Farmers use social media to fight negative portrayals

The battle between animal-rights activists and agriculture has taken a new turn in the world of social media. When angry animal rights groups recently released a YouTube video of dairy cows being abused by farmers, the video led to much outrage online, but not just from those appalled by the images, Juliana Barbassa of The Associated Press reports. "It also raised a flurry of outrage from another corner of the Internet," Barbassa writes. "Farmers fought back, blogging, tweeting, uploading their own videos and chatting on Facebook to defend their industry and explain the abuse did not represent their practices."

"Growers aren't usually thought of as a wired, social-networking bunch," Barbassa writes. "But frustration at being the targets of tech-wise environmental or animal rights groups has inspired them to get involved with social media and answer in kind." Ray Prock Jr., a second-generation Central California dairy farmer whose blog posts and tweets relay information on everything from emergency drills for handling manure spills to lactose intolerance, explained, "There is so much negative publicity out there, and no one was getting our message out."

"This is where my family lives — I care for the air, and the water, the environment, the cows," Prock told Barbassa. "This is what I wish I could show people." Nathan Runkle, director of Mercy For Animals, the organization responsible for the video, can likely relate to that feeling as he told Barbassa animal rights groups first embraced social media because they didn't have the budget to combat the ag industry's advertising campaigns. Farmers like Prock have learned from the groups and now have taken their marketing into their own hands. "We weren't part of the conversation," Prock said. "And if we aren't telling our story, other people will, and they'll tell it the way they want to." (Read more)