Speakers outline ways to engage, convince and not battle consumers
Farmers and ranchers often hear they’re supposed to “tell their story” to consumers so trust can be built. On social media it’s often hard to find common ground with people and even tougher in person. Learning how to interact with consumers properly is equally hard.
Kansas Corn invited dietician Cara Harbstreet with Street Smart Nutrition and Hannah Thompson-Weeman of Animal Ag Alliance as part of their Corn-Fed Beef Seminar Jan. 6 in Montezuma, Kansas. The pair gave tips and advice on how to start engaging, instead of battling, consumers.
“How many of you have ever heard a friend or family member, someone on social media, on TV say something about animal agriculture or all of agriculture that is 100% wrong?” Thompson-Weeman said. “Yeah, everyone. That’s exactly why we’re here.”
Most of those in agriculture have experienced this kind of scenario, and don’t know how to handle it.
“We want to correct it and want to do something,” she said. “But we’re not exactly sure what the most effective way to do that is.”
First, understand where consumers are coming from—what they’re hearing, their values and what influences them. Understand who they are and the issues they care about.
“We want to convince them. We don’t want to battle them with these issues that we are all very knowledgeable about and very passionate about,” Thompson-Weeman said. “Sometimes we have to be careful and make sure we’re making this a two-way conversation."
Bridging the gap
Animal Ag Alliance is a non-profit organization with a mission to bridge the communication gap between the farm and fork, Thompson-Weeman said. Their main issue is animal welfare, and more so today, they’re involved in the “sustainability conversation about the environmental impact of animal agriculture,” she said.
For Thompson-Weeman, it’s really important for those in agriculture to understand who the consumer is and what they value in order to make sure that “we are effectively reaching them and having conversations with them.”
“People are increasingly interested. They’re curious. They have questions about where their food comes from,” she said. “That’s really exciting. That’s something we should all celebrate.”
Unfortunately, the problem is many times the loudest voices consumers hear are not from within agriculture.
“It’s not industry groups,” Thompson-Weeman said. “It’s not farmers and ranchers themselves. It is some of those very loud, very extreme voices that are trying to influence the conversation and in one direction or another.”
Understand the challenges
She encouraged the audience to search some very basic questions on Google about animal agriculture. The results for beef do have some good results due to efforts of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the checkoff, but top results often come from animal rights groups.
“If you try chicken, dairy, or pork, the examples are even worse than this,” she said. “There’s even more of those negative voices. And you have to go pretty far into the results before you see any farmers or industry groups there as experts.”
Same goes for the crop side of agriculture. When GMOs in corn is searched, the top result is from “the non-GMO project,” she said.
“I know sometimes it can be frustrating if people don’t know the things that we know about animal agriculture,” she said. “They don’t always know how to sort through those different resources. And that’s very intentional.”
Thompson-Weeman said it’s important to find the movable middle and focus on that segment of consumers. There’s one side of the spectrum, a slim percentage, of those who are directly involved in agriculture. The opposite side is also a slim percentage—the ones who are against it.
“Less than 3% of our U.S. population is vegan, and that’s been stable for decade over decade,” she said. “So despite what you might be hearing, not everyone is going vegan and not everyone is dropping meat. It’s a slim percentage of the population.”
Don’t make assumptions
She also said it’s important to understand just because someone is vegan; it doesn’t mean they’re an activist.
“It’s an even smaller subset of that population who are coming from that activists mindset and are trying to convince others to move in that direction,” Thompson-Weeman said. “For those people, they just don’t believe that it is possible to responsibly or ethically raise animals for food for them.”
It’s not about animal welfare or the production standards, or how things are done if at the end of the day, animals are being used to feed and clothe humans. Activists won’t stand for that, Thompson-Weeman said.
“They don’t believe it’s acceptable to do that,” she said. “So for those folks, none of our efforts—no farm tour or blog post or video that we showed them is going to change their minds and what they believe.”
The vast majority of consumers fall somewhere between the two extremes—directly involved in agriculture or against it.
“They don’t have that personal connection or knowledge of agriculture. They don’t have that activists mindset,” she said. “But that is who activist groups are targeting. Again, they want to take advantage of the fact that most people don’t have that background knowledge.”
Activists are looking for those consumers who can’t discern myth from fact, and it’s not just a consumer at the grocery store or one ordering off a restaurant menu that’s being targeted by these activist groups.
“It’s legislators, it’s reporters, people in the media, celebrities, investment groups,” Thompson-Weeman said. “There are a lot of very influential people that are being targeted with this type of misinformation about our industry.”
Bin full of mischief
There’s an endless supply of issues consumers are concerned about when it comes to the food supply—responsible antibiotic use, meat alternatives and nutrition. One of the biggest issues is meat and the environmental impact.
“Honestly, I think this has been the biggest issue of 2019 and will be the biggest issue of 2020,” she said. “There’s a lot of conversation about the environmental impact of our diets. And a lot of people are being told that if they want to have a positive impact and decrease our carbon footprint, the number one thing they can do is drop meat from their diet.”
