By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio — A lot of people are watching what Butler County farmers are doing, said county Farm Bureau president Gail Lierer. They’re following them through a series of farmers’ diaries on the county’s website and on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) helped, and hopes the Butler County project would be just the beginning of what Farm Bureau believes will be effective local outreach by farmers through social media, said Dan Toland, OFBF’s communications specialist.

“We’re getting big responses from the diaries,” Lierer said. “We’ve gotten a lot of followers. On the county webpage they can tell how many hits there are. There are a lot of people following what our farmers are doing in Butler County.”
Rita Beiser, chair, and members of the Center for Food and Animal Issues Committee came up with the idea in a brainstorming session they had. “We wanted to try to promote a good public image to people who don’t know anything about farming,” she said. “To let them inside our lives and show them how good of care we take of our animals and that we take care of the soil.”
Every month from November 2010 through August 2011, three farmers will post weekly diary entries. They either e-mail their entries or, if they don’t use e-mail, drop off handwritten entries to Cathy Minges at the Butler County office. Minges then posts them on the OFBF website and on Facebook.

Beiser told about her family’s farm in November. She described day-by-day what they were doing on their farm, how they cared for the pigs and cattle and the practices they use, such as taking soil samples every year.

Joyce Brown is posting diary entries for March. Among other things, the Browns run Brown’s Farm Market in Ross.

“My life is in the greenhouse in the month of March,” she said. “I’m starting plants for the field and flowers for pleasure. I told them about the routine maintenance to get started for the season, and how I feel about the seasons and how I feel about the changing of the seasons – just a sharing of every day in the life of a farmer, and they’re all different. No two farmers’ days are alike.”
“Ohio Farm Bureau was real supportive of doing the diaries – they thought it was a good idea,” Beiser said. “They gave us help and a lot of ideas. I hope it is doing some good. If we don’t promote ourselves, nobody else is going to.”
“Farmers are realizing that their individual voices and efforts to connect ring more true with today’s consumer than at any time in the recent past,” Toland said. “We have been working at Farm Bureau to help equip farmers with the right tools and know-how to do online projects such as the one in Butler County.”

Another social media project known as “Follow Farming” was just launched through the Marion County Farm Bureau, Toland said. Local farmers will use the Internet every step through a 10-acre corn and soybean field’s journey from seed to harvest, donating profits back to the local community.
To see the Butler County diaries visit http://ofbf.org/counties/butler
The Marion County “Follow Farming” project may be seen at www.followfarming.wordpress.com

Finally, Ohio Farm Bureau’s social media guide can be found at www.tinyurl.com/OFBFsocialmedia