#AgriChatWorld

Last Thursday the 17th October was World Food Day and

to recognise the farmers

the various AgChats around the world got together

at the prompting and organising of AgChatUK's Jez

to hold the first AgriChatWorld twitter forum.

 

And it was busy.

There were 632 contributors

from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Holland, Kenya, Portugal and NZ.

The reach was 890,282 so there were lots of lurkers watching and reading.

There were 3,664 tweets and

8.44 million timeline deliveries.

That's a lot of people communicating across the world.

Connecting and being part of a worldwide farming community.

It's big.

 

And who was the media face of it all?

Who?

This tweeting monkey otherwise known as @NZcows

author of NZ Cows blog

co-colluder of AgChatNZ.

 

 

There were six simple questions that had us all,

both declaring our pride in our farming systems and

the future as we saw it and

a fair bit of eye rolling as the different countries rolled in with their points of pride.

 

For a brief on the conversation go to AgChatUK

 

It was pretty awesome connecting with so many people about farming around the world.

It was crazy frantic to watch the contributions and conversations taking place

but it had a wonderful energy and feeling of acceptance from all,

even when the anti-Badger cull nutters got involved.

 

There will be another......

 



Webinars and other scary things

I lie,

webinars are scary enough

without adding in any other scary things to this post.

 

My Kellogg Rural Leader project is

Farmers and Social Media: Communication, Connection, Community.

 

OneFarm which is the Lincoln/Massey University's

Partnership For Excellence

has been supporting me in completing my project goal of

getting more NZ farmers using social media.

 

So last week my Fulla and I travelled to Palmerston North

so I could film my webinar that has a basic overview

of social media.

 

Here's the thing,

if you don't see the point in using social media

don't worry about it.

Social media, be it facebook, twitter, instagram etc

has an audience of ardent and dedicated followers

so if you aren't interested it's all good.

Having said that if you haven't taken a look and has a try

how do you know what you are missing?

 

In preparing I changed my mind a few times about what

I wanted to share.

I'm always so unsure of myself and my message

but I've learned to just agree to stuff and go along for the ride.

To date it's all been successful.

 

Filming was fine once I got over speaking to a camera.

 

Reviewing was hideous but

I think I did ok once I got over myself.

 

This morning I took a look and  aside from it being me,

I quite liked it.

I could have said more and probably less on some things too.

 

 

There I tweeted a photo of my webinar because I'm a social media guru.

Clearly my ability to take photos early in the morning are less than ideal.

 

Anyway if you are keen to learn a little more about social media,

because I know there are some people out there

operating under misguided understandings of the usefulness of social media

take a look here



Almost at the end

of Kellogg Rural Leaders course.

Yesterday we all completed 

what seemed a huge hurdle at the start of the week,

our small group work project.

We started out innocently identifying

some of the most important issues in the rural sector

Water

Monoculture

Markets

Corporatisation

and something else.
Serves us right for trying to be so smart.

Once the issues were sorted

we were numbered into groups.

Given 5 days but very little time

in a schedule that starts at 830am and finishes at 9pm.

But we survived.

Only to be blindsided by a new assignment.
Such fun!

This one was to be part of a commission hearing on
a moratorium on dairying in New Zealand.

The groups were Fed Farmers,
environmentalists, Treasury and us, the Press.

Being the Press was fun.
I enjoyed coming up with totally left field questions.
Our team had the best time doing it too.
Two nights before as we were out on the town,
some of hit the tiles in a non-dancing way more than others,
we stole photos of the different groups talking to each other
and made gross and assumed assumptions (haha)
about this environmentalist talking to that Fed Farmer rep.

Our last morning on Kellogg Rural Leaders, stage one
was spent being half serious about swiping each other's arguments.

Our last hour was sharing what our learning was during the 10 days
of voluntary Kellogg imprisonment
(I think my partner felt it was more than I).

What I've learnt over the last 10 days is
that it is not enough for me to strive in areas I am relatively comfortable in.
I need to get my butt out on the edge and scare and impress myself.
I need to push myself harder.
I need to be more self aware of how others see me,
not how I see myself,
assuming of course that others see me as way more competent that I do.

Was 10 days of being challenged by Patrick and Tony
at Kellogg Rural Leaders worth it?
Hell yes.

Would I do it again?
Yes but not this week...
I need a break from being mentally stimulated and thinking so much.
Good thing the Boss doesn't read my blog!

NZIPIM & social media

Let me say that in New Zealand,

as with most countries,

we have particular areas that are much derided

as of the banjo playing, six toed, no teeth, cousin marrying ilk.

Southland is generally that place for us.

I flew from Hamilton in the north

(also much derided as a bland no hoper town)

to Invercargill about as far south as you can go
on Monday to speak at the

NZIPIM South Island conference.

I also spoke to their North Island conference

a week or so ago about the following.

