Agvocating To College Students

It is commonly known that peer pressure is a major concern among parents when their children are growing up. I have seen my share of peer pressure and I feel I've done well choosing the right decisions because I feel my parents enstilled in me long ago what was right and wrong. Not based on society, but on morals and ethics from a Biblical view. These world views effect all of our decisions and I think in a way they bring us closer together. 

I want to entertain a new idea though, as college students while we are building our education we have the ability greatly influence our peers. 

I think that as an agvocate we have a duty to put a bit of constructive positive peer pressure on our friends so that they can see the importance of agvocating and why it effects them. This peer pressure combined with a bit of structure can help the ag industry because we (students) are the future of production agriculture. Especially in Ohio where rules & regulations will be going into effect concerning our ability to raise food products we have an obligation to the producers & the consumers to agvocate and explain the benefits of our business. 

So I have taken charge of agvocating and I am in full stride with others who agvocate for our industry across the nation. I feel my calling is to talk to the students who are the future of our industry. I go to Ohio State's AG Technical Institute, we are a specific ag based campus of The Ohio State University and I think that we have been given a head start on agvocating through our professors and classmates. 

I have been given a great opportunity to work with a fellow agvoate and a professor to host an agvocate event here at OSU-ATI as a way of recruiting new agvocates for Ohio. We have spent several weeks planning the event and I'm pleased to know that all our plans are working out well. 

So if anyone is near Wooster, OH on May 17th I encourage you to come to OSU-ATI for our free event where several people who work in agriculture across the state will be showing us students how to get started in agvocating and why it is important to us. 

Here is the link to our facebook event. I encourage you to check out the event and share it with your friends and provide a little positive peer pressure to encourage agvocating in your area.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=125254250884982

Schedule for the event is tentatively set as this:

6:30 refreshments 
7:00 Dan Toland, Communications specialist for Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.
7:45 Leah Dorman , D.V.M. Director of Food Programs for Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.
8:15 Dr. Bobby Moser, Dean of CFAES at The Ohio State University

WE CARE FOR OUR LIVESTOCK!

The recent undercover video investigation from Mercy For Animals is extremely horrific. I was absolutely shocked when I saw this video. I have been around commercial livestock production my whole life both cattle & swine and I have never seen actions like this before!

There are several things that need to be understood about this investigation:
#1 No one in livestock production approves this behavior from employees on their operations!
#2 Mercy For Animals made this video undercover on the ranch without the approval of the owners.
#3 All producers must complete animal care assurance trainings in order to raise animals and sell them for consumption. The practices shown in this video are NOT ethical, moral, humane or practical and we as an industry DO NOT TOLERATE this behavior.
#4 Law enforcement was called by Mercy For Animals on these people for this treatment,which is good. However it was 2 weeks after the investigation & videos were made, which is entirely to late & unacceptable.

I feel that if Mercy For Animals was concerned with the animals safety, humane treatment and health than they would of called law enforcement at first violation, not two weeks after their video was made and edited. They were more concerned with their video & putting the ranch on the spot than they were for the care of the livestock.

These practices are absolutely 100% against what production livestock does on a daily basis & is not in any way an insight to how our operations are managed and how employees act. I hope that the employees in these videos are arrested and pay for their unethical actions because this is not what agriculture is.

If you are interested in what other producers think of this video and want their opinion feel free to ask me and I will direct you to them. You can also read these blogs for more opinions.

Haley-Farms: http://haley-farms.com/blog/2011/04/19/no-mercy-for-animal-abuse/
Michele Knoper: http://www.causematters.com/agriculture/mercy-for-animals-calves-animal-abuse/
Crystal Cattle: http://cdycattle.blogspot.com/2011/04/animal-abuse-in-agriculture.html

Ryan Goodman, a cattleman from Arkansas has done a very good job explaining how cattle are cared for on a daily cattle operation (ranch) in this blog:
 http://agricultureproud.com/2011/04/19/quality-food-begins-with-quality-animal-care/

Please share this blog with people that you know are concerned with quality of their animal care.

