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Anna: Welcome to Farm Communication 101: How to Talk to Your Stakeholders. Thank you for joining us today and for your interest in improving communication and transparency in agriculture. Just some housekeeping notes, we will be recording this webinar, we ask that you please mute yourself while watching today. This webinar will be 1 hour long with a Q&A section at the end, where you can unmute yourself to ask or pop questions in the chat throughout the webinar. The recording will be posted on our website afterwards. Today we will be covering the first half of this two part webinar series focused on engaging with your stakeholders.

Our two speakers today have great experience and advice for stakeholder communication. Each speaker will introduce themselves during their segment of the program.

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Welcome from Host

www.GreenMkting.com

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Thank you to our Promotional Partners

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Today’s Speakers

Leah Steinberg (She/Her)

Sustainability Consultant & Zero Zero Handmade Pasta

Chicago, IL

Marissa DeGroot (She/Her)

Marketing & Operations Coordinator Vitruvian Farms

McFarland, WI

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Anna Englebert (She/Her)

Senior at UW-Madison
Double major in Environmental Studies + Spanish, 2 certificates Organic Agriculture + Consulting
Intern at Evolution Marketing
Created webinar series for Organic Ag cert project

Your Moderator:

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Leah Steinberg (She/Her)

Sustainability Consultant,

Evolution Marketing

Owner,

Zero Zero

Handmade Pasta

Stakeholder Communication Basics

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Communication in Today’s Business Environment

Effective communication has become a core business function rather than an optional activity.

Stakeholders expect transparency and authenticity from the organizations they engage with.

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The Modern Communication Environment

Organizations today operate in an environment where:

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Is affected by a business’s activities
Can influence its success or reputation
Has an interest in its decisions or outcomes

What is a Stakeholder?

A stakeholder is any person or group that:

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What is Stakeholder Communication?

Stakeholder communication refers to how an organization shares information, listens, and builds relationships with the people and groups connected to its operations.

Stakeholders can influence:

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Why Stakeholder Communication Matters in Agriculture

Farmers depend on strong relationships to succeed. Today they must communicate clearly with:

Customers who want to understand their food
Communities who are affected by farm activities
Buyers and partners across the supply chain
Regulators who set expectations and standards

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Example: Stakeholder Engagement at Zero Zero Handmade Pasta

During last year’s egg shortage:

Concerned about supply and rising costs (we use hundreds of eggs weekly)
Our supplier, Campo Lindo Farms, prioritized us (long-term small business partners) over large corporate buyers with higher offers.
This stabilized our pricing and service to customers.

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Stakeholder Relationships Are Not One-Way

When relationships are strong:

Challenges can be managed together
Long-term partnerships become a competitive advantage
Value is created for everyone involved

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Check out our webinar series!

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Wholesale ● CSA ● Farm Store ● Home Delivery

Certified Organic Vegetables & Mushrooms

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Marissa DeGroot

Marketing & Operations Coordinator

Vitruvian Farms

marissa@vitruvianfarms.com

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Chefs & Wholesale Customers

Employees

CSA Members

Home delivery & farm store customers

Surrounding community members

2010

2020

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Chefs & wholesale

CSA, farm store, home delivery customers

community

employees

Email (primarily through email marketing tool)
Website & Online Farm Store
Text Messages
Printed Flyers
Social Media
In-Person Conversations

Website & Online Farm Store
Social Media
Radio
TV
Printed Ads
Direct Mail
Yard Signs
Vehicles
Sponsorships
Earned Media

Discord Chat
Email
Break Room Flyers & Notes
Staff Meetings & In-Person Conversations

Produce Samples
Email
Text Messages
In-Person Conversations

And here, I’m not going to read through every bullet point here, but I wanted to just share how we’re communicating with each stakeholder group
The big takeaways:

There is no one right way to communicate with your stakeholders, so…
Try a lot of different tactics and were you can, collect data to see what works, but also don’t be afraid to consider anecdotal evidence…sometimes that’s all we have!

A few I want to call out in particular:

Email - Collect email addresses anytime you get them. You don’t need to be using an email marketing tool (though we do) but you should be collecting and utilizing email
Earned Media - Don’t be afraid to reach out to your local news outlets to share a story with them, but remember to make your story timely…you have a grand opening…it’s National Garlic Day. 80% of your outreach might yield no media stories, but when you do get one it can have a huge impact. I filled out an online form for PBS’s Wisconsin Foodie show. It took me 5 minutes and now our Wisconsin Foodie episode will be airing on Thursday, April 2nd. Your story is unique and important, but media won’t always find us unless we reach out to them.
Don’t be afraid of new technology or social media, but always remember who you audience is. Our retail audience tends to be 50-70 years old so we run ads in the local newspaper and do a lot of printed flyers, direct mail, and yard signs.

