#RefindingFood: What's Happening in Food, Ag and Data
The evolving role of Women in Agriculture, Updates to Google's algorithm that will impact your SEO and data strategy, The Gates' farmland acquisition, and new resources you want to subscribe to
I can hardly believe we’re almost three months into 2021. It’s even harder to believe we’re officially one year into a pandemic. For me, the world changes constantly as we continually learn to live life with the ever growing developments of COVID-19. I never had a problem with change, in fact I welcome it and become restless if something stays the same too long.
It’s why I love the seasons: things are planted, they grow, they bloom, they are harvested and then they go dormant. Over and over, change is the only true constant in the world.
In the last year, I’ve used the ability and necessity to change to delve deeper into my love of food and agriculture. And I’m not the only one.
People from all areas of food, farming and Ag are developing new ways to communicate with their audiences in order to help them understand their food in so many different ways. They are using different channels and mediums to do so.
In this newsletter, I decided to feature four of them that I think are worth your time, and also worth your money. Each month, I’m going to provide these roundups to feature 3-5 amazing voices in food and Ag.
Also, I’m then going to wrap in my insights on data and analytics (everything from 101-level information to more advanced topics in SEO, SEM and e-commerce). As I read, the #1 need that’s stated by producers, organization and NGOs is that WE NEED DATA.
So I’m going to start talking about how to get data, what to understand from data and how to apply that to your goals. In the next newsletter, I’ll start to feature some projects I’m working on to use them as examples of what data and analytics can do in helping us understand the complexities of food production.
TED Talks: Audra Mulkern of The Female Project Explores The Role Women Play in Agriculture
Audra Mulkren is well known among women in Agriculture. The Female Project explores how “Behind every farm table, was a woman. I knew women farmed, but why had they just become visible to me?”
In her TEDxSeattle talk, she discusses how she learned that women were missing from the narrative, and the limited amounts of data available about farming and agriculture. Because of the inability to find representation of women and girls, she began to take photographs of what she couldn’t find in order to tell a deeper story of women in Agriculture.
From urban yards to desert climates, Audra shows how the faces of women who farm are extremely diverse. She shares that two thirds of female farmers have a full-time job in addition to their farms, in order to provide benefits and financial support. She also explains how female farmers have managed to produce food for people despite having harder times accessing loans and credit. The talk goes on to show how resilient women are despite facing numerous challenges and disadvantages.
And like so many, she also cites lack of data as one of the main challenges of helping women succeed in farming. Her ideas and questions are exactly the ones we should be asking ourselves when we develop better ways to grow food, make access to land more readily available to those that want to produce, and, of course, feed people.
What Happening in Data - Major Changes in Google Search and SEO
From SEO to SEM to local business, I continually talk to companies about the importance and impact of Google rankings and discoverability on their businesses. Usually, my advice is foundational as many agricultural and food companies lack advanced knowledge of it to employ more advanced use cases of data. This year though, the foundational knowledge that many of you use is going to require a serious upgrade as the way search and SEO work is becoming extremely sophisticated. In 2021, here’s what you need to think about.
Google Will Use Customers’ Needs to Impact Your Discoverability: You’re going to have to use your data to better understand the needs of your customers. You need to understand why they are coming to you (intent), what they are doing when they get to your site (behavior), and what actions they are taking (conversion). You will want to use their needs and behavior to optimize your website experience. This will have the largest impact on your ranking.
Google Wants You To Create Content That’s Relevant to Your Audiences: Once you know what they are coming to you for, you want to have original, authoritative, expert provided/written content to support their needs (search queries/questions). And that content should be created in the form that drives the most action from them (signup, inquire, purchase, share). So you’ll need to know if video, audio, visual or written content works best. Google will rank this content over other, more generalized content. As part of content, you need to make sure that you’re following best practices for organically ranking for rich snippets as they are high value placements no one can purchase.
