Too often I hear many in agriculture say we need to use science based facts to promote ourselves and educate the consumer about farming. Sadly this is a 180 degree view from where I think we should be, using common values. The public expects and trusts farmers & ranchers to manage our farms and ranches based on science. We need to market ourselves, our practices, and our products based on our culture. We need to build bridges between communities and foster relationships.  We need to embrace engagement and conversations as assets not liabilities. Let’s celebrate our success, and triumph our failures as stepping-stones to greatness and show everyone why “culture” is built into Agriculture.

In Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch , Shawn Parr explains the need to not only rely on your product or service to sell itself rather sell your culture too as a complete package: “It’s not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death.”

Matt Ridings highlights the need to build common ground first then using that common understand ding as a catalyst to true connection in communication in his post  Death Of A Harpsichord, Or Why Nuance Is Important: “When we talk about the ‘soft’ aspects of organizations, like corporate culture for example, language often falls short.  We can communicate the gist of something, but typically it requires finding some common ground with the reader/listener. Some shared experience is generally the means by which true understanding takes place.  Nuance is one of those things that lies just beneath the surface of language, we can intuit it, we can use analogies that people can more easily relate to, but describing a corporate culture is like trying to describe what love feels like.  Culture is something that is felt, something that is experienced. Because of that the best we can really do is to describe outcomes of specific cultures.  ”The by-product of x type of culture is that y, and z occur”.”

To show the culture in Agriculture we need to band together and take a long hard look at what those outside of Agriculture see when they look in.

• Do they see an inviting warm welcome environment or are they scared to ask questions for fear of being lectured or preached to about agriculture?
• Do they see a group of people willing to chat or do they see a group of people defending themselves at all costs?

What do you think the culture of Agriculture is?

Related posts:

• Farmers Don’t Need A Martyr Complex
• Let’s Build Bridges With Consumers
• Putting The “Culture” In Agriculture
• Social Business: Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch