“Success will be the result of doing things that are easy and amazingly simple.” Patrick Batts-Washington FB
I believe the skills we develop come from the experiences we afford ourselves. I have found the PAL training to be just that. The skills I have built have come directly from assignments that were given. Each experience and skill I have developed gives me a foundation for future skills and experience I will yet have.
Shooting, Editing, and Sharing Videos
One of the first things the PAL coordinators did was to mail each of the participants a Flip Share video camera and have us make a short video to introduce ourselves to the class. I have been asked to make several videos since that time for different assignments, even my kids had me help them make a couple of videos telling about our dairy. My first video wasn’t too impressive, but with a little coaching and practice the videos have gotten easier to watch.
A couple of the things I have learned about making videos.
A couple of the things I have learned about making videos.
- Shoot the clips you think you want several times and pick the best one to use, don’t just settle for the first shot.
- Get several different shots of the same thing: close-up, mid-range, and far away. Multiple short clips from different angles will usually do a great job illustrating what you want the viewer to see.
- Hold the camera steady, use a tripod if necessary. People will not watch videos that jump all over for very long.
This video was put together to be shown on Food Nutrition and Science, an online publication. The video was featured in their farm tour series and is a tour of my family dairy farm.
My son Kyle (age 11) made this video entitled "Together We Can Feed the World" about our family working together on our dairy farm to produce enough milk to feed about 3500 people their 3 servings of milk each day.
My daughter Rachel (age 12) made this video entitled "Together We Can Put the Milk in Your Fridge" about all the people who work together to get the milk to the store so you can buy it.
Telling my story in a way my audience will understand
My experience in New York at the First PAL Module was very eye opening and informative. I had never been to New York or any other city that size before. One afternoon, we rode the train from our hotel to the trade center site and arrived about 5:00 pm just as everyone was getting out of work and heading home, to see so many people from so many different backgrounds all coming and going was a very different experience for me. I thought to myself, I wonder how many of these people have ever visited a farm? Do they ever even think about where and how the food they eat is grown? Do they really even care? The next thought I had was there are a lot more votes in this city than all the farmers in the country put together. Which raises the question, how do we get our message to these people? And how do we get them to care about the American farmer? These are a few of the questions we discussed in our PAL classes. It is easy to tell your story to someone you know and have many things in common with, but it is quite another to tell that same story to someone who has such a very different life experience than you. The words we use, the way we describe what we do, they don’t understand. It is almost as if they don’t even speak the same language that we do. We may be speaking, but they can’t understand what we are saying. This is our challenge. We must learn to speak in ways that they will listen to and understand, we need to help them understand why our story, the story of the American farmer, is important to them. People are busy and don’t have time and usually won’t listen to long speeches or read long articles. Our message must be short. When we get the opportunity to speak about agriculture we must learn to get our point out in as few words as possible or we will loss our audience. We must ask ourselves, who am I talking to? How does my message relate to them? And, what is the most important point for them to understand?
Responding to Negative Messages About Agriculture
Near the beginning of my PAL training, both Time Magazine and The New York Times ran prominent stories attacking Modern Agriculture. I wrote a blog post responding to these articles and e-mailed it to everyone I knew.
When Nightline ran a negative story about dairies, I wrote this response and published it on the FBlog as well as my own blog.
I have also been trying to leave comments every time I see a negative article about agriculture on line. Often just a quick note to let people know there is another side to the story.
When Nightline ran a negative story about dairies, I wrote this response and published it on the FBlog as well as my own blog.
I have also been trying to leave comments every time I see a negative article about agriculture on line. Often just a quick note to let people know there is another side to the story.
Communicating My Message Through Traditional Media
Often the best way to learn something is by doing it. This was the approach to our media training. We recorded several mock interviews and played them back to analyze how we did. We learned:
- to be careful in what we said so our comments could not be edited and used against us.
- Speak in clear concise "sound bite" messages.
- Stay on topic by using talking points.
Farmers and ranchers have not traditionally been good at telling our story to the public, but with the constantly increasing attacks against American agriculture we can no longer neglect to speak out, our way of life is at stake. There is plenty of miss-information being spread about farmers today, if we don’t tell them the truth, we can’t expect them to stand up for us, either in the voting booth, or at the grocery store. We need these people as our allies, and the only way that will happen is if we learn to effectively communicate our message to them.
Speaking and Giving Public Presentations
We spent considerable time talking about preparing and organizing public presentations. We discussed both the Mind Map, and the Message House approach to organizing our thoughts and ideas into a logical and understandable presentation. Margee also taught us about proper posture and the use of hand gestures to make you look more at ease and the presentation more interesting (somethings I need to work on).
We also talked about the use of slides and visuals in presentations. What makes them helpful? What might make them a distraction?