Google Wants to Continue to Think Mobile First, but Also Put More Focus On User Experience: You need to think mobile first (look at how your information is rendered on your phone, see how search works, how the actions you want them to take happen). You’re also going to want to focus on experience. This is where behavior and the needs of your customers or audiences comes in. You want to make getting something from you as quick and easy as possible. Load times and site speed are important, but it’s also time to explore what may cause friction for your audiences. You may want to explore ditching popups and things that are distractionary.
Invest in Analytics and understand your customer’s journey. In Google Analytics, there’s a section available that shows your customers’ journey. It visualizes how they come to your site and what they do when they get there. You’ll want to look at this and use it to build actions that help you address the three points above.
You need to understand that SEO is no longer simply about meta descriptions, tags and keywords. While they’re a piece of your overall SEO strategy, you must now take into account behavior and experience. You want to tie your customer’s website visit to what they came to you for, how they found you and what they did after they did or didn’t find what they were looking for. In 2021, you’re using your overall site optimization strategy to fortify your brand, deepen your data and then use that information to drive more relevant web content. In 2021 and 2022, experts feel this is going to have major search graph implications.
Two New Food and Agricultural Newsletters Worth Your Time
Q1 has brought some amazing and new food-centric newsletters. Mark Bittman and Lisa Held Evans both launched a newsletter dedicated to their work in food, farming and agriculture. Both are currently $50/year. You can also subscribe to the newsletter for free.
The Bittman Project - Mark Bittman’s amazing recipes, along with op-eds about making nutritious food available to everyone, supporting small farmers and examining agriculture’s environmental impact on our planet. Check out Our Suicidal Food System and his new book Animal, Vegetable, Junk.
Peeled - Lisa Held packages her amazing talent as a food and agricultural reporter into a much more personal newsletter that allows her to share, explain, and analyze more of the reporting she does on food and food systems. In it, she wants to show how food relates to the important issues we as people care about— including climate crisis, poverty and hunger, racial justice, immigration and labor rights, and health. She’s written great articles, my favorite being an insightful look at the acquisition of farmland by wealthy landowners such as Bill Gates. Lisa’s newsletter is as amazing as are the articles she writes elsewhere. I recommend her paid subscription!
Food Industry Must Follows - Food Science Babe
Have you seen Food Science Babe on Instagram? If not, then I encourage you to follow her. As many of you know, I believe there are many ways to farm, and if we’re going to change the way we produce food and make it accessible to everyone, we need people from all areas of Ag to come together to do it. No matter where you fall, the biggest challenge in food is the rampant use of misinformation surrounding meat, chemicals, food production and crop production.
Erin, a food scientist and contributing writer to Ag Daily created Food Science Babe to help consumers better understand ingredients, production and what labels actually mean. Her goals to help end fear mongering and misinformation surrounding the food we eat, whether it's about GMO's, pesticides, unfamiliar ingredients, how it’s produced, what’s good for us/bad for us, what it means to be organic or natural, I could go on. Here mottos are let's #StandUpForScience and promote #FactsNotFear! Check out her work and please support it, even if it's for the fact that she has the most genius marketing titles for her subscription levels ever!
Becoming A Small Female Rancher & Horsewoman in Washington
This summer I sat down with Dillon Honcoop of Save Family Farming and the creator of the Real Food, Real People Podcast. We talk about what it’s like to be a small farmer in Washington, the work I’m doing with my horses, misconception in beef, and how we have to start building more truthful ways of marketing in food and agriculture. :: Watch It Here ::
What Could the Gates Acquisition of U.S. Farmland Really Signify?
If you look at the historical investment in The Gates Foundation’s investment in Agriculture, the land acquisition paints a much deeper picture of how Gates Ag One may be a catalyst for developing new ways to produce food in the U.S.
:: Read It Here ::
Also note, that since I wrote this piece, Mr. Gates did an interview with MIT Technology Review that paints a darker picture than what I was hoping to ideate. But nonetheless, the idea is out there.