Email Etiquette - yes there is such a thing

and

Social Media - my favourite thing at the moment.

Email is actually a tricky thing

because how we use email is changing.

Originally, like 18 years ago, email was considered to be like letters.

We would write long involved letters which heaps of information.

Now we pass information along very quickly and

emails have been an easy way to get things off your desk and

on to anothers.

Email use is decreasing as the younger generations move to

even more instant modes of information sharing like twitter.
More instant and shorter.

My next presentation was on social media.

Which is our theme for the week

(see previous post).

Ok kiwi farmers and social media haven't really gelled

 namely because rural broadband has been pretty sucky.

But that is changing,

not just because the Rural Broadband Initiative

is bringing broadband to most rural schools

(please note: most is not all)

and thus some

(please note: some is not remotely all)

rural homes will enjoy better Internet access,
but also due to better cell phone coverage.

In my humble opinion,
 social media is best used on a smart phone,

preferably an iPhone in my biased and totally converted opinion.

So yesterday I took the farm consultants over using twitter

and how one might use it to connect over what
one may choose to connect with others about.

So here's the thing that most newbies do not understand about twitter

it is all about creating

communication, connection and communities.

Seriously it is.

Communication, connection and communities.

Sums it up.

Here's the other thing....

like most things, twitter is what you make it.

You can be totally immersed and involved
gaining solid, trustworthy, surprising connections

or participate as much as you want to or not,

or lurk and just watch the conversations.

With all of the millions of tweets each day you only ever see

a fraction of what happens.

So what I have done is create rules for myself to manage my time and involvement.
My rules are simply too many dogs, cats or lunch photos or tweets
I do not follow you.
If you blitz twitter with inane comments,
I do not follow you.
If you tweet once a day but you tweet a heap all at once,
I do not follow you.

As far as time is concerned,
either twitter is something you make time for or you don't.
When you get practiced and savvy at using it
it takes no time at all.
As far trusting information on twitter,
use the same rules as you do when you meet people in person,
do they seem trust worthy? 
Then chances they are.
You learn which are reliable sources of info which are not.
Just like life.

Tomorrow's forum all about farmers and social media.
It is about putting faces to places and jobs.
Help the world to realise that the food chain starts somewhere
and there's some serious pressure on our farmers.

My goal to use twitter to create agvocates
and who knows what can happen????

Anyway back to Invercargill.
As we were all seated on the plane to leave,
the hostee removed a half drunk bottle of beer
from a particularly hairy passenger
who had arrived with crutches but was walking fine.
Interesting people in Southland.
I think the crutches were insurance for any speed wobbles later on.

Other exciting thing was that RadioNZ Rural News picked up
on our wee Social Media for Farmers Forum
and I was interviewed for tomorrow's news.
I was quite chuffed about that.
See you at #AgChatNZ

Farm on.

SOS Dairy UK

We interrupt our regular broadcasting with a wee story about SOS Dairy.

SOS Dairy came about because in many countries

dairy farmers are hardly making a living

on what they are paid for their produce aka milk.

Farmers in Britain and Australia
are facing this problem.

Consumers are wanting cheaper milk,

and rightly so when in many countries

the price of coke is less than the price of milk.

However the people who get squeezed are the farmers.

The supermarkets,

worldwide the huge chains of  supermarkets

are dictating the price they buy milk at

and then setting price they sell the milk at.

British dairy farmers decided to do something about this

because

they were having to get out of farming.

That means not farming

and no farms. 

So who then grows our food?

To see how successful the British farmers were go to

SOS Dairy

or follow #sosdairy on twitter



farmer wellness

On Wednesday I was in Hamilton.

That alone will call for questions about my own wellness.

Hamilton or the 'tron

is considered a nonentity of a backwater city.

We all have them.

I attended a workshop on farmer wellness,

primarily about farmer stress.

I've not been to a mental and physical health workshop before.

Thankfully, for the most part the people were sane.

And the few who were questionable were able to prove their sanity

with the certificates of release.

There's light at the end of the tunnel for stressed farmers.

So we talked about lots of aspects of farmer wellness.

Because we were in the Waikato

(the home of dairy farming in NZ)

we talked about statistics and studies of dairy farmers.

The most interesting stats I remember

was that only 9.5% of dairy farmers

and 20% of the urban population smoke.

The average dairy farmer is overweight

and they talk to the friends rather than professionals.

Those of us familiar with the industry can explain all of these

quite logically and rationally.

The smoking - who wants to smoke with cow poo on their hands.

The fatness - dairy farming has anti-social hours

so no rugby team involvementt please and now days

nobody walks or rides horses on farm,

it's all tractors and ATVs.

The talking to friends rather than professionals?

Who the heck has the time to take half a day off to drive into

town to talk to a shrink?

Who has the consistent phone coverage to phone the 0800 numbers?

Friends are easier.

When a rural person commits suicide

it impacts the whole community.

It's very close to us all.

