TO get their message out today, food producers need to have an entirely new sense of urgency and need to use an entirely new set of alliances and tools, according to one specialist in issues management.
This requires first a desire to actually respond, then alliances with interests that are not traditional to agriculture, then capabilities to communicate plus outreach that transmit messages consistently, continuously and rapidly, explained George Clark, director of the issues and crisis group at Burson-Marsteller in Washington, D.C.
"The (communications) landscape has changed dramatically," he said, whereby a "story" can leap from a cell phone photo or video to YouTube in seconds, and food producers need "a parallel response".
Ag and food producers face broad opposition from activist groups, and response must be proactive and rapid.Producers must speak out to show they provide abundant, affordable food supply.Effort must pool resources across agribusiness and collaborate with NGOs that can lend credibility.F ood producers need this response because activism is occurring on a broader frequency that's more opposed to agriculture and conventional food production than ever, he said.
Furthermore, activists are taking their agendas directly to the media and public, which agriculture tends to avoid, Clark said, noting that this process begets funding and membership and creates support for the agendas.
Activists are in the conflict industry, he said - creating conflict to raise money to create more conflict to raise more money.
Activists also polish their images, he said. Consumers perceive groups such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) as caring about kittens and puppies when their proclivity is really about vegetarianism and veganism, he said, noting that the public is just not aware of this.
Clark, a former information officer in the US Department of Agriculture who coordinated inter-agency communications on food safety for the White House, spoke with Rural Press US newspaper Feedstuffs during an interview in Washington.
Table talk
HSUS and PETA also are non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which are regarded as credible and as having public clout, Clark said, and NGOs are increasingly driving public policy-making at the local, state and national levels.
They "have taken seats at the table", while agriculture has not, he said.
Moreover, agriculture and conventional food production are experiencing "a dramatic drop in public trust" due to the "debilitating effects" of animal and environmental abuse videos and food recalls, he said, and the people at the table are subjecting producers to more scrutiny "than has been seen in decades".
There are "a myriad of issues that can prompt headlines that we didn't have 10 years ago", Clark said.
Accordingly, agriculture needs to try new tactics, such as alliances with NGOs that have common interests and proactive communication strategies that say what agriculture does, how it does that and why it does that, Clark said.
Producers can't ignore issues by taking the be-quiet-and-it-will-go-away approach, he said.
Producers need to call out and speak out, he said - calling out producers who have committed violations related to animal welfare, environmental stewardship and food safety and speaking out about how agriculture produces an abundant and affordable food supply.
The industry needs to be engaged in the development and use of best management practices and needs to lead investigations of breakdowns in those practices, he said.
"It is not an option to not speak out," he said, because others will - activists, media pundits, policy-makers, regulators and plaintiff attorneys. "They will gladly be quoted."
Tent talk
Producers need to get messages to the public, Clark said, suggesting that while an industry's animal welfare or environmental guidelines may be well known and understood by producers in that industry or by rural media, they are not top-of-mind for consumers.
Producers need to use the right media to reach the right audiences, he said.
"I'm not aware of industry X's guidelines because they aren't being twittered, they aren't coming up on Google, they aren't reported by the Washington Post," he said.
When a person does a Google search for "hen house", for instance, a web site needs to pop up with a chicken cam or video showing what's going on in the house and why it's going on, Clark said.
Information needs to be instantaneous, and grassroots industries like agriculture need to be merged with the digital world, with podcasts, webinars and town hall meetings, he said.
They also need to be merged with NGOs such as labour unions, which have a stake in jobs in agriculture and food processing, and church groups or parent-teacher associations, which have a stake in the economies of rural communities, Clark said.
A lot of pressure on producers is coming from retailers, which are also being pressured by activists with agendas and by consumers with concerns and questions, he said, so producers need to tie up with NGOs that have credibility with retailers and grocery shoppers.
"You need a bigger tent where you can have greater collaboration," he said.
Collaboration and communication must pool resources across agriculture and food production and be ongoing, Clark said, and strategies must be directed toward explanation, opinion shaping, anticipation and prevention, which are more cost and resource effective than responding to crisis.
"Where public confidence and trust become expensive (to keep or restore) is when something already has broken loose," he said.
Clark referred to recent opinion poll that showed that the public no longer differentiates in its perceptions of agriculture: The public "doesn't think of beef producers or chicken producers but of food producers", he said.
"It's not this segment and that segment or this product and that product; it's agribusiness, (or) it's food manufacturing. That's how the public sees things today."
This is why the "parallel response" must not be the beef industry's response or the chicken industry's response but all of agriculture's response, Clark said, and it must be consistent, proactive, responsive and transparent.
"We have not demonstrated our desire or expertise to do that," he said.
However, agriculture and food production can do this with communication techniques and partners that provide "a public face" and let people "peak inside" to see what producers do, how and why, Clark said, and the more this is done, the "more light and less heat" there will be.
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