makes them smart business people, while explaining some new initiatives designed to help the 1.5% of the population better understand the 98.5% not on a farm.

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Advancing Social Media for Agriculture

Society has shifted in an era of 500 million Facebook users, 50 million tweets, 450 million people on mobile internet and 68 million bloggers – whether you accept new media or not. We’re bombarded by 13,000 marketing messages each day, now largely due to new media. Watch the Evolution of Online Agvocacy if you want to see more. All of this social media mania is also building a fear that humans may just stop having real conversations -after all, we can just text, direct message, instant message, Facebook or email (how old school!). Nothing could be further from the truth, based upon the energy level of a group of farmers, ranchers and agricultural folks this week at the inaugural AgChat Foundation Agvocacy 2.0 Conference.

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