Sustainable Ag Marketing: Four Resources on Engaging Food Bloggers

Engaging food bloggers to write about your products, services, farm and market, has become a cost effective and efficient marketing tool to create an online presence without having to become a blogger, or web master, yourself. Think about those anonymous restaurant reviews in your local newspaper. How much more influential are they than even a paid ad talking about yourself. The only difference is that a blog's readership likely reaches well beyond your locale, and with a very targeted and interested (i.e. engaged) audience, it can be very effective in influencing consumers, lots and lots of consumers. The topic has popped up in several venues over the past few months. Here are a few that I've run across: 

• It was the cover article in the Oct 2011 Produce Business magazine; 
• I talked about it at the 2012 Atlantic Coastal Ag Conference in January. My comments are summarized in the Proceedings, which I've copied below the 'Read More' link below;
• We were honored to have a guest food blogger, Katie Parla, join us in AC and she posted her own thoughts on her Parla Food blog;
• and just today, produce marketing consultant Heidi McIntyre, summarized a session that she moderated at the Southeast Produce Council’s 2012 Annual Conference on her blog Adventures in Produce.

Savvy marketing is the key to success in the world of small business, including farming. Making friends with some bloggers covering the food (and farming and tourism too) scene in NJ may open a world of possibilities.

Rick VanVranken

Real Issues in the Decline of Mid-size Farms

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and
you're a thousand miles from a cornfield.

 -Dwight D. Eisenhower

An Essay on the Political Economy of NJ Farming
The most recent Census of Agriculture shows the loss of America’s mid-sized farms even as the number of large and small size farms are increasing. Loss of the “ag-in-the-middle” does threaten the stability and productivity of our farm-to-fork food system. Many have weighed in proposing solutions to saving family farms – but often the agenda gets hijacked by those who plow with their pencil and are a thousand miles from a cornfield.

On-Farm Energy Savings - the Devil's in the Details

This month in the Sustaining Farming on the Urban Fringe Briefing, we show you where to find answers on figuring out where your energy dollars are being spent and how to maximize efficient energy use - in a way that's understandable for us mere mortals.

The NJAES Ag Engineering team has produced three fact sheets and, in partnership with NRCS NJ USDA, will hold workshops stepping through the various processes this week. Don't miss them.

• Understanding On-Farm Utility Costs and Billing FS1128
• Lowering On-Farm Utility Costs with Electricity Monitors, includes a case about monitoring a typical NJ diversified farm operation.
• Assessing On-Farm Equipment Efficiency & Energy Use, details nameplate information and how to use it to calculate motor efficiency.