Thompson-Weeman said a very efficient livestock production system in the U.S. “emits less than 4% of greenhouse gases.”
“These people are being told that it’s more than transportation, if they use global numbers and things like that to try to misrepresent the carbon footprint of animal agriculture,” she said. “I think we’re going to continue to hear this narrative in 2020. I think this is something we need to be prepared to talk about.”
It’s understandable that people care about the planet and want to know how to reduce their impact on it.
“All of us in agriculture know how important it is,” Thompson-Weeman said. “We already talked about things like cover crops and soil health. We’ve got to have a healthy planet in order to do what we do and that’s the message we need to make sure we’re communicating.”
Harbstreet grew up in a small town in Missouri near the Kansas City metroplex. Even in a rural setting she didn’t recognize agriculture around her until she made it to college. Nutrition became a way for the former collegiate athlete to fuel her body and eventually has become a career.
“But even with all of the nutrition knowledge that I had, through both an undergrad and a master’s degree in nutrition, I still have my own thoughts and beliefs about food production,” she said. “So far removed from it, even growing up in a rural area that I wasn’t informed enough to have conversation with anyone about any of those topics.”
So Harbstreet relied on things like farmer’s markets or looking at food from a sports performance perspective. Because of things like documentaries and sensationalized headlines she had her doubts about food. With the help of Kansas Farm Bureau she’s been on some farm tours and has gotten to see food and animal production first hand.
“These are just a couple of examples of how direct outreach to the people who do speak directly with consumers can go a long way towards shifting opinion and getting information into the hands of people who can then share it with the people who are then consuming that end product,” Harbstreet said.
Diverse story to tell
But remember, you’re not going to convince everyone about the good of agriculture. Even though farm tours and showing the behind the scenes worked for Harbstreet, it’s not going to work for everyone.
“Because these are our long standing deeply held beliefs,” she said. “If you say some heritage or culture or the nostalgia factor that we have with food—you trace that back far enough, you’re gonna eventually end up on that far side of the spectrum.”
Harbstreet said you have to find ways to “kind of drip this content out in an acceptable way that it makes it feel like an invitation to participate in the conversation.”
“One of the ways that we can do that is to shift our thinking from an individual or a business entity into more of a personal brand,” she said.
Consumers tend to ask friends and family their opinions on products and services in addition to reading online reviews when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
“A direct conversation that’s taking place between consumers is just about as influential as any fact or figure that you can find or dig up on the internet,” Harbstreet said. “So by thinking of ourselves as more of a brand, we can kind of find the sweet spot in the middle.”
Like Thompson-Weeman mentioned with the movable middle, Harbstreet said there’s still a lot of separation between the different groups within the middle section of consumers.
“You guys are experts in your particular area,” she said. “Meanwhile, in kind of the digital space or through social media or these other groups, and they’re very influential, they may have either a huge audience or highly engaged audience, the ones that are really good at it, both.”
Those are the folks forecasting the trends that are coming down the pipeline, and informing the general public about things that they should be keeping their finger on the pulse of.
“One of the things that we can do to be more effective at telling our story is to learn how we can better overlap into other areas,” Harbstreet said. “Whether that’s getting involved in social media, whether it’s delegating that out to someone who’s a little more savvy. Not to say we have to be all things all at once either.”
One could think they already have a “brand” when it comes to their business, but it goes beyond that.
“I kind of compare it to your digital alter ego,” Harbstreet said. “You kind of have this persona that you put on a public space. Whether that’s online or in your community, but you can put on this hat when those tough conversations come up.”
It’s not really a removal of your actual personality, but it becomes a lens that you work through when shaping these kinds of conversations.
“For example, if you’re looking to be kind of that voice of reason and dispel some of those myths, that becomes the filter that you’re passing all of your responses through,” Harbstreet said. “It’s just kind of another layer into that, that picture of how it is you approach these conversations.”
Online, Harbstreet has many recipes on social media, but in real life doesn’t get to do a lot of cooking any more.
“But if you went online you’d never know that,” she said. “Alter ego kind of put on a persona that I present in order to initiate these conversations that I’ve started.”
When a person sees himself or herself as a personal brand, it can be a great way to add value—whether working for yourself or someone else. For Harbstreet since she’s a “one woman shop” she relies on her voice to get her message out there instead of paying someone else to do it for her.
“It’s a great way of marketing your services, depending on what it is that you do,” Harbstreet said.
Agriculture might be a little different, but if a farm or ranch has different employees who are working off the farm or dabbling in other spaces, this personal brand could possibly become an advocate that widens the network and gets the story in front of more people.
“Then if you are an employee, this is a great way to direct the conversation and kind of take ownership of it,” she said. “I think we’ve seen a lot of examples of how we tend to be more reactive than proactive, and seeing yourself as more of a personal brand, this is just one way to leverage that conversation and kind lead it in the direction you want to go without being so forceful about it.”
Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].