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Stakeholder: Community, CSA Members, farm store customers

There is no one right way to communicate. Find the strategies that work for your audience and your capacity

Focus on building connection over clicks

Be transparent, be your authentic self, and don’t deviate from your values just to try and market something

When it comes time to ask someone to take an action, like purchase something or change a behavior, lead with joy!

Now I want to focus in on a couple stakeholder groups in particular, our Farm Store Customers, CSA Members and the Greater Community.
There is endless amount of information about communication tactics, so what I’m sharing today are really my takeaways from lived experience at the farm:

There is no one right way to do this, find the things that work for your audience and your capacity
Focus on building connection over clicks
Showcase your authentic self, give people a peek behind-the-scenes, be transparent, don’t deviate from your values just to try and marketing something
When it comes time to ask someone to take an action (purchase something, change a behavior), lead with joy. As difficult as it might be in this day and age to believe this…over the long term we humans are motivated to take action through positive interactions and emotions, not guilt or shame. That’s not to say there are not serious issues we sometimes discuss, but even then we try to leave people with feeling of hope rather than despair.

Next I want to share a few examples of our past communications and how these takeaways show up…

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Capacity | Values & Transparency

31.4k views | 414 ♡ | 24 shares

1.7k views | 104 ♡ | 4 shares

I’ll be honest, I understand the incredible marketing power of social media, but I personally don’t really enjoy doing it so I’m always looking for ways to maximize impact and reduce my time spent on it
So this past year I tried something new, I happened to catch Shawn during our orchard clean up and with no prompting and only one take made a reel of him explaining what we were doing.
It took a fraction of the time of creating my other posts, it showed behind the scenes at the farm, and I think people connected with it because Shawn was transparent around a mistake we had made with our orchard and what we were doing to fit it
Months later I tried it again with Shawn explaining why winter carrots are so delicious and the reel took off. 1) Reels on Instagram are what the algorithm is liking 2) We educated…which is in alignment with values 3) There was no sales pitch, and yet our winter carrots sold out within weeks

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Capacity | connection

One of our most successful ways to get new folks into our farm store was partnering with our friends at a pumpkin patch down the road to hand out flyers with a $5 off coupon
Word of Mouth is powerful, especially when it comes from trusted members of the community
And they were able to help us in October, a month when we’re exhausted after the CSA season with little capacity left

There can be certified B Corps that are benefits corps and vice versus

To become a Certified B Corp takes time and effort. This is not something you decide one day you want to be, based on my experience helping companies to become Certifed B Corps, it will take about a year to be B Corp ready and then another year to work through the process with B Lab

Add a slide showcasing the mission lock and what it looks like for Mi - no benefit corp law - unpack the structural difference between certified B corp and benefit corp Ben and Jerry’s - protect the business from inverter pressure

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Lead with joy!

This is a screen shot from a commercial we shot and used for local TV and social media. Tommy is “pulling” a turnip from the ground and taking a bite. What you don’t see is me hiding just below the shot throwing dirt at my husband’s face!
We thought about making it more serious, focusing on supporting your local farmers during a time we needed it most…
But instead we decided to just be ourselves…silly and a little weird. We decided to leave our audience with feelings of joy when they thought about Vitruvian Farms.
More people have commented to us that they saw the commercial and it made them laugh than nearly any other marketing piece even though it only ran on local TV for a month.
They remember it because it made them laugh and we want people to feel happy when they think about local food.

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Resources

Buy Local Buy Wisconsin (BLBW) Grant

Designed to strengthen WI agriculture and food industries by reducing marketing, distribution and processing hurdles
Vitruvian was awarded a $41,000 grant, $31,000 for marketing

FairShare CSA Coalition

csacoalition.org/resources - Promotions & Fundraising PDF has good resources on print and earned media for farmers

Reach out to me!

Marissa DeGroot
marissa@vitruvianfarms.com

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To be sent out after webinar to attendees

More Resources for Stakeholder Engagement

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Open up to audience for questions to ask speakers

Questions & Answers Section

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Leah’s Takeaways:

Communication builds trust
Trust strengthens relationships
Strong relationships create resilient businesses

Marissa’s Takeaways:

Find strategies that work for your capacity
Focus on building connections
Don’t deviate from your values to try and market something
Lead with joy!

Key Takeaways from Speakers

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Next Webinar:

Register Here:

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Leah Steinberg Contact

Evolution Marketing: https://www.greenmkting.com/contact

Anna Englebert Contact

School: apenglebert@wisc.edu

Work: Anna@evolutionmarketing.biz

Personal: annaeng2004@gmail.com

Marissa DeGroot Contact

Vitruvian Farms: https://www.vitruvianfarms.com/contactus

Contact Us:

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Thank You for Attending Farm Communication 101!