Should we bother trying to get consumers closer to farmers?

It is often said that farmers need to get closer to consumers.

And while it is possible, and some marketers have set up the facility to, for a bar code (or QR code) to show exactly where a piece of meat came from, even though that’s good it’s not really the point.

Sure, often the marketer will be telling a story associated with the meat’s provenance.

However, my argument is that within the huge quantity of meat sold around the world, the brave battle of such tiny efforts is worthy but not enough.

The reason that farmers want to get closer to consumers is because then you’re NOT commodity. It means you ARE differentiated.

This is an argument that if we give ourselves a helicopter view of what we produce, and much more importantly how we produce, then we automatically link consumers with our farmers (and we should start at the consumer – the fact we can produce something doesn’t mean a thing).

By naming that method (pasture Harmonies), which after all can only be carried out on-farm, we change the mental relationship of the consumer to what they’re going to eat (or wear or put on their floors).

Imagine then, a pasture Harmonies co-brand quietly sitting alongside a marketer’s brand.

Immediately (because we’d be telling the pH story in many different ways) a consumer would have the ultimate validation of it being the way they’d farm if they farmed themselves.

A consumer could, easily, imagine themselves to be that farmer.

At the moment, that’s much too much a bridge too far. A consumer can’t be sure how ‘our’ produce is made. There’s nothing like an ‘Intel Inside’ guarantee. (They can’t with other protein production methods either, but one thing we would be trying to show/prove is that we’re not feedlot, not ‘industrial’).

And finally, want to know the best thing about naming our story, and enabling consumers to get closer to farmers?

We don’t have to make anything up. It’s all true. What we’d be doing is owning responsible pastoralism and providing a means for that consumer to feel good about their choice.

We’d be linking consumers’ hearts with farmers’.

Or would we?

If we think beyond the actuality of how we produce….

Science has served New Zealand agriculture extremely well. It should and needs to do so in the future.

It is also that pragmatic rationale approach that has delivered and developed a wonderfully integrated on-farm representation of responsible pastoralism.

Put another way, we’ve engineered a farming solution that makes best use of the temperate climate and relatively thin, bony, young soils of New Zealand.

We are one of the few countries in the world where farmers aren’t peasants.

We tend to take it so much for granted, that what we have, what we project from (most of) our farming, is ‘normal’.

In doing so we forget what it looks like.

Now, while some tourists and travellers may complain our countryside looks like a giant golfcourse, in a way it is a bit of a backhand compliment.

Our farms, from Northland to Southland, from the coast to the foothills and high country, look looked after. They look as if someone intelligent is at home and the land, environment and animals are being cared for.

It looks almost bucolic. One of (many) definitions of bucolic is – of, pertaining to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life – which while a large stretch of the actuality, is a pretty good image or association to have.

The fact, supported by billions of dollars of spending over the past 100 years, we have science to utterly back up the picture.

However, this is a synergy we’ve, (I’m arguing) never exploited.

But first and foremost though, we need to control the imagery of what and how our farms and farming looks in the big picture.

pasture Harmonies can truly represent the idea and the ideal of responsible pastoralism.

By inviting consumers to visit, we can also take part in a conversation.

For example, consumers will (probably) always want a standard that in practice is impossible and/or uneconomic to achieve.

If, when we stake our claim to the rotational grazing territory we initially discovered, then we can take part in a conversation, instead of always defensively reacting .

One of our current challenges, is agriculture attempts to defend an amorphous idea.

When we give that idea a name, we are in a much better, stronger position.

Our farming is about much more than the sum of all its parts.

We are picture (almost) perfect.

Let’s start believing, living up to and improving that picture.

To which end, let’s name it, and with it the science behind the image.

(Or, is our image something we should just let look after itself, and by default decay?)

We’re the only protein production system that can say VISIT

Forget the science, briefly, about our agriculture, even though that’s the wonderful legacy that has got us to where we are today.

Forget the rational.

Forget the food safety, the genetics of plants and animals, the fertiliser….all those things that are objective or measureable in their input and output.

For many of us, myself included, that’s a difficult thing. We’re programmed, almost obliged to look at the facts, to deal with what’s real.

Instead think emotions, hearts and minds, soul even when it comes to our farming.

Because that’s the trigger, hook, main consideration (even if they don’t realise it) for consumers.

In a sense, they don’t care about how a piece of meat ends up on their plate. They assume (correctly) that those technical aspects of creation and distribution take care of themselves.

(Heaven forbid that there’s a whole slicing and dicing industrial process that delivers that piece of protein – in a sense none of us want to overly dwell on that).

What they do care about is the imagery. The spirit. The essence.

And it is these intangible aspects that we’re completely failing to capture.

If we slightly modify what it is we think we offer to consumers (at least those with discretionary income who have a choice beyond cheap) we have an opportunity to prompt a passion, elicit a feeling.

That’s because consumers have a mental image of what a pastorally-based system looks like. The sun is shining, the water is clean, the animals are happy.

Indeed for the most part, the image matches the reality. From that point of view, we, our pastoral system, pasture Harmonies, is the only protein production system that can say VISIT. (It is also part of the reason you don’t see a picture of a beef feedlot or a chicken broiler barn, or soybean farm on advertising for these forms of protein).

We have nothing to hide, and from my experience, most NZ farmers welcome visitors. What you see is what you get and we don’t have to make up a story to match the reality.

We have the opportunity to globally represent responsible pastoralism.

We can own the word VISIT.

We can link into consumers’ emotions, and operate in that market space where price is less of an issue than perception.

To do that, we need to own our story.

But perhaps we’re too straight, too dour, too emotionless to go down this path, while all the time repeatedly trying to reinforce the science behind image.

Are we capable, as NZ Inc, of responding to the emotional cues consumers display in all their other purchases?