Standing Up for Agriculture: Jasmine Dillon

BY LAUREN CHASE, YPC Communications

I was sitting in the 2013 Young Producers’ Council meeting in Tampa, looking around at all of my peers and noticed one face in particular. I knew I had seen this woman before….but from where? Then it hit me. That’s Jasmine Dillon…she made a really great “ag-vocacy” video that went viral on YouTube. I had to meet her. And I’m glad I did. She is one super beef and agriculture advocate and today we feature her story on the Cattle Call.

Jasmine: I was born in Newington, CT and grew up in Plano, TX.  My Dad is from Jamaica and my grandparents used to have a few goats and chickens on their property in Florida, but my real connection to agriculture came when I was in high school.  Even though we lived in the suburbs, my school had an FFA chapter and I joined it so that I could show animals, as I loved them.

Growing up, I wanted to be a veterinarian and through FFA I discovered that being an animal science major as an undergraduate in college would prepare me for vet school.  I decided to major in animal science at Texas A&M University-Commerce, and transferred to Texas A&M University in College Station my sophomore year.  About halfway through school, I decided I wanted to explore options other than vet school and while I knew they existed, I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do.  I studied abroad in Brazil for a semester as a senior, an experience which opened my eyes to the breadth of opportunities available to me as an animal scientist and the passion I had for being part of a system which, at the end of the day, allowed me to care for animals and by doing so help bring nourishment to people.

I am currently finishing up my Master’s in Animal Breeding.  My research is investigating a phenomenon in Bos indicus x Bos taurus crossbred birth weights.

LC: You created a really powerful “ag-vocacy” video…could you tell us about how you got the idea to produce it and what it’s all about.

The idea for the video was born out of a movement which started last spring on Texas A&M’s campus called Farmers Fight.  Farmers Fight is a grassroots movement with the mission of reconnecting American society with agriculture, starting with our campus and our community.  We aim to do this by providing a space for students to develop their ability to innovate and communicate through agricultural advocacy.  It is built on three pillars: community outreach, connection with campus, and advocate preparation.

The video started out as a spoken word poem, which is a form of art where you perform your poems.  I was with a friend, Mason Parish (the student who started the Farmers Fight movement), planning for events that semester: specifically for a conference where industry leaders were coming in to help us learn how to better communicate the message of agriculture to an audience from a non-agriculture background.  I had written a couple of poems in the past, and I performed one for him.  Mason prompted me to write my first poem about agriculture, and he along with other friends provided the encouragement and motivation I needed to get it done.

The idea behind the poem was to one, rally the Texas A&M College of Agriculture & Life Sciences student body behind the idea of making a difference for agriculture on our campus and beyond.  My hope was that students would feel empowered, and realize that they are capable of making a difference if they would only “stand up” for it.  The second idea behind the poem was to share agriculture with people from non-agriculture backgrounds through a new, innovative medium.  I hoped that the poem would encourage people to pause and reflect on the many ways in which agriculture touches us day in and day out without our being conscious of it.  While calling attention to agriculture’s role in our lives, I wanted to bring attention to the breadth of disciplines directly and indirectly tied to it.

The poem became the “ag-vocacy” video that it is when we decided to record it so that the message could be spread further.  We were able to do so with the gracious help of friends of ours at Wieghat Graphics.  We released the video through a number of social media outlets (YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) the night before our campus wide advocacy day.  Our hope was that it would create a buzz for the event.  We also knew that social media would be a powerful tool in spreading the message, and that a video would allow it to be heard far, wide, and long after our years here at Texas A&M.

LC: What do you think the bridge between farmers/ranchers and consumers looks like? How can we make it better?

The bridge right now is broken; there is a chasm in the middle.  The folks on one side speak one language, while the folks on the other side speak another.  Really, the folks on either side represent two different cultures.  There are a few brave souls approaching the chasm and attempting to create a way across it, and some have successfully done so.  As a whole, however, we need to do a better job of engaging in “intercultural” communication so that we can work together to rebuild the bridge across the gap.

