Crop Advisor Certification & Using Social Media for Ag

Crop Advisor Certification & Using Social Media for Ag plus Propane Woes. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

The next Certified Crop Adviser or CCA exam date has been scheduled for Friday, February 6, 2015.  Registration is now open and available on line until Friday, December 5, 2014.  To register for the exam go to the Certified Crop Adviser website at:  https://www.certifiedcropadviser.org/exams/registration. Eight sites around the west will be proctoring the exams for the Northwest Region. To become eligible for the CCA certification, you must take and pass both the International and your local board exams. To learn more about the CCA Program and the requirements of becoming a CCA, visit: www.fwaa.org and click on the CCA tab.

The organic industry has been making huge in-roads in the past few years and a lot of that has to do with marketing. Joanna Schroeder with 4-R Communications says agriculture should take a plan from the organic industry's marketing plan in regards to social media.

SCHROEDER: One of the problems with the agriculture industry is they're always repeating what others are saying about them that's negative. We need to stop doing that. We need to be positive in our messaging. When you look at the organic marketing, what they do really well is have authentic stories about these mothers and these children and these teachers. We need to emulate that campaign

Now, are farmers in for a repeat of last winter's huge spikes in propane prices? Gary Crawford has the story.

(USDA Report)

Thanks Gary. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.