As we look at social media and search the web we are always going to find false things. The agriculture industry is always being attacked however most of it is false, some people just soak it all up as if their preacher was preaching about it at church on a Sunday morning. Them people are the ones that do not know any different because they have never been taught what was right and what actually happens in the agriculture industry. This is why we need to teach people what is right and what does not happen because it is wrong. Then they will be able to see the difference from the facts and the ignorant stuff that PETA and HSUS comes up with so that they can possibly teach them or someone else like their family and friends how to know what actually happens to their food and products that they buy often on a daily basis. They need to know because what they believe now is what they see on the news and social media and Internet which is often false. They give the agriculture industry a bad name and say that we do a lot of cruel things to animals when we do not.
Today in class we video skyped what you might call a professional blogger. She is very well known and is from Wisconsin by the name of Carrie Mess which goes by Dairy Carrie in the online world. While listening to her she told us about herself and what she does and how she does it. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin with no farming background at all, the only thing she knew about animals is that she liked horses. The reason she got out of the city is because she married a dairy farmer and they milk 100 cows on 300 acres which is the average dairy farm size in Wisconsin. She also works full time from home with very flexible hours even though she is thinking about quitting so that she can work on the dairy and do public speaking events on the side. She got started in social media by starting a twitter account to promote her online business that she then sold. Her first big online project was to get hay and money donations to ship to Texas and Oklahoma during the drought a few years ago and succeeded with shipping seven loads of hay. She stands up for agriculture to teach people what is right for example telling Ryan Gosling about dehorning cattle instead of using polled bulls because of the polled gene pool being so small, cousins do not marry cousins so why would we breed cattle like that. Another way is when Panera Bread was marketing antibiotic free chicken she told them that the medicine was used properly just like a human going to the doctor to get medicine and they later changed their marketing and apologized. She also wrote a post about the South Dakota blizzard Atlas that received over 100,000 views on her site. One of the reasons she is so good at talking to these people online that do not understand agriculture is because she used to be one of them, she knows where they are coming from, they are not stupid, they are just uneducated on the subject. She informed us that we cannot get mad at these people that leave ignorant comments because they are not ignorant they just do not know what we do. This is why we cannot put things on the internet that will give people like PETA or HSUS reason to target us. We can write negative things on the internet if it is how it happened and we did everything possible right to prevent it for example a death loss. Dairy Carrie is well known, if you have never heard of her, look her up.
video: http://peteholmes.com/video/daylight-savings-monologue
After watching this stand up wanna be comedian video for the second time because I couldn’t finish it the first time I figured out that he is very uneducated not only about farming but about history also. He needs to show some respect for where his food, clothing and other everyday products come from. The bad thing is that he stood up there and kept making fun of farmers during his show and the audience was just as uneducated and disrespectful as he is because they just kept laughing and applauding at the stupidity. None of them said anything to disagree or correct him to try to teach him that daylight saving time is a part of history. He should watch what he says because if it was not for farmers working daylight to dark then he would be naked and hungry and we probably would not mind him going hungry for a little while to realize what he said was wrong but the last thing we want to see is him naked. He needs to sit down and be the one listening for once so that he can learn something about agriculture so that he does not just keep proving that he is an idiot more and more. This is why we as agriculturalists have to stand up to what is right and teach others the truth about our everyday lives so that false things are not spread around like a wildfire. While we teach others what is right we need to make sure that we are doing everything the best possible so that they do not get the wrong idea of what we are doing.
video: http://peteholmes.com/video/daylight-savings-monologue
Lately the cattle market has been high and very active. Joplin Regional Stockyards holds a special cow sale one Saturday a month to sell about 1000 head of consignments. It is a great opportunity to go and eat and socialize with friends and watch the cows and bulls sell to keep up with the current prices. Many people that work or go to school throughout the week that can not go to the regular sales on Monday and Wednesday attend these to buy, sell, and stay current on the market. There is a sale this Saturday that is all one operations cattle selling approximately 2000 head with the cows being three years old to six years old however most of them will be three year olds and some bred heifers with the majority of them being black or black baldy all being Angus and or Brangus influenced. If someone is looking for a bull there will be forty Angus bulls that are of breeding age that are tested and guaranteed. In addition to the cattle being sold this operation is selling twenty ranch geldings and forty weaned colts that are all coming from Claremore, Oklahoma.
Well I still haven’t heard to much about the South Dakota blizzard that destroyed many head of cattle and sheep which makes no sense to me because it is a national disaster and will have an impact on many people across the country. I went to a special cow and bull sale at Joplin Regional Stockyards on Saturday night that they have one Saturday night a month I try to go every month to eat and socialize with friends and to stay current on the cattle market. I was impressed by one individuals cattle that we’re being sold there from Polk County, he brought in 366 head of black and black baldy three year olds and out of all of them one was open, eleven were green tags and the rest were all red tags. I do not know the reason for selling or if he had any more but they were on a very strict nutritional program and were in good flesh. They had a very good sale like usual and a lot of high quality cattle could have been bought for the price sold for and used to make money. The market is high now but cows can still be bought and money made because calves are so high. The market will probably continue to go up because of the storm in South Dakota and the demand for beef and live cattle are high because the supply is low and is getting lower and will more than likely be that way for a while.