What will it take to cross the gap and what will it take to make it better?  I like to think of what we’re talking about here as intercultural communication.  So, how do you go about learning and interacting with a new culture?  You get out of your comfort zone, you give careful consideration to other points of view, you seek to understand why someone thinks or believes what they do the way they do – all of this you can accomplish by engaging in honest conversation.  I strongly believe in the idea of seeking to understand before seeking to be understood.

Nowadays, the consumer or food buyer typically has little connection to the agricultural process behind the ingredients that make up their food.  They are, and rightfully so, curious about what happens, how, and why.  On the other hand, the agriculturalist is not always able to relate to the way their customers think or why they think that way.  This causes frustration between both parties.  The fact of the matter is that we are as much a part of the problem as we are a part of the solution.  We live in an information age, so while it is our responsibility to make sure that accurate information is available and easily accessible, we are also responsible for learning about what our customers want, why they want it, and responding appropriately.  It is with this approach that we can seek to understand our customers before we seek to be understood by them.

LC: Why is it important for youth to get involved in local/state/national ag associations like the NCBA Young Producers’ Council?

It is important for youth to get involved in local/state/national ag associations because youth, us, WE, are the future.  We will be taking the places of decision makers in agriculture today.  I believe it is important for us to connect with those who have made their careers in agriculture so that we can learn from the wealth of wisdom they have to offer us, in order for us to make educated decisions that move us forward.

I also believe that it is important for us to be empowered in order for us to make sound, effective decisions.  It is important for us to understand that we have voices that are worth hearing, and we need only “stand up” for them to be heard.  There is a generation of people in agriculture right now waiting to empower the next generation of leaders, we just have to make ourselves available to them.

Local/state/national ag associations like the NCBA Young Producers’ Council provide spaces for youth to begin the learning and empowerment process.  They also have the potential to create a space for us to bridge the very gap we’ve been talking about.  Our generation better understands the next generation of customers, because they are our peers.  There is value in our ability to relate to them, and connecting with organizations like the NCBA Young Producers’ Council can help connect us in the ways we need to in order for us to make things happen.

LC: What are some of the ways you are working to advocate for agriculture…especially being from a “non-ag” background?

I believe that advocacy is my responsibility, as a student and lover of agriculture.  It’s not work to me, it’s life!  I read agriculture, I study agriculture, I plan to build a career in agriculture.  So naturally, I talk about agriculture.  I try to make it a point to consciously engage people in conversations to understand what it is they want from their food system, how they currently feel about it, and why it is that they feel the way that they feel or believe the way that they believe.  My personal preference is to have one-on-one conversations with people, because it allows you to get to know them more deeply.

When given the opportunity, I also perform the “Stand Up” poem at spoken word events to reach folks who care about where their food comes from but may not have as direct a tie to its production as they would like.  I also like to share some of the musical parodies that have been made, just to get people thinking and talking about ag in different ways.  One of the things I think I do most is ask questions.  Asking questions allows you to get to know someone, while also encouraging that person to explore their own thought processes and rationale.  In some cases, a person may realize that the opinions they hold are not based on fact or reason but rather, on popular opinion.  And you never know, you may find that you end up challenging yourself to reconsider what you think and why you think that way.

LC: What is the one thing you wish consumers understood about the production of beef?

I think I would like most for food buyers to have perspective on the rigors of the measures our food system has in place to ensure that food is as safe as possible.  By safe I mean that we are consistently working to have a product that provides nourishment to the person who eats it while also minimizing its chance of making them sick.  I would also like food buyers to know that our production system isn’t perfect, and we know that.  That is why there are thousands of us working in agriculture day-in and day-out to continuously improve beef production.

I honestly am not a big fan of this question, not because it is a bad question, but because I feel as though it takes the focus off of us, the agriculturalists, and puts it on the food-buyer.  I do wish that customers understood these things about beef, but I believe that it is our job to make sure that it is understood.  There is power in words, and language like this encourages us to view the situation as though the problem is not with us.  It almost, in some ways, encourages us to look “down” on the customer as opposed to valuing them and their wants and desires.  This kind of thinking encourages us to be reactive as opposed to being proactive.  I would love to see us take a proactive stance in approaching this problem: seeking to understand our customers and reflecting on what we can do differently so that we can begin repairing the bridge.

