Building farmer-centered outreach: Messaging insights from Midwestern corn and soy producers
Effective engagement is essential for agriculture outreach professionals looking to bridge the gap between conservation practice knowledge and uptake. However, many professionals are facing challenges—maybe the same set of producers show up to every event, or maybe online outreach efforts continuously fall short.
In our work with Trust in Food™, one of the most valuable things we learned is this: great outreach goes beyond just sharing information. It should connect with your audience in a way that speaks to their core values and ways of life.
When designing our engagement strategy for corn and soy farmers in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, we focused on aligning our visual and written content with what mattered most to them. This approach wasn’t just about promoting regenerative agriculture practices; it was about ensuring our messages deeply resonated with their real-world experiences and goals.
USING DATA FOR IMPACT
Data played a vital role in tailoring our outreach. We chose a group of middle-adopters who were not quite sure about sustainability practices and set out to learn exactly how they felt about the conservation practices available to them.
In the end, we evaluated over 500 data points from 55,000 producers in the region—all made available from Farm Journal’s first party consented database—and then supplemented with quantitative research.
This information gave us a comprehensive understanding of our producer set’s motivations, values, and stressors. We felt strongly that we should prioritize their perspectives because bringing more farmers to the table requires us to meet them where they’re at.
Fully embracing this decision means that we sometimes needed to set aside our own understanding of regenerative agriculture. While we might view cover crops as essential for sequestering carbon and improving soil health, farmers in the project area cared more about higher yields and leaving the farm more productive for future generations.
Ultimately by centering farmer perspectives, we developed messaging that felt relevant and meaningful.
SHAPING OUR MESSAGING
There were many ways to fold our producer data into our messaging. Here are a few that worked well:
Nature-based imagery
Many farmers we engaged with enjoyed outdoor activities, so we incorporated imagery and language tied to nature. This helped link regenerative agriculture to their existing interests.
Audience affinities
Most producers in our dataset had strong connections to brands like John Deere and practices that emphasize high yields. We reflected this relationship by using images of tractors and showcasing lush, abundant crops.
Multi-generational farming
Farmers in our project area had deep ties to the concept of land-based legacies. To honor this, we featured families and emphasized stewardship for future generations through calls to action like “Your farm. Their future.”
Trust in education
We found that our chosen producers had low trust in advertising yet relied on the internet for information and inspiration. We avoided sales language and used phrases like “learn more” to position our materials as opportunities for education instead of marketing.
By reflecting their priorities back to them, we managed to exceed our engagement goals, and our outreach performed at a rate three times the industry average. Explore step three on reachfarmersfaster.org to see real examples of imagery and messages we used in our outreach.
TIPS FOR FARMER-CENTERED MESSAGING
When designing outreach for farmers (or any audience), take time to identify motivations, values, and stressors. Use these insights as the foundation for your messaging and engagement strategy and show how your program’s benefits align with farmer interests and goals.
Success hinges on the understanding that every farmer is different—they each produce a certain set of crops, have specific geography and resource concerns, and have unique psychological and social factors that contribute to their identity as a producer.
Learning about the producers you are trying to reach is an easy step to forget, but understanding them allows you to speak to the priorities producers identify with and care about.
Remember that a farmer-first approach isn’t just about sharing information—it’s about building trust and fostering meaningful change.
CONNECT WITH US
Contact Deborah Carter McCoy or Emily Haley with workshop enquiries or to learn more about the project. For more insight on upcoming opportunities, sign up for the Environmental Initiative newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.