July-August 2012 - American Society of Agronomy

44 Pages·2012·5.06 MB·English

&
Crops
July–August 2012
The magazine for certified
crop advisers, agronomists,
Soils
and soil scientists
An American Society of Agronomy publication
Tweeting in the field
How social media is
changing the way
crop advisers
communicate
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Contents
Contents
Volume 45 | Issue 4 | July–August 2012
Crops & Soils, the magazine for certified crop advisers, agronomists, and soil
scientists, is published bimonthly by the American Society of Agronomy. Visit us
online at www.agronomy.org/publications/crops-and-soils.
Feature Magazine staff
Director of Publications: Mark Mandelbaum (mmandelbaum@sciencesocieties.
org or 608-268-4974)
Director of Certification Programs: Luther Smith ([email protected] or
608-268-4977)
Are you using social media in your
Managing Editor: Matt Nilsson ([email protected] or 608-268-4968)
Associate Editor: Madeline Fisher
business? If you’re not using it, others Proofreader: Meg Ipsen
are, including your clients. To understand Advisory board
Fredrick F. Vocasek, Servi-Tech Laboratories, Dodge City, KS (chair)
Howard Brown, GROWMARK, Inc., Bloomington, IL
better the changes in how social media
Charles Russell Duncan, Clemson Extension Service, Manning, SC
Susan Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald and Co., Elmira, ON, Canada
and digital communications have affected Dale F. Leikam, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
Lisa Martin, Martin and Associates, Pontiac, IL
the business of agriculture, Crops 4 Larry Oldham, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS
James Peck, ConsulAgr Inc., Newark, NY
Kim R. Polizotto, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Greenfield, IN
& Soils magazine spoke with six George Simpson, Jr., Yara North America Inc., Beaufort, NC
Dale L. Softley, Forensic Agronomy/Consultant, Lincoln, NE
Harold Watters, Ohio State University Extension, Raymond, OH
professionals in the industry.
Contributing board
Canada East: Tony Balkwill, GROWMARK, Ontario, Canada; Brian Hall, OMA-
FRA; Ontario, Canada
Canada West: Scott Gillespie, Taber, AB, Canada
U.S. North Central: Amitava Chatterjee, North Dakota State University, Fargo;
12 C ertification | Understanding changes to the CPAg TDaennnneirs EHhomllkaen,d H, Peaiolyn,e KeSr ;H Cih-Brirsetdi HInatnedrn, aMtioidnwale,s At lCbouornpeetrta, tIiAve; sM, Pairekr rKeo, pSeDc;k y,
University of Wisconsin Extension, Price County, Phillips, WI; Ed Winkle,
program. Plus CEU opportunities in Cincinnati this fall. HyMark Consulting LLC, Martinsville, OH.
U.S. Northeast: Mark Sultenfuss, University of Maryland, Wye Research and
18 R egional Roundup | North-Central U.S.: U.S. ESdouucthaetironn: CDeenntneirs, QOusbeoernnseto, wRnal.eigh, NC.
U.S. Western: Gregory House, House Agricultural Consultants, Davis, CA; Stu
Starter fertilizer and sunflowers. Northeastern U.S.: Turner, Turner & Co. Inc., West Richland, WA; WERA-103 group (Jason
Ellsworth, chair).
Response of full-season soybean to nitrogen fertilizer.
Southern U.S.: Rice, ecosystem services, and a new agron- Correspondence
omy. Western U.S.: Revisiting soil nutrient sufficiency levels Call 608-268-4968 or email [email protected]. For general
inquiries not related to Crops & Soils, please email certification@sciencesocieties.
and crop yield response to fertilizer application. org or call 866-359-9161.
28 N ew Research | First-year corn after alfalfa often ACodnvtaecrt Atilsexinangder Barton ([email protected] or 847-698-5069) or visit
requires no fertilizer N. www.agronomy.org/advertising.
Postage/subscriptions
31Continuing Crops & Soils (ISSN 0162-5098) is published bimonthly by the American Society
28 of Agronomy. Send address changes to Crops & Soils, 5585 Guilford Rd., Madison,
Education | WMiIs 5si3ss7a1u1g-a5,8 O01n t(aforiro t hL5e SU1.ES9.) Caannda IdBaC ( fMora Cil aPnlauds,a 7).6 S8u6b sKcirmipbtlieo nSst .a, rUe n$i3ts2 2/y1e &ar 22,
Earn 2 CEUs in Nutri- (U.S.) and $59/year (international). To subscribe, call 608-268-4941, visit www.
agronomy.org/publications/subscriptions, or email [email protected].
ent Management with
The views in Crops & Soils do not necessarily reflect endorsement by the publish-
the following self-study ers. To simplify information, Crops & Soils uses trade names of some products. No
CEU: Soil P and K endorsement of these products is intended, nor is any criticism implied of similar
products that are not mentioned.
following RTK-guided
broadcast and deep- Social Media
band placement in CCA Facebook: www.facebook.com/CCA.
certifiedcropadviser
strip- and no-till.