A friend of mine says we should rephrase the question to be “what do we wish we understood about the consumer?”  I tend to agree, and would go so far as to add, “and how can we meet their needs?”

LC: What does the future look like for you? And when can we expect the next video?

I want to be a productive part of what I see being a global body of people working to solve our international challenge of feeding 9 billion people sustainably in 2050.  Specifically, I would like to see the inclusion of livestock production systems in that solution.  In the process, I want to encourage people who may not traditionally think of agriculture as a career path to consider it.  I honestly don’t know exactly what this will look like yet.  I believe it will involve sound science, good policy, and improved communication between all sectors of our industry.

As for the next video, we’ll see. I can’t make any promises, as my first priority is getting my thesis completed so that I can wrap up my graduate program.

If you would like to learn more about Jasmine, you can tweet her at @jashdillon.

 

YPC Chairman Travels to DC for Legislative Conference

BY J.W. WOOD, YPC Chairman

I just wrapped up the 2013 NCBA Spring Legislative Conference at our nation’s capitol. Here were a few of the highlights for me:

• Tuesday we had our executive committee meeting. This was a great opportunity to listen to the some of the sharpest minds in the industry discuss and debate the upcoming action items and task needed to championing the associations goals. It was refreshing to hear the committee acknowledge the challenges in recruiting, retaining and developing younger members. I think the goals and direction of the Young Producers’ Council align very well with that of the executive committees and I look forward to the opportunity of working with them.
• Wednesday I was able to accompany a group of the Colorado Cattleman’s Association and the Colorado Livestock Association on their congressional visits on capitol hill. It was a tremendous chance to visit either with the legislative assistants representing our elective officials or our elective officials themselves. Mainly, we discussed issues pertaining to the upcoming farm bill, disaster relief programs, the grazing of public lands and the use of antibiotics in livestock operations.
• Finally, Thursday we witnessed the congressional testimony of Brenda Richards on behalf of the Public Lands Council, NCBA and the Idaho Cattle Association in support of the Grazing Improvement Act (H.R. 657), a bill which would save taxpayer dollars and increase business stability for ranchers who graze federal lands. Brenda and her family ranch in Idaho and she did an excellent job of articulating the benefits of the bill and the benefits of grazing public lands. It was even more impressive to hear her defend her stance against opposing representatives in a hearing room that at times became heated and contentious.  Additionally, it was energizing to hear a handful of congressman passionately advocate the benefits of the bill and grazing of public lands.

All in all in was a great conference to learn and advocate for the policies that impact us as NCBA members. I certainly looked forward to next year and attending with other Young Producers’ Council members.

 

The BEEFMAN Bloggeth For Cattle Call

BY LAUREN CHASE, YPC Communications

If you ever have a question about how best to talk about beef, Daren Williams is your guy! I met Daren serving on a judging panel for the National Beef Ambassador Contest and after a few days discussing best media practices, I knew that he was a gem for our industry. Today on the Cattle Call, we feature Daren and how he educates not only cattle producers on beef messaging, but also how he uniquely teaches consumers about beef through exercise. 

I was born in Plains, KS, near where my great, great grandfather homesteaded in 1886 and cousin still farms that land, mostly wheat (my great grandfather invented the first minimum tillage plow on the great plains. I wrote about it for Ryan Goodman’s blog). When I was born my dad was the grain elevator manager at the Plains Co-Op. He and my mom were newlyweds. They met at Ottawa University (also my alma mater) and moved back to her hometown after school. We moved away when I was three when my dad became state director of the Farmer’s Home Administration in Topeka. Those are my roots in agriculture.

