By Charlie Elrod, NEAFA President
How many times have you heard complaints about how far-removed society is from the realities of modern agriculture? How often have you wished for a concise and informative educational piece to help you communicate all our many positive contributions to the health and well-being of society or to tell our sustainability story? Thanks to the collaboration of several ag organizations, The Dairy Toolbox is now available to do just that.
Thanks to this creative collaboration, the Dairy Toolbox provides about ten short videos, from 1 to 5 minutes long, highlighting different aspects of dairy management, research, cropping, and sustainability. You might think about putting them all together into a video loop to play at a company, customer or community meeting. The video clips could also be incorporated into a presentation you’re making as a “public service announcement” to help enlighten your audience.
There are also a couple of great infographics highlighting the opportunity provided by anaerobic digestion on dairy farms and the many ways that water is conserved and recycled in daily dairy operations. Similarly, there are several one-page fact sheets on different aspects of dairying such as recycling as an integral part of dairy farming, practices used to reduce emissions, efficiency gains in agronomic practices and milk production, and sources of feed and bedding used in dairy production. All provide informative, fact-based insight into modern dairy management.
Lastly, there are several resources designed to be used in your social media efforts. Many of these are NY-focused and communicate facts about the industry in NY, while others are more broadly oriented. The graphics are attractive and quickly convey key messages such as “up to 80% of a cow’s diet cannot be eaten by humans”, an effort to push back on the misguided idea that cows consume feedstuffs that could otherwise be used to meet the nutritional needs of people. There are also multiple posts that could be used in your social media feeds to help expand the reach of this messaging.
All the materials available in the toolbox can be downloaded for your use in whatever way you can imagine to help tell the dairy industry’s story. Consider sharing the link with your customers to further spread the word. Spanish translations of the materials are being developed and additional pieces will be forthcoming as the needs arise. I hope you’ll check out the Dairy Toolbox and use those resources to help tell dairy’s amazing story.