They don't care how much you know...

I’m a teacher by trade. And one of the most important (although often forgotten) parts of a lesson is the hook.

Before anyone can truly learn new information, they have to be emotionally engaged. Teachers do this by getting students excited, trying to explain why the lesson is important, or by tying the lesson back to something the kids already know.

Our well pump broke once. And I asked my husband what was wrong with it. He went into a lengthy description of the broken part – what it does and how to fix it. My eyes (and brain) glazed over after about 3 seconds. Why? Because I didn’t care. I knew he was going to take care of the problem, and that’s all the information I needed.

The same thing happened occasionally (more often than I’d like) with my students. They simply checked out when the lesson didn’t interest them.

And it happens with our audience. Except, the problem is not that they’re not engaged. It’s that they don’t trust us.

I never had to fight that battle as a teacher. My 4^th graders trusted me as an accurate source of information. (Remember when you were a kid and you thought teachers were the smartest people in the world?)

But our audience doesn’t trust us. Why? Because there are certain values they associate with good farmers and certain images they associate with good farms. And our farms don’t look like the ones they’re imagining. If our farms look different, our values must be different, too, right?

We know that’s not true. We know that farmers’ values haven’t changed over the generations. But our audience doesn’t know that. Many of them have never met a farmer. And many of them who have believe that family farmers are the exception, not the norm.

Our values haven’t changed and it’s up to us to tell them. And show them.

Show them that we care about the land. Show them that animal welfare and food safety are top priorities. Show them that we are dedicated to our families and communities. Show them that we take our decisions very seriously. Show them that we care.

As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

We can spout off facts about agriculture as much as we want, but that won’t have an impact on our audience, unless it’s accompanied by a strong dose of values.