As part of a social media challenge to advocate for agriculture (which is a competition with winners getting a scholarship!), this week I tried to dive into consumers’ perceptions on agriculture. I wanted to find out what consumers think about agriculture: how much they know, what they are concerned about, and how they think agriculture affects the world.
To do this, I created a short, 10 question survey, with 9 multiple choice questions and 1 free response question. (Gotta keep it short so that I could get more people to participate!) I posted the survey to all social media platforms I have which included Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I thought I’d be lucky to get a few responses, but I got more than 30 participants who filled out the entire survey!!
The respondents were mostly 21 – 25 years old which I expected, but I was surprised to find that there was quite the age range – spanning from 15 to 60+. I was hoping to capture a wide audience to see what the entire population thinks about agriculture rather than just one (my) age group.
You can check out what the questions and the stats for each one are with the pictures below, but here’s the big picture. From the data, a few things were made clear to me. Generally:
- People know more about animal agriculture than crop agriculture
- People think farmers are trust-worthy
- The population is split on whether small farms are more trust-worthy than large farms
- People are more concerned about sustainability, animal welfare and pesticides/herbicides
- People are less concerned about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), antibiotics, hormones or Genetically Engineered foods (GE)
- People think farmers are also concerned about these issues
- People obtain their information on animal agriculture mostly from farmers, Facebook and news on the internet
- Very few people obtain their information on animal agriculture from Instagram, Twitter, or their parents
- People think agriculture has a positive impact on our planet, environment, and people
What Does this Mean?
People know less about crop agricultural practices than animal agriculture practices, myself included! In the future, I will work to educate myself so that I can better educate others on agricultural crop practices. I’ll be sharing more information, pictures and graphics on crops, to incorporate that side of agriculture into my social media posts.
I learned that most people think farmers are trust-worthy – awesome news! But, I also learned that people are torn on whether they think small farms are more-trust worthy than large farms. A slight majority of people think that small farms are more trust-worthy. This means that I need to share more personal stories about large, family-owned farms to show that large farms are just trust-worthy as small farms! Of course, there’s a few bad eggs out there, but it’s not limited to large farms. Just being a small farm doesn’t mean better care for their animals or ethical growing practices for their crops.
One of the most interesting things I learned is what issues consumers actually care about the most. Of the options offered, sustainability, animal welfare and pesticides/herbicides were the issues they cared about the most, while Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), antibiotics, hormones, and Genetically Engineered Foods (GE) were not as much of a concern. So instead of tackling issues like antibiotics, hormones and GMOs, I will share more facts about sustainability, animal welfare and pesticides/herbicides and focus on some of the other concerns a bit less. Until now, I’ve not shared much on pesticides/herbicides so I’m excited for this change in direction! Along those same lines, I learned that most people think farmers are also concerned about these topics, but I can reinforce that by continually sharing all the ways that farmers are working to address these concerns.
For their information on agriculture, people are going directly to farmers first and foremost. I suspect this is skewed by some of my agriculture friends, but by the volume of people who answered that they had “little” or “no” knowledge on animal and crop agricultural practices, I think the majority of the respondents that are removed from agriculture make up the other answers seen besides “farmers”. After farmers, Facebook, news on the internet, and classmates are the next best sources of information. Facebook is my favorite social media platform, so this is great news for me!
The final question about whether agriculture has a positive or negative impact on our planet, people were torn with an ethical dilemma. Obviously, we need food to feed humans, but humans are destroying the planet. This is something I hope to address with subsequent posts on the sustainability of animal and crop agriculture practices. Here's the feedback I got.
This experience has given me tremendous insight on how consumers think and what issues are concerning them so I can better educate in the future. Watch for my future social media posts!