More Beef, Less Question

As I continue to study animal advocates I am learning more and more how and why it is so important that we show and speak the good things of our industry. I started my project for agvocate training this week. I chose to do the masters of beef advocacy (MBA) program because I have a passion for raising beef cattle and showed club calves in 4H when I was a little younger. I come from a pork producing grain farming family that used to run a cattle feedlot operation but got out of the cattle business when I was still a young kid. My knowledge of the beef industry is a little lower than other agvocates, but I feel that if I want to defend agriculture I need to understand more about other aspects of agriculture. This feeling combined with great reviews of the MBA program has led me to this program and I am very excited to learn from the presentations, handouts & homework.

The first lesson in MBA was an overview of the beef industry from cow/calf to processing. We also discussed the different labels or titles used to market beef such as the "organic raised" or "all natural" labels. I learned a lot about the differences teh USDA has put up as standards for each of these labels. I feel their are two underlying messages here and I want to explain why.

#1  We live in a country and society that allows us to choose what we want to consume, hooray for us! We should be thankful for this. The most important thing is that regardless of what you choose whether it is traditional, natural or organic you're still supporting agriculture and eating meat! That is the outcome we as an industry want. Hopefully you are confident in your choices and understand what is going into your food products when you make your selection. I encourage everyone to learn at least a bit of the differences in the meat selection.

#2   This is where the problem begins as an industry. Beef is safe, healthy & extremely nutritious and that is what we want consumers to understand and have confidence in. But when we put labels such as organic or natural we are unintentionally saying that one product is right and the other is wrong. Even if you don't mean to, I'm not trying to start fights among beef producers because I agree with most differences in the industry as to why you have diversity. But to consumers their is a greater chance of misinterpretation of the label by simply not knowing how beef is raised. The fact of the matter is that all beef is healthy, safe & nutritious, that is the message producers are trying to tell and when we tell our story and explain these facts it is important to bring light the differences in feeding methods so that consumers understand all beef is good.

I'm not an expert on cattle, beef production or marketing beef; however I feel that it is a simple task to explain the difference since we already have the job of advocating for our industry. The different feeding options that ranchers & farmers make can cause a sort of "gray area" that is lost in translation and needs to be found and brought to light by us (producers) so that the anti-animal groups don't spread more falsifications of beef's safe, healthy & nutritional background.

The Watering Hole

Everyone has heard it, seen it or participated in it. Every group of people in society has one. I'm talking about people getting together to spread gossip, facts, fish tales, hunting stories & moments of pride for themselves, this has become known as a local watering hole. You may think of barber shops, hair salons, coffee shops, grocery stores or any other meeting place.

Social media has taken the watering hole to new levels...we now have wells or fountains of knowledge and information at the tips of our fingers. No longer is it a local matter, we can share our stories (like in this blog) to people all over the world. Technology has become a part of our everyday lives and we benefit from it in many ways. I don't want to focus on the benefits and downfalls of technology or social media here because I want to spend time talking about a special watering hole known as #agchat.

#agchat is a hash-tag (twitter lingo for a search) that allows anyone to post tweets that can be seen under the #agchat hash-tag. Agchat holds weekly question banks on twitter allowing anyone to submit answers under the hash-tag and they can be seen by whoever searches the hash-tag. They spend time focusing on different aspects of agriculture & important events happening in the ag industry. The key to #agchat's weekly talk is that anyone can post answers which gives a huge variety of ideas and ways of looking at questions. Technology has helped us to spread our knowledge to others interested through #agchat.

Today is the agchat foundations first birthday. This was when the weekly discussions started and they have grown faster than anyone could have expected. The Agchat foundation has also held several events in the past year to help farmers strengthen their social media skills. They work hard to make sure that the positive side of agriculture is heard through producers voices and communities.

For more info on #agchat and the Agchat Foundation look at their facebook page:
  http://www.facebook.com/AgChatFoundation
And follow them on twitter at @agchat or search the hash-tag #agchat

My fellow agvocate and agchat attendee Mike Haley or @farmerhaley has posted a similar blog about agchat and has compiled a slideshow of photos from different agchat foundation events. If you're interested more in photos be sure to look at them!
http://haley-farms.com/blog/2011/04/04/agchat-birthday/

So Happy Birthday to the Agchat Foundation and be sure to tweet into agchat sometime for some great discussions and thoughts.