Telling Ag's Stories Pt 1
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. The theme from last November’s Washington State Tree Fruit Association Annual Meeting was “Weather the Storm and Prepare for Progress in Smoother Sailing.”
WSTFA President Jon DeVaney says among today’s many challenges and a big key to smoother sailing will be making sure we tell the industry stories …
DeVANEY ... “The mistake, I would say, that we in tree fruit and in all of agriculture, we frequently make is keeping our heads down, focused on doing what we do as ag producers, and therefore we only show up in the media when something goes wrong.”
That, DeVaney says would help people outside the industry understand us better …
DeVANEY … “It’s really incumbent upon us to talk about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and the challenges that we’re facing so that when we do have a problem they see it for the aberration or the unusual circumstance that it is, that that is the exception and not the rule.”
DeVaney says it may not be news to us, but others don’t always know the long-term challenges we face …
DeVANEY … “The fact that we have overseas competition, the fact that we’re facing a lot of economic pressures, the fact that we facing changing weather patterns might not be new to growers, but it might be new to the people who are thinking about how we produce food in this country, and they need to be aware of those challenges that our producers are facing so that they recognize that they’re not making these management decisions in a vacuum.”
Listen tomorrow for more on this year’s WSTFA Annual meeting and getting out and telling our stories.
