On the third Tuesday of each month, #agchat (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23agchat), the Twitter-based conversation of agriculture issues founded by Michele Payn-Knoper (http://twitter.com/mpaynknoper), broadens its focus to to become #foodchat (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23foodchat).
Last night's #foodchat discussion addressed a number of food safety issues from a number of perspectives, including those of folks who regularly participate in the #sustagchat conversations on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23sustagchat).
Both the weekly #agchat and the monthly #foodchat, as well as #sustagchat, are great examples of the power of social media to build agriculture and food communities, enable discussion of agriculture and food issues and tell the stories of producers, processors and consumers.
In a recent post to her blog (http://causematters.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/twitters-business-value-to-agriculture/), Michele Payn-Knoper shared the answers she received when she asked “Why do you think twitter is valuable to #ag?" Among the responses were "Relationships-Putting a face on the farmer and making them human" from RayLinDairy and "Great way to spread info to other aggies in a quick manner, Great way to tell our story to non-ag audience" from ChrisChinn.
Nebraska farmer Brandon Hunnicut shared the sentiments above in "Farmers Tweet With a Global Network," a recent story from KOLN/KGIN TV.
Val Wagner and her husband Mark use to Twitter share the story of their Manango, ND operation through the eyes of a Red Angus heifer on http://twitter.com/Cows_Life. In a recent article in The Cattle Business Weekly (http://www.cattlebusinessweekly.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=1411), Val explained, "The goal with the tweets is to connect and educate with the people who are not on the farm, but are making decisions that affect the farm."
Twitter is not the only tool producers are using to share information. Martin Family Farms, a corn and soybean operation in central Illinois, has been posting videos like "No-till soybean planting" and "Tree planting CRP acres" to the video-sharing site, YouTube. Check out all the Martin Family Farms videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MartinFamilyFarms.
If you are interested in learning more about social media tools, email me at Robert.Bertsch@ndsu.edu. If you are already a Twitter user, follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ndbob and follow this blog at www.twitter.com/thewinnowingoar.