In case you have missed it, the AgChat Foundation has an album of photos on its Facebook page. They are looking for the top 10 blog posts about agriculture this year. The blog posts in the set cover a wide range of topics, written by people in various parts of agriculture. I put the thumbnails from that album here as you see the varied blogs and in many cases, the bloggers themselves.

When I look at the thumbnails from that album, I see lots of familiar faces. Lots of farmers I have met through social media and have later met at various events across the country. I also see new faces, bloggers I wasn’t familiar with and that I definitely needed to check out. Some are on everyday farming topics and others are on particular news stories.

Here are all the posts (there are 32 posts in the running for the top 10) and I THINK the list is in the order of the thumbnails (no promises though):

• Emily Grace: A Bridge Back. A Way Forward.
• Paint the Town Ag: an inconvenient inspiration
• My post: “G is for GMOs-What are GMOs & Why Do Farmers Plant GMO Crops” 
• Krista Stauffer: “I want consumers to feel farming” 
• Alison Bos: “Growing Up On A Farm: 25 Facts About Being A Farm Kid!” 
• Lauren Arbogast: “When I Said “I Do””
• Lauren Arbogast:“#NoDance” 
• Judi Graff FarmnWife: “11 Ways to Speed Blog” 
• Ryan Goodman:  “Chipotle Takes On Big Food with Animated Scarecrow” 
• Brian Scott:“My family farm isn’t under ‘corporate control’ 
• Ryan Goodman:“What the ‘ag gag’ bills mean to my farm” 
• Nicole Small:“Introduction to Flat Aggie” 
• Curtis Mahnken:“Dairy Month – Why I’m An Ag Educator” 
• Carrie Mess:“Sometimes We are Mean to Our Cows” 
• Kalu Samuel: Youth Support in Agriculture, Important in our time…My story
• Leah Brakke:“The B Word”
• Jennie Schmidt:“Top 10 Annoying Words About Agriculture”
• David Hayden:“Hey Chipotle”
• Rudy Taylor: Just a Farm Kid (Guest Post) 
• Larry Lankard: “Memories of a Farmer Dad”
• Karen Penry:“The Farmer’s Wife…Or Trying To Keep It Together At the Ranch” 
• Sophie: Thank God I’m A Country Girl:”The Time You Have (In Jelly Beans)”
• Karen Penry:“A Perspective on the Black Forest Fire” 
• Karen Penry:“The Truth Is…” 
• Jennifer Armbruster:“Celebrating Our Nation’s Farmer Veterans”
• Emily Webel:“Day Six: 6” – A Reflection from a Dr. Oz episode 
• Ryan Bright:Dairy Dynasty Week: Day 5 The Video from Farmer Bright. 
• Will Gilmer:”I’ll have a burrito with extra salsa, hold the bull” 
• Jodene Shaw:“Broken Dreams and Hearts On the Western Dakota Prairie” 
• Holly Spangler:“Five Things Farmers Need to Know About Consumers” 
• Kelsey Pope:“Puppets of the weather – today on the RamZone blog”. 
• Jude Capper:  “Activism 101-How to Write Like An Angry Internet “Expert” on GMOs” 

Everyone of those blog posts has a personality and a story behind it. It will take you a while to really look through that list and think about a few you may want to vote into the Top 10 of the year.

The Story Behind My Post

 

One of the posts that was part of my A to Z of agriculture — “G is for GMOs — What are GMOs & Why do farmers plant them?” is in the running. I thought I’d tell you about the background.

This blog post was something that I had thought about writing for a long time but stayed away from. I talk about GMOs & biotech a lot at work and since this is my personal blog and the conversation has gotten so polarized on the topic, I hadn’t wanted to get into it here. That’s not the kind of blog I want. There are other blogs who do a great job of covering controversy and I just hadn’t wanted to draw lightning bolts in my direction. That changed.

As I was doing my A to Z on Agriculture, I was asking people who read my blog what to write about. It seemed clear G was for GMOs for a lot of people.  I decided I would write about it from the spot I sit in. GMOs are a really useful tool for some farmers. There isn’t just one kind of GMO and based on the background I have, I am comfortable with the safety of the products that include GMOs currently on the market.

This post was the top post on my blog for a while. For months people continued to talk about it and share it through social media, so it was certainly my top post from a numbers game, but for me its top because I found a way to participate in the middle of a conversation that was polarized without adding to the polarization. The comments showed a real interest in hearing another viewpoint.

Read & Vote Appropriately

So wander on over to the various blog posts above, give them a read. Then go the album on the AgChat Foundation page and simply click like to vote for the posts you think are best. If you think my post has a chance, give that photo a like. No matter who gets in the Top 10, I feel we are all winners for having found something that is important to us and taking the time to share our story & engage in conversations with others.

Related articles

• I Eat GMOs.
• The Power of One Voice
• Mom Blogger asks “Dr. Oz – Where’s the Farmer?”
• What would happen if an organic farmer toured Monsanto?