Here are two power point presentations that I put together. The first is an introduction for myself that I gave the first night we met as a PAL class. The second was done as an assignment for our last module in St. Louis. This was an interesting presentation for me to put together because I do not agree with the argument that is being made, but it was a good learning experience to have to look at presenting the other side of the issue. It is done from the standpoint of the Natural Resource Defense Council regarding Cap and Trade.
We also talked about the use of slides and visuals in presentations. What makes them helpful? What might make them a distraction?
Here are two power point presentations that I put together. The first is an introduction for myself that I gave the first night we met as a PAL class. The second was done as an assignment for our last module in St. Louis. This was an interesting presentation for me to put together because I do not agree with the argument that is being made, but it was a good learning experience to have to look at presenting the other side of the issue. It is done from the standpoint of the Natural Resource Defense Council regarding Cap and Trade.
I have always enjoyed visiting Washington D.C., but this trip was different than the one’s I have taken before. Very little sightseeing (although the Cherry Blossoms were in bloom) and Congress wasn’t even in session. We focused on effectively influencing the political process and understanding how that process works. I believe we often over-simplify the political process, thinking in our ideological minds that you debate a bill and then have a simple vote to determine if it will pass. But as we learned, very little in Washington is as simple as it seems. If you are going to be effective in furthering your agenda then you need to understand how the game works.
If you are an elected official your ultimate goal is to get reelected. Trying to satisfy your constituents when every bill seems to be tied to another can become a real juggling act. Choosing which bills you need to support in order to get votes for your bill becomes a real challenge. We spent part of one day playing the Congressional Insight game; it was a good illustration of how every vote and every decision will make some people happy and others mad. You often have to decide who you can afford to make mad today.
If you are a lobbyist, you must be careful who you upset today because you may need their help on another issue tomorrow. We had the opportunity to visit with Monsanto’s Washington staff. Michael Dykes (Monsanto’s head lobbyist) stressed the importance of being able to work with both sides of the political spectrum and not get caught up playing politics if you are to be successful as a lobbyist. He talked about the importance of treating everyone with respect, he said just because someone is just an intern today doesn’t mean they won’t be a Chief of Staff tomorrow. The point was also stressed to us that we need to be direct and strait to the point when meeting with our elected officials and/or their staff; you never know how long you will have with them. They may be called out quickly for another meeting or a vote, so don’t lose your opportunity.
Developing and Evaluating Policy Language From Both Sides of an Issue
The first night we were in St. Louis we had a Mock County Farm Bureau Policy Meeting and drafted policy language to guide us through the rest of the module. Prior to the trip we were each asked to research and prepare position statements and supportive documents for Farm Bureau as well as another stake holder group. I was assigned the Natural Resource Defense Council. This forced me to look at both sides of the issue and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of both. Throughout the module we each took turns role playing and debating “Cap and Trade” from both our assigned group and Farm Bureau (bound by the policy language we had developed). We role played town hall meetings and press conferences, each taking turns defending opposite sides of the issue, trying to find common ground with some of the other groups if possible. The last day we held another county Farm Bureau meeting to re-evaluate our policy.
· Was it strong enough?
· Was it flexible enough to work with other groups?
· Did we need to make any changes to the policy?
We did not all agree on what the final policy should be. Some of the group thought our policy was too tight and did not allow us to compromise and work with other groups, while others of us thought the policy was right on where we wanted to be. After much discussion we left the policy as it was.
Identifying Stakeholders and Building Coalitions
I have always felt that there is strength in numbers. This is certainly true when establishing public policy. Module C in St. Louis focused on identifying and working with other stake holders and building coalitions. We explored several questions such as:
· When should we seek to establish a coalition of like minded groups?
· What groups should we try to work with?
· What level of involvement should we have with these other groups?
· What groups may come together to oppose us?
Unfortunately there is not a "one size fits all" approach when answering these questions, each situation is different and many factors must be considered. As we reach out to other stake holders on an issue we develop and strengthen our “Social License” in regard to the issue. Our “Social License” simply gives us credibility with the public in addressing the issue. If the public does not recognize you as an important player in the issue, it will be difficult for you to shape public opinion and therefore public policy.
The take home message for me was that often when an issue comes up we want to jump right in and start fighting for our position. However we can be much more effective if we step back and ask ourselves some basic questions:
· What other groups or individuals does this issue effect?
· And can I benefit from working with any of them?
· Who is on the other side of this issue?
· And how do they see the issue?
· How can I be most effective in debating this issue?
Although this may not be as fun as the fight, it can significantly increase our chances of winning.
"If you’re not at the table you are on the menu."
Effectively sharing information using Social Media
One of the first things we had to do was register for Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in. I was somewhat resistant at first to have anything to do with Social Media and would never have signed up for any of these sites on my own. I have however found that these sites are an excellent way to tell the story of agriculture. For me Facebook had been the media I have used the most. I find it interesting to post some little thing that happened on the dairy or some problem we are having and them see all the comments from my friends, many of whom know very little about dairies. Hopefully they are learning a little from my posts.