CCA Blog: http://certifiedcropadviser.wordpress.com
Wired for Soils Blog: http://wiredsoils.blogspot.com/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/
Cover: iStockphoto/shotbydave. asa_cssa_sssa
agronomy.org/certifications | soils.org/certification July–August 2012 | Crops & Soils magazine 3
Feature

4 Crops & Soils magazine | July–August 2012
Tweeting in the field
How social media is
changing the way
crop advisers
communicate
Are you using social media in your business? If you’re
not using it, others are, including your clients. To
understand better the changes in how social media
and digital communications have affected the business
of agriculture, Crops & Soils magazine spoke with six
professionals in the industry.
By John Morgan
Crops & Soils magazine contributing writer
Photos courtesy of iStockphoto. From l to r: July–August 2012 | Crops & Soils magazine 5
Vladgrin, shotbydav, and mustafahacalaki.
Feature
Social Media 101 The concept of social media for many is just that, a concept. It
brings with it funny terminology like tweeting and friending, and it can feel like another
Social media encompasses world with another language.
web-based and mobile device-
Add to this the fact that social media spread so fast and was adopted so quickly
based technology that is used
that it was easy to get left behind. What’s also interesting is that it has been possible,
to facilitate communication and
for now anyway, to live one’s life without social media. The question going forward is
interaction. The big three, these
whether it will be possible to be successful professionally without it, particularly know-
days, are Twitter, Facebook, and
ing that if you’re not using it, others are, including your clients.
blogs, which work uniquely but
are also commonly used in col- To understand better the changes in how social media and digital communications
laboration. All are free to use. have affected the business of agriculture, Crops & Soils magazine spoke with six profes-
sionals in the industry. The six stories share similarities, but they are unique in how
Twitter is a site that allows
each professional has adapted social media to his or her own needs. If you’re new to
people to post what are basically
social media—Twitter, blogging, and Facebook, in particular, see the sidebar for a sum-
stick-it notes (called tweets) that
mary of each.
are viewable to anyone follow-
ing you on Twitter (you can
have a “closed” Twitter account, Proactive, not reactive
which allows you to approve
Kelly Robertson, farmer, adviser, blogger (Benton, IL)
who follows you). You don’t need
Business site and blog: www.precisioncropservices.com
to tweet, you can simply set up
Farm site and blog: www.krfarm.net
an account to follow those who
are tweeting. Tweets are limited
to 140 characters, so they’re On an average day you might find Kelly Robertson, a farmer and adviser, planting
exceptionally brief. People often fields, fixing equipment, advising other farmers, or blogging and tweeting about all of
set up an account
and follow a collec-
tion of sources—news
sources, someone
who’s blogging about a
relevant topic, etc. The
idea is that you’re get-
ting out information
in a quick and timely
manner. People can
then “re-tweet” your
tweet, too, thus stick-
ing your tweet up on
their Twitter page and
then their followers
can see it. Or, they can
respond to your tweet
such that there’s a sort
of train of thought
related to a certain
topic. A CCA might
be in a truck in a field
and tweeting about a
new insect pest just
seen.
6 Crops & Soils magazine | July–August 2012 Photo by iStockphoto/Birkholz.
this and more. In fact, he sets his tractor on auto-steer, for information like warnings about weather and pests or
pulls out his smartphone, and does a few of the above advice on when to buy fertilizer or seed.
simultaneously. That’s right, plowing, blogging, tweeting,
“And so any business—farm business or agribusiness—
and texting.
that thinks this is all about Britney Spears is just wrong
“I got into it because I wanted to tell my story about because they’re so far behind the curve now on where
what I was doing and what was going on in my part of they’re getting their information and how they get their
agriculture,” he explains. “Not only to the people I work information.”
with or work for but also to the non-ag community that
stop by and saw my site.”
A communication revolution
Robertson stresses that it’s just like any other ag-related
Owen Taylor, AgFax Media (Brandon, MS)
technology that comes out and makes life easier and
business more effective. In fact, he has saved real money Website: http://agfax.com
following blogs and tweets that alert him to buy fertilizer
and seed at their lowest prices.
