Agvocating for Dairy Farmers: "How To", Neighbor Relations, and Resources

• Morning session - Eileen Jensen & Erin Hull, NYAAC will present Agvocating: the Why and How and facilitate an interactive discussion
• Afternoon session - Panel of dairy producers involved in agvocating will cover Social Media, Farm Tours, and More
• NYFarmGirls - Evelyn, Claudia & Josephine Leubner - "We have been agvocating going on 4 years now! We are mainly on Instagram, but have expanded to Facebook and YouTube. We love the outreach we can get on social media but we also go to other events where we get face to face opportunities. Some of these events include "fuel up to play 60", the New York Empire Farm Days, FFA, and 4-H events. Our main goal is to help close the gap between producers and consumers in a positive way."
• Julie Patterson, Patterson Farms, Inc - "Julie is an owner at Patterson Farms, Inc., alongside her husband Jon Patterson at their 6th generation dairy and crop farm in Auburn, NY. Currently milking 1550 cows and cropping 2500 acres. Julie's responsibilities include financial management, HR manager, social media and outreach. The farm has a website, FB page, gives tours, works to educate local newspaper reporters and distributes newsletters that get mailed to about 800 neighbors. Julie did not grow up on a farm and believes it is important to keep learning about our food system and to help educate consumers about modern agriculture and her farm's part in the food system. When a person gets the opportunity to know where their food comes from and meet the people that are responsible for the production of that food, that's a connection that is becoming vitally important."
• Johanna Bossard, Barbland Dairy Farm - "Johanna is married to Bret Bossard, and they are partners at Barbland Dairy Farm, a 2,000 cow dairy farm that works 5,000 acres of forages, located in Fabius, NY. She organizes and gives all farm tours and public relation activities on the farm. She is in charge of the farms social media platform, as well as organizing the farms bi-annual neighborhood newsletters which is distributed to over 1,600 of the farms neighbors. Johanna believes that by educating others about agriculture, we can help to bridge the gap between producer and consumer relationships."

• Additional information and resources on preparing for third party audits will be available.