She’s defending conventional agriculture and bringing common sense to America’s dining room.
The Farmer’s Daughter
There’s a farmer’s daughter in southwest Michigan who felt called to tell the story of her family’s farm. Amanda Zaluckyj, creator of the Farmer’s Daughter USA website, used new media to do this, with a blog that she updates frequently. She followed the family’s corn crop from planting to harvest, and the following year, followed the family’s soybeans. But through the process, she became aware of how radicals in the organic food movement were using social media to paint an ugly picture of traditional farming.
“I think it is always important to remind folks that farmers want the same things consumers want – healthy, safe, and nutritious food! Despite all the fear-mongering that seems to go on, we don’t poison our food because we eat it too, we don’t abuse our animals, and we are caretakers of our farms because we don’t get to just go out and buy new fields and water every year!”
Amanda had been working on an idea – “Team Ag” – which would challenge the misconceptions some people have about farming, and the outright falsifications extremists use to sell organic products. She is using her social media skills to build a network of people who feel like she does.
Team Ag not only takes on false propaganda, but also vocalizes support for companies that are taking fire from the anti-GMO crowd.
“We just sent a note out about Land of Lakes. They’d been targeted lately by some of the anti-GMO organizations. So we wanted to do something just to support them. We had a good turnout as far as that goes. Looks like most of the people opened our e-mail and at least read it, and I definitely got some feedback from people saying that they had made some good comments, and we found those comments online and on Facebook that people had left in response to our e-mails.”
Amanda and Team Ag are bringing balance to the discussion. Food quality and safety is obviously very important to everyone, and it is time that conventional farming techniques got a fair shake. To learn more, visit Amanda’s website at http://www.thefarmersdaughterusa.com.
I’m Len Wilcox and that’s the Western View from AgNet West.