Finally, modern coverage of agribusiness and food production
Americans too easily forget about the people who stock their grocery store shelves. No, not the grocers. The production farmers of grain, veggies, fruit, meat and dairy, and the myriad other businesses that support them and turn their harvest into food products and consumables.
But those are the very people and groups we write Terra Firma for and about.
Though frequently overlooked, they account for 5.5 percent of America’s GDP or $992 billion, according to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as of 2015. And they make up 11 percent of American jobs, or 21 million full- and part-time positions, also according to the USDA.
They are hardworking and honest. And they are vastly misrepresented.
Conventional media favors the dramatic, and with respect to the people who feed the nation and globe, that means discussions of drought and Salmonella contamination grab the headlines, rarely anything positive. When the coverage is favorable, it’s hopelessly idyllic, hardly a reflection of the highly technical operations at all levels of food production.
Not so in Terra Firma.
Here, the industry is framed like any other, not exaggerated or downplayed for a consumer audience.
Terra Firma came about when staffers of a national business publication stumbled upon some agronomists and co-op managers whose stories fascinated them, all the more so because they hadn’t been told in a way that wasn’t blown out of proportion.
Terra Firma came about when staffers of a national business publication stumbled upon some agronomists and co-op managers whose stories fascinated them, all the more so because they hadn’t been told in a way that wasn’t blown out of proportion.
Simply put, we take a grounded approach.
In our story on StateLine Cooperative, Chuck Peter, an agronomy manager, jokes, “Are we unique? Heaven’s no … Are the tools we have out our disposal unique? Definitely not.”
How then, the writer of that story asked him, has StateLine Cooperative spent the last 19 years as a profitable farming co-op in Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota? Especially in light of the Recession and turbulent commodities prices?
“The degree of sincerity, of confidence, of intensity that we bring to our customers and the willingness to get the job done—that’s what separates us from our competitors,” Peter told him, though to be sure his business uses all the modern approaches of any co-op today.
In a way, Peter is also describing this publication, which operates in best interest of so many food and agribusinesses.
We view the organizations we write about as our clients, and they have a say in how we frame them. We revise drafts together and encourage them to help sculpt their stories. Likewise, we seek advertisers who personally know the businesses we write about. That way, as the stories are distributed, the benefit is experienced by the businesses and their support systems.
So as you read these first articles, you might consider us more than a publication. Consider us a partner, a service provider—perhaps not unlike you.
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