Has the ag sector ‘come of age’ on social media?

At a national, state and local level, agricultural representative groups united to run a concerted digital social media campaign encouraging people in regional and urban centres to engage their local MPs and senators to deliver a fairer tax for backpackers – a critical labour source for our sector. An online change.org petition that was driven and shared through social media attracted more than 50,000 signatures, greatly improving public interest and engagement in the campaign against the tax.

While the backpacker tax campaign had its genesis through agricultural representative groups, the reaction on social media to the southern dairy crisis stemmed directly from grassroots individuals. Agricultural representative groups were then able to leverage the public mood and turn a reactive campaign into a proactive, informative one. The ‘buy branded milk’ social media campaigns had a direct result with an initial 20 per cent increase in national branded milk sales and had ongoing political repercussions with commitments from the Deputy Prime Minister to ‘fix $1L milk’ with a review currently underway.

There has been a lot of talk about the need for the agriculture sector to better engage in social media. While the sector still has a long way to go and social media is just one of the tools in the advocacy toolbox, these examples potentially demonstrate ‘coming of age’ moments in an area the sector has not excelled at in the past. Agricultural representative groups and agribusinesses must continue to tell their stories and spread their campaigns through this medium as it can have real results and is here to stay.