Prepare for What’s Ahead
The public conversation around the tools of modern ag is heating up and shifting. The media landscape is full of new players, and old players with new channels. It’s hard to keep up, while the high stakes of our 24/7 media world constantly creep higher.
How does any agribusiness begin to consider their Communications in such a fluid environment?
One step at a time.
Let’s consider our current environment. Cultural, political forces and regulatory events are simmering concurrently in the crop protection (CP) space that promise to feed public attention in the near term:
RFK, Jr. is on the rampage against everything from CP products to corn syrup in his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign. A White House Commission of the same name is set to release its findings starting in late May. Many in Ag expect the panel to unleash fresh, existential attacks on CP products already under fire.
Legislative initiatives are making the rounds across the Farm Belt aimed at new limits both on litigation against EPA-labeled CP and foreign-owned assets, sensitive issues for the biggest players in the industry and their hundreds of thousands of customers. Given forces at play in #1 above, the players on the ground are shifting.
And the International Agency on Research on Cancer (IARC) is scheduled to decide this autumn whether atrazine, among other products, is a probable carcinogen. We all know what happened when the same group made its decision about glyphosate, in 2015: It opened the floodgates of litigation that continue to threaten Bayer.
Agribusinesses don’t necessarily need to be involved in these issues directly to experience reputational fallout from them. The media coverage and activist content resulting from these kinds of events often trigger questions from employees, customers, and other stakeholders. How you engage, or don’t engage, could say volumes about your business.
Now’s a great time for agribusinesses in these spaces to start thinking about how they want their reputations to fare in this upcoming conversation; explore areas of potential risk and reward, plan for likely scenarios. Often what we think is a threat can be an opportunity in disguise, and, of course, vise versa.
This kind of proactive, methodical approach keeps the focus on company goals, not outside factors we can’t control. Because regardless of any distracting noise, it’s always about telling your own story.
In my next post, I’ll share some thoughts on ways the media is changing.