I grew up in the big city of Topeka and moved to VA/DC in 1979 when my dad went to work on the Senate Ag Committee staff for Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS). That was my first real exposure to the big city! I didn’t particularly like it at first but have to admit it grew on me. I graduated from a large high school in the VA suburbs (2,800 students) and immediately headed “home” to Kansas to attend Ottawa U, where I met my wife, got married, graduated and moved back to DC (apparently whatever grew on me was still growing). My first job was on Sen. Bob Dole’s 1988 presidential campaign. It was an amazing experience I would never trade. At age 23, I was running around New Hampshire in January running get-out-the-vote efforts in the Republican primary. Unfortunately we lost (Dole took second to then-Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush in the primary).

I spent the first ten years of my career in DC. Following the campaign I went to work at Agri/Washington, a public affairs firm representing food and ag clients in DC. That’s where I got my start in communications and issues management, working on the Alar crisis in the apple industry (one of the first big food safety scares driven by activists and the media, which led to today’s food disparagement laws under which BPI is suing ABC over their “pink slime” coverage). In 1997, we left DC to go home to Kansas where I joined the ag division of Fleishman-Hillard public relations in Kansas City. FH is where I first began work in the beef industry, developing the first industry-wide crisis communications plan for E. coli-related recalls for the Beef Industry Food Safety Council. Over the next nine years I helped beef industry clients communicate during E. coli recalls and the first BSE case in the U.S. (2003), before joining NCBA in 2006.

I was hired at NCBA to create a spokesperson development program to train farmers and ranchers to serve as media spokespeople. But when social media sites like Facebook and Twitter took off in the last 2000s we saw a need to train a large number of farmers and ranchers to be grassroots advocates for beef and created the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA) program.

You have been a part of a lot of different industries throughout your career…what do you like about working for cattle producers? 

My grandpa once told me to never trust somebody wearing pointed boots and a cowboy hat (he was a farmer who wore work boots and a cap). My uncle who took over the farm from my grandpa still gives me trouble about working for the guys in the “white hats.” But my experience is a guy wearing  white hat represents honest American values of hard work and integrity. As a public relations counselor I represented clients in the health care, automotive and consumer products industries, but I kept coming back to my roots in food and agriculture. The best part of my job is traveling to farms, ranches and feedlots across the country and meeting the people who make up the beef community and helping them find a way to connect with consumers. I like getting to know the people who produce the beef I eat and feel like I represent other consumers yearning for the same experience.

The Masters of Beef Advocacy Program is one of your greatest successes…why is it important for young producers to participate and earn their MBA? 

The MBA program is not my success. It is the success of the farmers and ranchers and chefs and retailers and others who earned their MBA and are working every day to connect with beef consumers. It is also the success of the farmers and ranchers on the checkoff committee who had the foresight to develop and approve the MBA program five years ago, just as social media was exploding.  Of course, Facebook and Twitter are now THE source of information for millennial consumers. And we have more than 4,000 MBA graduates who are well-equipped to engage consumers in conversations about beef through social media. Of course we need as many voices as possible to connect with more consumers, particularly young producers. We need millennial farmers and ranchers to connect with millennial consumers!

From the Young Producers’ Council perspective (raising cattle and advocating for beef), what are some of the most important things we need to know about how to effectively communicate with each other and with consumers?

The most important part of a conversation is listening. Today’s consumers, particularly millennials, want us to listen to their concerns. All too often we rush into a conversation in person or on Facebook and start telling someone why they are wrong. I catch myself doing it. Just recently a registered dietitian I follow on Twitter said she only eats grass-fed beef because “the other stuff makes me sick for days.” I wanted to tell her that was ridiculous. But I didn’t. I started by thanking her for eating beef then engaged in a conversation about the differences between grass-finished and grain-finished beef. We had a good conversation. I tried to clear up some of her misconceptions about grain-feeding and I think she listened to my point of view because I listened to hers first.

You are involved with Team BEEF…can you please explain what that is and why it’s an important activity for the beef community?

I think Team BEEF is one of the most positive, non-controversial ways to promote the role of beef in a healthful lifestyle. By showing up at a race in a Team BEEF jersey you are showing, not telling, fellow athletes that beef-eaters can be healthy people! Beef has gotten such a bad rap over the years that many people just don’t think of beef as a good food. Sure, it tastes great but it can’t be good for you. The beef checkoff has worked hard to reverse that image through research, education and advertising. And it’s really working. More and more consumers view beef as a good balance of taste and nutrition. Team BEEF literally takes that message to the streets.

