Women in Ag

Last week on Friday, my mom and I went to the annual Women in Ag Conference for the 3rd straight year. It is held in Rock Island, IL. We went the 1st year to support my cousin, one of the IL Farm Bureau managers there to run the conference, the 2nd year because I was thinking that I was going to be more involved in Ag with the bank I work at, and this year because I want to find something in Ag. If I want to be in that field, I need to not let myself get out of the loop; keep learning; the right time to apply that knowledge will present itself and when it does, I'll have went to those conferences for a reason!

One thing that I learned, from a popular blogger, Dairy Carrie, is that we need to advocate, or as she calls it, Agvocate for Ag. We need to be the ones speaking for Agriculture to get our voices heard. How else are the consumers going to hear from the producers?? She suggested that we try using our social media sites to Agvocate at least once a week. While the majority of our friends on Facebook/Twitter, etc. know us well enough to know what we do, what we are about, and what we are likely to advocate for, why not educate the others that may not have that direct contact with Agriculture? Give them facts. Nothing to complex but, I like just a little "fun fact". I read a blog post the next night after the conference and there were lots of Ag facts that I plan to take from to post to my Facebook and twitter pages. It may go unnoticed by many but,

it may teach a few.

Those few need the info too!

"Farmers produce 262% more food with 2% fewer inputs compared to 1950. Biotechnology also saves the equivalent of 521,000 pounds of pesticides each year and helps cut herbicide runoff by nearly 70%. Today it takes less than half as much land to produce our meat, dairy and poultry supply compared to 45 years ago."