We all studied the industrial revolution that increased the way we could mass produce things in demand. And most of us in mainstream agriculture have participated in the biotech revolution. This morning as I was casting my vote for Michele Payn-Knoper for twitter user of the year… the phrase, social media ag revolution came to mind.
Today, I count among my friends people in agriculture in every geographic region and crop. The amount of information we trade via twitter & the blogs and website we link out to is incredible. It’s empowering. And it has made it so that even if you are on a farm in the middle of nowhere, you have a huge community right here. Some of the things the community has offered:
- Great support when a few tweeps had less than stellar days from real tragedy like a fire to simple travel woes
- Great background knowledge on a topic I may be new to — I’m going to learn even more on the livestock side in the next couple of weeks
- Laughs, laughs and so many more laughs both at myself and with others
- A heads’ up when something was coming at us in the public eye (CSI, Food Inc, Time, whatever)
- Recommendations from books to read to wine to sip
- Incredible weather information that The Weather Channel would be impressed by
- Insight on what is really going on in the field for those of us who spend most of our days in the office
We are all participating in the social media ag revolution whether we blog, tweet, Facebook, youtube or some combination of those media! And knowing that Michele had the vision to create the #agchat discussion, get us organized (much like herding cats, especially when a few of us combine wine recs with the chat), and leverage it across several social media as well (check out her blog, twitter accounts for herself / agchat / foodchat, the agchat Facebook group, or her occasional vlogs)…. it stood out and has now become a rallying cry for some of us when we heard about the openwebawards.
They let us vote everyday for one more week. I hope you’ll join me in trying to make sure that someone among the nominees represents agriculture. Just imagine how stunned the rest of the world could end up being…. celebrities will likely be on the list, how cool would it be to have someone there who has cows in the yard. PLEASE vote MPK http://bit.ly/2z9JVj everday!
If you like the photo on here, it’s a fun idea Derek Balsley put together on Zazzle. You can order a shirt online and get any of a number of styles, colors, etc. I’d highly recommend a 100% cotton shirt… preferably one that is grown & made in the USA!