I am living proof that beef fits in a healthful diet. At age 30 I weighed 270 lbs., got little to no exercise, and had terrible eating habits. I consumed a lot of empty calories (three cans of Pepsi a day), ate a lot of fried, high fat foods. I ate beef but also lots of “lean” chicken, thinking it was healthier (and it was cheaper). Of course I didn’t just grill a boneless, skinless chicken breast plain. It was always slathered in bbq sauce or covered in cheese or gravy. What I didn’t think about at the time is that I’d been a lot better off fat-wise grilling a steak with a little salt and pepper. Today, At age 48, I weigh 210 lbs., get plenty of exercise and eat beef every day, with a lot of fruits and veggies, whole grains and other heart-healthy foods (I love avocados and almonds!).

You have a great opportunity to travel the country and speak with cattle producers in just about every state…what are some of your most memorable experiences on the road? 

I love traveling and meeting with cattle producers. When I joined NCBA there were only four U.S. states I had not visited: North and South Dakota, Montana and Idaho. It wasn’t long before I had been to all four and could say I have visited all 50 states. My favorite road warrior story is getting stranded in Sidney, MT, in the dead of winter. I flew to Sidney on a small Great Lakes Airline puddle jumper and was met at the airport by Jim Steinbeisser, my host for the trip. After a detour through Jim’s ranch to break the ice off several water tanks, we headed into Sidney for the MonDak Stockgrowers meeting. I spoke at the meeting and we closed down the bar with a number of the attendees before heading back to Jim’s ranch (where I was staying). After about three hours sleep Jim taxied me back to the airport for my 6:00 a.m. flight to Denver. Unfortunately, there was no airplane. And there would be no plane until Monday. It was Friday and my only option to get home was to drive to Billings. And my only mode of transportation was Jim. Either Jim is a really nice guy (which he is) or he didn’t want a guest for the weekend, but regardless, he made up some excuse about needing to visit a ranch of his near Billings and drive me six hours across the state in an ice storm.

Why should a young person get involved with their state and national YPC groups? 

My experience is if you want to be a mover and shaker you hang around other movers and shakers. YPCers are movers and shakers. State and national YPC groups are a great place to develop relationships and leadership skills that will benefit you in your career, no matter which direction that takes you.

What is a fun fact about Daren Williams?

I have a degree in English Literature and my favorite writer is Ernest Hemingway. I love his simple, straightforward writing style and strive to write more like him every day. I have a tendency to overstate, belabor and use way too many words to say what I want to say. See what I mean? I think that’s why I like Facebook more than Twitter! 140 characters just isn’t enough. Hemingway would have been great on Twitter. My favorite book is Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” I even love the title. The sun also rises implies the opposite, that it sets. But it also rises. Every day comes to an  end, but just as surely the sun rises and a new day begins. Or, as my favorite band (Pink Floyd) says in one of my favorite songs (Time) on one of my favorite albums (Dark Side of the Moon), “So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking, racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.” So that’s more than one fun fact, but it all leads to a point: I try to live each and every day as an adventure, traveling to new places, meeting new people, setting new goals, trying new things, a never-ending party. I revel in each sunset and look forward to the sunrise. Wow, that was deep.

What’s your favorite beef dish? 

I love brisket. Whether slow-cooked for 12 hours on a smoker or in the oven the way my mom made it when I was growing up. It’s just so dang good. I like to smoke mine with pecan wood after marinating it overnight in a mixture of half-empty bottles of barbecue sauces from my pantry. Then I’ll throw in a bottle of hot sauce or some peppers to give it a kick. I like the combination of sweet and hot

If you would like more information on the Masters of Beef Advocacy Program, click here. 

To keep up with Daren’s adventures, check out BEEFMAN Bloggeth, @REAL_BEEFMAN, and Facebook.