US Farmers and Rancher Alliance Help Educate Consumers with Films

Brad Greenway: Reaching Consumers in a Different Way

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

Brad Greenway is Chairman of the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. California Ag Today recently spoke with him and Allison Garriga, Vice President of Strategy & Operations, about the importance of communication between farmers/ranchers and consumers, and how his organization is bridging that gap.

“We’re a true alliance, so we’re made up of 105 different agricultural organizations and a few corporations who are largely funded by farmers and ranchers. Some of the funding comes through checkoff dollars,” Greenway said.

“Our focus is to talk to consumers in a way that perhaps agriculture hasn’t done before,” he explained. “We try to go through pop culture. We try to go through the entertainment industry. We want to take advantage of the trust that consumers have in farmers and ranchers, but of course the lack of understanding on how we grow and raise food, so we’re trying to bridge that gap, and we are using the farmer’s voice to do just that.”

The Alliance is working through film initiatives, documentaries and their food dialogue efforts to bring all voices and all opinions about agricultural production to the same table. The film Farmland was done through the efforts and funding of the Alliance.

“That’s the focus as we generally believe. We’re not listening to the folks that are against modern agriculture; they’re not going to hear us. That’s because our goal is to have an open communication,” Greenway said.

It’s important that everyone does their part in making sure that farmers get their voices heard.

“Whether you’re on social media, wherever you are, it’s getting consumers to hear our voice,” Garriga said.

“So there’s always people that say, ‘Well, all my friends on Facebook are agriculturalists.’ Actually, they’re probably not, and so we’ve all got to do what we can do. And what we do as an organization ourselves is try to focus on the coasts,” Garriga said.

“You kind of think of the smile geography of the country. If you drew a big smiley face across the forty-eight states. That’s where we focus our efforts,” she explained.

For more information on the Alliance: http://www.fooddialogues.com