This week in Ag has not been the most exciting however the government finally grew up and quit acting like a bunch of babies because the USDA website is up and running again and we can now do research on topics as needed. With this website back up and running and the government doing the same finally maybe they will realize the harm done by the big blizzard that hit South Dakota. It hit them a couple weeks ago and was not recognized by the major news media for some unknown reason. I do not know why they did not cover the topic but I am sure they will have something to say if the beef prices go up in the stores because of this. Most predict that beef prices will rise due to the disaster because it killed so many head of cattle. There was already a shortage because of the drought over the last two years and this is just going to add to it. It also killed a bunch of sheep so that will hurt the sheep products that are trying to become more popular everyday and become established like beef, pork, and poultry.
After having class Monday through Wednesday last week we were then on fall break Thursday and Friday. After class Wednesday I went home to work and get other things done before the weekend, I unloaded the three ton of feed that we had delivered and fed and checked the 250 head of stockers that we have. Then the weekend finally came and went to Welch, Oklahoma to the Buford Ranches bull sale on Saturday morning to purchase a bull that could be used on heifers or the mature cows. There were 153 service age bulls sold, 131 Registered Angus bulls that averaged $5,567 and 22 Hereford bulls that averaged $3,581. The top selling bulls were Lot 1 for half interest, half possession at $57,500; Lot 2 for half interest, half possession at $48,000; Lot 4 for half interest, half possession at $14,000; Lot 3 at $10,200; Lot 126 at $8,500; Lot 16 at $8,200; Lot 25 at $8,000; and Lot 10 at $8,000. Saturday night I went to the East Newton FFA BBQ supper and Labor auction they held to raise money for scholarships and travel expenses. Then at 2:00 am Sunday morning I went to help unload three pots of 500# stockers to be custom weaned and run on grass and did not get back to bed until 5:00 to sleep for just a few hours. I may be tired but I did have a fun filled fall break/weekend unfortunately it is back to school now.
Well a lot of different things have been happening this week both locally and nationally. The government has shut down for a while because they are acting like a bunch of little kids in D.C. that can’t get along because one party wants the other to pay for everything and then the other way around from what I understand. Another big topic is Obamacare and I do not know who in their right mind would want that to go in affect. There is one show that is in Branson that is shutting its doors after 54 years of business because they cannot afford the new healthcare for employees coming in and insurance both. Another local event that happened this week was a shooting threat to all college campuses in Springfield resulting in OTC and Drury and some elementary and high schools going in lockdown on Wednesday. MSU was never on lockdown and never sent any notices to staff or students during this time until afterwards. There was an arrest on the Drury campus with no injuries that I am aware of. I think that with all of the crazies out there that it is a good thing for the right people to be carrying a gun however some that think they should actually should not. This weekend is the Ozarks Farmfest so that would be a good thing to go to learn about new products and to try to get away from some of the government stuff that is annoying and hopefully see or meet new people and see new products and items being displayed and some different livestock that one might be interested in.
In class the last time we met we had a guest speaker that was an editor from Ozarks Farm and Neighbor that was talking about their newspaper and them being on social media. They publish a paper every three weeks to distribute to local farmers and ranchers interested in reading and that subscribe to it. They also use social media like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their customers, however most of the newspaper subscribers are older the younger generation can receive some of the info on the web because most now have a smartphone. The speaker talked about how hard it was to get her boss convinced that they needed a social media source for customers to look at and reach them through to make that extra connection with them. This probably did not make them have more subscribers to their newspaper but it did get them connected with more people to be in contact with and they can post on social media everyday and even several times a day when their newspaper only comes out every three weeks. Social media may not actually help a business but it will connect it with the public and keep them in contact and on their mind so they can look at products and like or share or comment on them and that will in return get more viewers and likes and potential customers.
Here is a video of a recent class assignment. This is me asking these questions jokingly, however they are real questions that some people ask. Just because these people ask these questions it does not mean that they are stupid or dumb, it just means that they are uneducated or misinformed. We as agriculturalists need to teach these people the right thing so that they are not going around giving producers a bad name. It is our job to teach them and educate them from young ages to adults so they know where their food comes from. If we think that they are going to say that is unethical then we should ask ourselves is it, yes or no? If it is then we need to change our actions so that we can show these people that its ok and they can see there food was not mistreated. These people probably aren’t bad people they just need to be informed of the right thing the first time so they gain knowledge of what they are talking about, who knows maybe they can teach us something about their way of life and how they make a living that we didn’t know also.
MissouriAggie 