“Farmers are like everybody else in terms of business,
“Suppliers and dealers, plus farmers, put that informa- in terms of industry, they’ve got to have technology. And
tion out all the time. And it’s free! And so the massive everything they do is going to pretty much parallel what
amount of information that’s coming out and is floating society does,” explains Owen Taylor, who owns AgFax
in cyberspace that allows me to be on top of the game is Media with his wife Deborah Ferguson.
incredible,” he exclaims.
AgFax is an agriculture news company that has been
Robertson adds that as powerful as it is, these tools are in the agriculture news business for decades and has
actually pretty easy to learn, noting that if you use some- adapted with technology, from sending out printed news-
thing like Microsoft Word and know how to cut and paste letters via fax, to pdf newsletters on web sites, to the use
and such, then you can do social media. of blog-based web sites, Twitter, and Facebook.
“Anybody who says the technology is It’s important to stress here, too, that you can go online,
too hard to learn, I just laugh, because if sign up for a blog or Twitter account, and be following
you’re already typing an email, that’s basi- blogs and tweets and even blogging and tweeting yourself
cally a blog—you’re just doing it for one in a matter of minutes. It’s also possible (and very easy in
person. And if you’re doing text messaging, some cases) to set things up in a way that your Facebook
that’s already Twitter—you’re just doing it page is updated and a tweet is sent every time you put a
for one person.” note on your blog. The benefit of this is that many folks
In Roberston’s mind, using social media will see this on their mobile devices instantly. And Taylor
is non-negotiable. He explains that the stresses that farmers are just like everyone else—soon a
business is too dependent on getting criti- smartphone will be in pretty much every farmer’s pocket.
cal information in a timely manner to not So if you tweet about a possible frost issue or an article
use social media, a perfect delivery system you just read about fertilizer prices, your clients and other
“followers” will see this seconds after you post it.
“What we’re looking at right now is the fact that it’s
not so much saying, ‘Well I know I’m reaching these
specific people,’ Taylor continues. “It’s that you have as
many channels going as you can possibly support. And
so through those channels, you’re going to reach some
July–August 2012 | Crops & Soils magazine 7
Feature
Social Media 101 people who aren’t your target, but then you’re going to reach some people who are
your target.”
Facebook is probably best So you can very easily cover several bases at once, connecting with many more
misunderstood as the place people in your network, depending on what form they favor. And this is the essence of
people go to gossip and giggle social media. You’re connecting with lots of different people in the ways they prefer,
amongst themselves. But it’s which is different from using a website.
far more than that. It allows a
“There’s no such thing as, ‘I’m going to have a beautiful, well-managed website and
person to create a community
a lot of content on it. And I’m going to send out an announcement, and people are
of “friends,” to post information,
going to find it, and they’re going to bookmark it and come back to it every couple of
photos, videos, etc., and commu-
days to see what new and exciting information I have.’ It doesn’t work like that. You’ve
nicate about it all, posting notes
got to keep pushing people to come to your content,” Taylor advises.
and replying to posts. “Friends”
For the CCA, “pushing” means providing information on a regular basis about rel-
can be relatives, colleagues,
evant topics. This pushing is via texts, tweets, emails, and Facebook posts.
clients, and others and you ap-
prove them when they request “They’ve got to stay involved on an ongoing basis,” he suggests, “even if it’s noth-
to follow you. Businesses often ing more than sending something out once a week that says here are three items that
use Facebook, too, sometimes in I found on the internet this week that I think relate to our soil types or our herbicide
place of a having a website. The issues, things along those lines. You’re essentially saying to them, ‘I’m trying to find the
application of Facebook to the best possible information, I’m out there all the time looking, here’s some things that you
crop adviser would be to connect should pause and take a look at.”
with farmers, other crop adviser
colleagues, supply companies,
etc., to post notes on the fly while
in field, including pho-
tos and video.
A blog is an online
journal or column—
usually focused around
a specific topic—
whose entries are
posted publicly. And
so a CCA might have
a blog about grow-
ing fruit in the upper
Midwest and he or she
might post something
on the blog each week
of the year relevant to
that topic—perhaps
focusing more on gen-
eral education in the
off season. Others can
subscribe and can at-
tach comments to the
blog post (which the
blog author approves
prior to posting). Pop-
ular free blog websites
include Blogspot and
Blogger, along with
many others.
8 Crops & Soils magazine | July–August 2012 Photo by iStockphoto/kryczka.
“If you have a Twitter account, you get those headlines
Extension–consultant interaction
that are posted in our blog just as soon as they’re posted
Angus Catchot, extension entomologist, Mississippi State
because it tweets them automatically once somebody
University
posts them,” Catchot explains. “So you know instantly
Blog: www.mississippi-crops.com what’s going on. Plus, I’ve found that we’re more likely to
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/acatchot post a 140-word or less quick fact almost daily on what
we’re seeing here.”
