There’s one question I commonly hear when we meet with producers and others involved in animal agriculture: How do we tell our story better?

It’s not a new question. To answer, I think it’d be helpful to give the lay of the land in 2022.

We know the major players who want to see meat become history: Animal activists. But how much reach do they have?

Here are some hard numbers:

PETA gets more than 1 billion video views every year online, has 280 million YouTube views (cumulative), and has 6 million Facebook fans and 1 million Twitter followers. And that’s just PETA.
The Humane Society of the United States has 2.6 million followers on Facebook, nearly 200 million total YouTube views, and has 800,000 followers on Twitter.
Mercy for Animals has 2.5 million Facebook fans, 47 million views on YouTube, and gets millions of video views on other social media platforms, and has 300,000 followers on Twitter.

Admittedly, there is redundancy here in that one person could be a fan of all three, but it is still a lot of bandwidth driving a false perception of agriculture.

The pro-meat side?

One major campaign has 400,000 Facebook followers, 40,000 Twitter followers, and 2.5 million YouTube views (cumulative).
One association has 35,000 Facebook followers and 23,000 Twitter followers, and 22,000 YouTube views.
Another association has 14 million YouTube views — mostly from five or more years ago — and 12,000 Twitter followers.
One checkoff campaign has 1 million Facebook followers and 40,000 Twitter followers.

I’m not going to name names because I’m not trying to criticize these groups or campaigns. But the numbers should make clear that, from a communications standpoint, agriculture is immensely outgunned. Activists are on broadband and ag is on dial-up.

I’m reminded of the 2014 documentary Farmland. It was a solid film. But we’re as far from 2014 as 2014 is from 2006. And since then, I can think of a half-dozen other documentaries attacking meat off the top of my head. Each one likely has millions of viewers.

Simply put, people are seeing more messages from the activists than they are from farmers and ranchers.

This then goes downstream into the news (reporters watch films and videos) and, eventually, the culture. Last year alone, there were 90,000 media stories that mentioned meat and climate.

The reality is that these activists don’t operate at the same ethical level of the ag community.

It’s not a fair fight? Our opponents have twisted agendas and equally twisted arguments. But as we know, perception is reality. And that perception is being shaped by opponents of ag.

How does that perception look to our consumer base? How does it drive decisions? Consider the perceptions of Gen Z and Millennials — a topic I’ll cover for my next piece here on Meatingplace.

For now, I hope you’ll agree that there’s a problem and that if things remain this lopsided, ag will eventually lose control of its future. The answer requires approaching the challenge with fresh eyes and infrastructure. What worked as recently as 20 years ago is by definition outdated in the internet age. It’s going to require a focus on many different messengers and tactics to create an “echo chamber” — something our opponents have done well.

Anyone who wants to continue the discussion offline is welcome to reach out to me at rick [at] bermanco.com.

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