Nuffield Scholar Says Twitter is Effective SM Platform

The Nuffield Farm Scholarship program -- which began in the UK and has now expanded into seven other countries -- provides an opportunity for its participants to explore and research several countries’ agriculture and learn first hand from other progressive farmers around the world.
New Zealand Nuffield Scholar Sophie Stanley is a farmer’s daughter and works for New Zealand’s largest rural bank. Her area of study is how farmers are utilizing social media to tell their story.
Although she is involved in several social media platforms, Stanley says that twitter is her choice for sending her ag message out to consumers.
Stanley: “Because it’s short bits of information. It’s very quick -- so farmers can use it very quickly on the go, at work on the tractor. It’s more of a business tool I believe than Facebook is probably more of a personal tool. With Twitter we can actually meet with our farmers, with our consumers, with our foodies and with our mums who are actually buying the food.”
In comparing U.S. farmers engaged in telling their story to those in New Zealand, Stanley says
Stanley: “In New Zealand we’ve got a smaller population so you’re driving past a farm more often. I think here that farmers are a lot more vocal than in New Zealand.”
Stanley encourages farmers to use social media to tell their story. ??Stanley: “Farmers don’t tell their story well enough. If we aren’t at the table telling our story, someone else will tell it for us. So farmers need to be telling our own story.”