The idea is that social media enables you to more
efficiently find information and take advantage of it, Tuning into Twitter
not simply to be a provider of it. For the consultant, this Deb Campbell, CCA and owner of Agronomy Advantage
means staying in touch with what’s coming out of places (Dundalk, Ontario)
like extension offices.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/DCHighlander
“Honestly, I think that we’re getting to the people who
make the decisions better than we’re getting to the farm-
ers,” notes Angus Catchot, an extension entomologist at CCA Deb Campbell works hard to find relevant infor-
Mississippi State. “So, for instance, if you’re a farmer and mation for her farmers and get it to them quickly.
you farm 5,000 acres in the Mississippi delta, you may “I use Twitter daily,” Campbell explains. “I’m not nec-
not necessarily be involved in Facebook and Twitter and essarily one communicating outwardly daily, but I follow
all of this stuff, but I can almost bet you that somebody quite a few farmers and also quite a few extension and
who’s responsible for helping you make management university notes and tweets so that I’m staying connected
decisions—like your ag consultant or a retailer or your to research articles and the news of the day.”
industry rep, whoever’s helping you—they are plugged
Campbell notes that it’s all about time and being the
in. So it’s somewhat misleading to just
most efficient she can be, realizing that her clients are
say there’s not a bunch of farmers that are
busy and it’s her job to keep them informed.
plugged into this. They are indirectly, even
“Everybody’s busy and everybody’s going 20 different
whether they know it or not.”
directions every day, and this is immediate. It’s right there
Catchot and his colleagues worked with
in your pocket. You can stop for a coffee and suddenly
AgFax to design and launch their own blog-
you have the latest news in cropping and planting, etc.
based version of the longstanding Missis-
It’s all right there in your pocket brought right to you. My
sippi Crop Situation, and he credits Owen
ability to bring them that information is the power of my
Taylor for getting them moving. Catchot
business. That’s what drives my business.”
admits that there’s a bit of learning curve,
Campbell has found that she really has to be efficient
but he stresses that if he can do it, anyone
with getting her clients what they need in a timely manner
can. And the benefits of being able to get
and filtering for them the information that she is monitor-
information out quickly and efficiently are
ing on a daily basis.
too much to ignore.
“I do a lot of crop scouting, and I record everything on
an iPad,” Campbell notes. “I have an app that I use that
records everything that I’m seeing; I use Google Earth
Maps within that document on weak patches or drainage
issues. And by the time I leave the field, it’s all summa-
rized and detailed and emailed directly to the farmer who
July–August 2012 | Crops & Soils magazine 9
Feature
Social Media 101 then receives it on his smartphone and has that information immediately as I’m driving
to the next field.”
Why not a website? Well, it
may sound hard to believe, but
websites are already old hat. For some eyes only
They are often simply online Howard Brown, CCA, CPAg, and manager of agronomic services, GROWMARK
brochures and the information is (Bloomington, IL)
static, so the content gets stale. It
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/HBrownGMK (Protected)
is possible to have a website that
contains both a blog and a Twit-
ter feed, making it much more CCA and CPAg Howard Brown has been in the business a long time and is admit-
dynamic. tedly a late adopter when it comes to social media. But he has found the short and
sweet nature of Twitter to be a perfect application for his work. He also values that he
The two main advantages of
can protect his Twitter page so that only those he wants reading his tweets can do so.
social media and the reason for
its success are that it’s instantly “It’s a secured site,” Brown explains. And since I’m a regional cooperative, I try to
updatable by anyone (don’t need minimize the number of competitive companies that read my tweets because that may
to be tech savvy) and it allows for give them the competitive edge to what we’re telling our people and our farmers.”
a discussion. You could open a He notes that because he works in a competitive environment, he doesn’t necessar-
Twitter account and send out a ily want to share his information with competitors.
Tweet in two minutes—perhaps a
“That’s the other thing about social media. You can say too much to too many
few minutes more for a blog.
people. And actually instead of enhancing your position, it could diminish it because
The CCA program and the you’re just sharing with everybody if you’re not careful,” Brown cautions.
Societies (ASA, CSSA, and SSSA)
have a number of social
media sites. Here are
some that might be of
interest to you:
• CCA Facebook:
www.facebook.com/
CCA.certifiedcrop
adviser
• CCA Blog: http://
certifiedcropadviser.
wordpress.com
• Wired for Soils
Blog: http://wiredsoils.
blogspot.com/
• Twitter: www.twitter.
com/asa_cssa_sssa
10 Crops & Soils magazine | July–August 2012 Photo by iStockphoto/paulburns1.