Ag related

Foodchat on Holiday Food and Activity

Truffle Media Networks — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:40:53 +0000

Holiday Food and Activity What are your favorite holiday foods? How do your food traditions change over time? This holiday conversation provides a view into food, people, and their holidays.

Learn How Social Media Is Being Used by HSUS

Truffle Media Networks — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:45:22 +0000

This presentation by Carie Lewis, Director of Emerging Media, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), offers a great view in to how HSUS is strategic in its use of social media. While you may or may not like the HSUS, they do have a plan and know where they need to go. Everyone in agriculture needs to leverage this HSUS information to help advocate (aka agvocate) their agriculture, farm, and ranch story.

Click arrow below to play.

Taking Online Dairy Advocacy to the Next Level

Truffle Media Networks — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:25:08 +0000

How can you utilize social media in agriculture? What steps should you take when general media portrays farming operations in a negative light? This webinar offers some guidance, tools, and resources to help. Webinar from Dairy Management Inc. and myDairyToolkit.com, December 14, 2011.

For full screen, click on player below. Click to share video with others.

Truffle Media's 3 Words for 2012

Truffle Media Networks — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:36:31 +0000

I was recently reminded of Chris Brogan's "My 3 Words for 2011" (plus 2010, 2009, and 2008) and thought how I would apply this to Truffle Media Networks.

One of the recommended approaches is to

"think long and hard about what these words will mean for you, how you can sum up an entire PERSPECTIVE into these words, and how you can use them as guideposts for your actions in the coming year."

So in this spirit I take a jab at creating the three words and share the deeper why.

Delegate. Great companies can't do it all. There are some tasks that just are not a good fit for a company to take on. Yet they have to have the task completed. They find someone to take on the work and get it done. Delegate, outsource, assign, whatever the word, they found the balance of getting tasks done.

Delegate. My grandmother was a great delegator. She was able to accomplish many great things in her community because she was able to discover the talents of her friends, family, colleagues, and associates, and, when the time came, make the ask. Part of delegation is learning to let go of the task and accept the outcome of the completed task. My grandmother was good at that. Yes, she had a set of standards. But she incorporated those standards into her talent identification process.

Delegate. Truffle Media Networks is a small organization with lots of ideas. We have to prune the ideas to a manageable level but still there are tasks we just don't have the internal resources to do. Historically we have killed ideas because we didn't have the people power. But that also meant we killed off possible products, maybe for the wrong reason. We need to look at what we truly want to do and figure out how to get it done. Delegate.

Deliver. That is what you expect from your local pizza place. If they don't deliver you stop ordering from them.

Deliver. You expect delivery from your home town newspaper. However, delivery gets a bit more complicated with a newspaper. The first part of deliver is "Did the paper get delivered this morning?", an easy thing to confirm. But newspapers must also deliver on the stories, and this gets very subjective in the news media business. Is the paper delivering on my expectations as a news channel for me? Is the newspaper delivering in its mission to be the neighborhood information and editorial source?

Deliver. The Truffle Media Networks team has been in the digital agriculture media world since late 2004. The aim originally was to leverage these things called iPods to bring relevant ag information and updates to top tier agri-producers, with the tag line "Podcasting With A Purpose". In late 2009 we changed the tag line to "Ag Media You Can Use" because we believed ag information for information's sake was not helpful, but ag media that you could actually use was definitely needed. However, in 2011 we don't believe we have really lived up to that tag line. So we either de(live)er on that or move on. Deliver.

Visible. I see my US mail delivery people certainly weekly. I know when they (there are two, sharing the route) will arrive. I know what to expect and they know who I am. They are visible.

Visible. I don't see my congressperson very much. I sometime forget who it is, except when they want to get (re)elected. Even then they are not visible in my part of the world. They are selectively visible whenever they want something.

Visible. Truffle Media Networks is visible in a variety of ways but are we visible and remembered? We attend ag focused events. We share an email update with our audience in a regular basis. We participate in ag related social media communities. But are we selectively visible, only showing up when we want something? We believe to be truly helpful we need to be visible when we don't need something. We need to be visible to help agri-professionals do their job better. Visible.

Delegate, Deliver, Visible. These are the three words Truffle Media Networks will use as guideposts for 2012. What are your three words?

Happy New Year,
John Blue

Farm Job, Day Job

Truffle Media Networks — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:13:13 +0000

Farm Job, Day Job Farming and ranching may not be a full time job for everyone in agriculture. Some times, when two jobs are needed, flexibility is needed to support the seasonal aspects of agriculture. This AgChat convo offers a glimpse of how people manage with a farm job and a day job.

Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability

Truffle Media Networks — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:07:38 +0000

Audio via PoultryCast

Dennis Treacy shares what sustainability means to Smithfield.

There are five pillars Smithfield looks at when talking about sustainability: Protecting the environment, animal care, food safety, how we treat our employees, and the communities in which we operate.

Smithfield actively works to help consumers understand their company and improve the relationship. Yes, Smithfield is the largest pork producer in the world. Smithfield works to communicate with the outside world about what they do as a large company, sharing the Smithfield story.

Farm Bill - Ag Data Hackathon To Support Debates

Truffle Media Networks — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:03:52 +0000

via Food + Tech Connect Blog

Using software and people to highlight issues is not new. But using it in agriculture is picking up steam. Food+Tech Connect and Gojee brought together journalists, tech designers, food/ag policy experts, and data gurus to explore the 2012 US Farm Bill. The goal was to highlight issues and extract data to support conversations and debate.

Emily Zweber will become the AgChat Foundation's first executive director

Truffle Media Networks — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:33:49 +0000

via AgChat.org

Emily Zweber (@ezweber ) will become the AgChat Foundation's first executive director. The nonprofit AgChat Foundation (ACF) educates and equips farmers with the skills needed to effectively tell their story on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media services.

Zweber, an organic dairy farmer from Elko, Minn., will focus on furthering ACF's mission of connecting farmers to diverse audiences via social media platforms. She also will provide day-to-day management oversight and fundraising support.

"Emily uses social media every day on the family farming operation, so she’s a great choice for this position," says Darin Grimm (@kansfarmer), ACF president. "What began as an all-volunteer outcropping of an agricultural social media movement is growing into a professionally managed organization. Having Emily on board is a real boost."

Grimm added that ACF's highly-successful summer thought-leadership and social media training conference is slated to provide more content than ever in its third year, and that additional training programs are planned.

Emily received her bachelor’s degree in agriculture economics and international studies from South Dakota State University and is a University of Minnesota Center for the Study of Policy and Governance Humphrey Policy Fellow. Previously, she has served as the Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation’s executive director and the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation’s special programs coordinator. Emily and her husband, Tim (@ zweberfarms) , co-own and operate Zweber Farms with Tim’s parents.

AgChat and FoodChat topics by date and their participation count

Truffle Media Networks — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:45:39 +0000

AgChat and FoodChat topics by date, with a ranking count related to the number of participants and their tweets. This is mainly to show how conversations rate in terms of participation and compare them to other conversations in the series.

Legos Help Learn About Farming

Truffle Media Networks — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:58:46 +0000

via ThisWeekInAg

Warren Seely shares how and why he builds working model tractors with Legos. The why is very insightful: a working Lego model tractor will not hurt you when explaining how a tractor works. Warren also uses the Lego models to explain mint and potato harvesting.