Well I can finally tell you all, after holding it in for a month…I am lucky enough to be in the final 9 for US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance’s (USFRA) search for the Faces of Farming & Ranching! This en devour stared a few months back, right in the heat of harvest. A few folks from Oregon Farm Bureau saw that the USFRA was looking for candidates to become spokesmen & women to share their story of agriculture to consumers.
We submitted a 3 minute video which answers to questions like, “Why do you think sharing your story of agriculture is important?” or “How do you share your story already?” Then it was cut down to 9 finalists who we got to finally meet this weekend in New York City! Now you may be thinking…NEW YORK CITY?! Darlin’ We’re goin to have to shut you down!! Or more accurately, “wow…what a strange place to have a conversation with farmers about food.” But indeed this turns out is just the point, bridging the gap between consumers and farmers and bringing the conversation of what is on their table right into their own backyard.
The event itself was very interesting, even or more interesting as a producer. Lots of great conversation about how food is grown, if its portrayal in the media is harmful or positive, are antibiotics an imperative tool for livestock, do GMO’s make sense or are they dangerous to humans, etc. I learned so much just being here for two days with these incredible people. The finalists are all very amazing people as well. Although we didn’t participate in this specific panel for this food dialogue, I imagine it won’t be too far into the future when we will be a large part of the conversation.
So here is where you…my loyal followers come in…you can go to the website and if you register you can vote on who you think should be the Face of Farming & Ranching! You can vote once per day from now until December 15th. After that the votes will be tallied, our interview scores will be added up, and the winners will be announced in January! I’m not saying you have to vote for me…but I would really appreciate your support! Like I said, all the candidates are incredibly qualified and I’m excited to even have met them and made those connections with them!
I’m sure you will hear more on this in the weeks to come! Again thanks for all your support, without all of you helping make my blog successful I doubt I would have ever been gutsy enough to even give this whole thing a shot!
***If you have a hard time logging in, they are having some technical issues & hopefully will have everything working soon! But you can e-mail your vote to rinne@usfraonline.org for the time being and it will be tallied! Thanks!
NuttyGrass 