After earning an Olympic medal in the summer of 2004 and working for the world’s largest sports and entertainment agency in New York City, it was agriculture marketing that brought me back to Northern California in 2013.
When the opportunity to improve the food ecosystem for all parties – farmers, laborers, producers, consumers and countless others – creates a fire in your belly, you don’t ignore it. My professional purpose, arguably our agency’s mantra, is to connect the consumer to the farmer and vice versa. Since we touch every aspect of the food journey from the soil to the processing and e-commerce, we in fact have the opportunity to make this agency vision come true. What better reason to celebrate National Ag Day?
The purpose of National Ag Day is to recognize and celebrate the abundance provided by agriculture. The National Ag Day program, organized by the Agriculture Council of America (ACA), believes that our nation should understand how our food is produced, value agriculture’s role in maintaining a strong economy, consider careers in food and agriculture, and appreciate how the agriculture industry provides safe, abundant, and affordable products to us all. My team and I feel the same. Our only caveat would be that we want to foster these beliefs on a global scale – why stop at just American agriculture?
When I sit with the question of why Ag marketing pulled me in, my key reasons have to be:
I’m a fifth-generation farmer, and with family farms accounting for 96% of all US farms, I’m not the only one.
It’s the industry that feeds the world, and there’s no nobler cause.
You won’t find more resilient people.
To give consumers the information to make better buying decisions & show the industry that the choices they make matter.
March 23rd might mark National Ag Day, but for AC&C and my family, Ag day is everyday.