Everyone I know who lives outside the cities

can tell stories of clusters of suicides,

mostly young males

and I would say mostly due to isolation,

perceived and real.

Farmer's work situation doesn't have numerous co-workers.

Farmer's living situations many have a strong community

but because of physical distance between homes,

the concept of how well others are doing

is that they are totally handling their stuff.

(its not fun in town to overhear domestic arguments

but at least it helps you keep it real knowing that no-one is perfect).

Often, it's like the idea of suicide as an answer to your problems

is like a virus and is catching.

All the Young Farmers I spoke to about

what stresses them and other farmers

mentioned clusters of suicides and many of them not long ago.

AgResearch and the Rural Support Trust

are working together and

inviting all farmer network groups to join in

to come up with some viable answers

for improving farmer's physical and mental health.

There's lots of research and communities are

good at pulling together during droughts and disasters

to support each other

but how do we create a sustainable and educated

healthy rural population?

farming is exactly like

they say, only funnier. And dirtier. And colder. And much noisier than you'd think.

On Sunday I started tractor driving lessons (Thanks Emz!)

Look at that perfect day.

The frost was still on the ground at at 2pm but it was warm, if you were wearing three layers.

Yes the tractor is just a middle size old dunger, its a Massey Ferguson (classic no doubt) and that 'trailer' on the back is a super-comby silage wagon.

It takes five tonnes of silage which is quite heavy - this is it empty.

So basically you load it up and that white box is the scales. It pulls out so you can see it from the loader. You pile it up and then drive and drive and drive to the paddock where the break is set up. A break is a portion of a large paddock surrounded with an electric fence so that cows are contained and this controls how much they eat so they don't get too fat (cause they are compulsive eaters who eat pretty much what is in front of them).

What Emz and I were doing was setting up a number of breaks so the cows had a number of days eating. Farmers know that x amount weight of x type of food will last x number of cows x number of hours. You have to know quite a bit about maths in farming.

However someone who struggles with the concept of farming is my Boss.

This is a summary of his month on his farm.

To be fair it's his wife who is the farmer and he does the planning.

Bosses family has just moved into brand new house so there is no garden. He spent an afternoon planting a heap of grasses in his newly set up garden. However he forgot that currently they are de-shelter belting the farm and are putting in centre pivots, so there are no fences.

They farm crops, which are reasonably static but also finish cattle. Not finishing in a mafia way but they buy in baby cattle, feed them up and then on-sell them (aka send them to the 'works').

No fences + new grasses = yummy kai for cattles and goodbye planting.

But it goes on.

Two weeks the Boss left the driver's door on his NZYF four wheel drive open to air a slightly damp inside when the Bosses wife's working dog, who enjoys nothing more than jumping inside, bouncing from passenger to driver's seat and back and forth, then in to the back seat and had a good shake to get all the mud off. And thus covering the black interior which muddy mud. So much that when I, as a going to town favour, took the truck into get valeted the poor valet asked in a voice of dismay "What happened?!" I don't think townie valets know about working dogs and mud.

But there's more.

The Bosses pride and joy this summer was finally digging and lining his pool. Like a typical guy, he finally got going at the end of summer.... but it's in.

So while he and I were at dinner one evening during Feildays. He received a call from his daughter Megan to say that the few remaining and specifically kept trees were on fire. They had every fire engine in the district on farm draining the pool to put the fire out. This was a success however the pool was refilled as a precaution from the water race and is now filled with slit.

But there is more.

Early last week the Boss and Goose (a Young Farmer working for the Boss over the Uni hols) looked out the window while munching on their breakfast to see a little* cattle in the pool, getting a little upset. It was trying to jump up the side of the pool but not getting anywhere.

Poor baby.

Goose jumped in and hefted the not really that little cattle up and over the edge and away to hang out with its wee friends.

Lucky outcome, the pool lining was not damaged - cause that's what counts.

So am off to Gore today until Sunday with my new Coordinator who is currently hoppy Lou as she is on crutches. She'll be right and we'll be back on Sunday.

Saturday is a massive NZYF night on TV.

7pm on Country Calendar is Denise Lupton who is a Young Farmer from the Waikato who entered in the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Regional Final. Then on TVNZ6 at 7.30pm is live coverage of the Grand Final quiz show including coverage of the competition day and then, for those of you who don't get freeview, TV1 has delayed coverage on at 10.30pm.

All that and I'll be at the ball.

*little is relative.

It all began today...

Finally I started my new job and will now be driving to Methven most days.

It's quite a long way but interesting.

Thoroughly enjoyed my first day, am totally overwhelmed with all the

information but it'll make sense as I go.

I am looking forward to working with farmers all over the country.

.On my way to work I pass 21 pivot irrigators - most are centre pivots and the rest are linear pivots. How boring am I? I think centre pivots are beautiful. Maybe I'm just weird.

I also pass them on the way back.