California Agricultural Communications Coalition: KnowACaliforniaFarmer.com

The goal of the California Agricultural Communications Coalition (CACC) is to foster a more supportive climate for California farmers by engaging consumers in positive dialog.

As the foundation of this effort, AdFarm designed and created a website as a portal and communications hub. All of content is created by farmers in their own voice to ensure authenticity and credibility. The site provides a platform for farmers to tell their stories. It makes it easy to post blogs, videos and photos about how they farm, why they farm and relevant issues. Consumers are able to comment, ask questions and reconnect with the people who grow their food, flowers and fiber.

One of the key initiatives of the campaign is farmer training via live workshops, webinars and weekly tips email. During these interactive sessions, farmers work on how to generate thoughtful content around the issues, review how to capture and post content to KACF.com, and learn how to develop social networks to push content out to California consumers. They discuss best management practices on responding to comments with a view to engaging the audience and maintaining the momentum of online discussions.

The website also contains a Communications Toolbox - a secure area for farmer members which includes tips on public relations in digital world and how to use social media applications (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs.) It allows members to download easy-to-follow guides to help them navigate these new advocacy tools.

The website has laid the groundwork for an on-going communications effort that has the potential to connect 80,000 California farmers to the 36 million consumers in California.