Reading Time: 2 minutes A couple of major players in the agriculture sector are on an expanding list of major companies pausing advertising on Facebook for the month of July in pursuit of policy changes at the U.S.-based social media giant. Bayer and Corteva Agriscience recently announced they have joined the #stophateforprofit campaign, backed by organizations including the Anti-Defamation […] Read more
Bayer, Corteva among companies stepping off Facebook
Major firms pledge to pause advertising for July
Get the story right
Why it’s so hard to debunk myths (and the secret to doing it)
Reading Time: 3 minutes The expression “mud sticks” doesn’t just refer to the aggravation you experience during spring planting. It also means that misinformation seems to have an uncanny knack for settling in and never letting go. Take, for instance, these gems that persist despite (or perhaps because of) an online world of information at our fingertips: bovine flatulence […] Read more
‘Fake News’ and the farm
Politicians may have just caught on about ‘fake news,’ but farmers have known for years what it’s like to live in a world where anything can and does get said and believed. Now, there is a way to counter the din of anti-activists, the food conspiracy theorists, and the faddists. And it may just start with you.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Just 18 short months ago, almost no one — not politicians, not reporters, not lay people — used the term ‘fake news.’ Sure, bias and dishonesty have existed in politics, in sales, in industry and in media forever. What’s new since the viral spread of the ‘fake news’ concept, though, is our almost universal belief […] Read more
Before you believe it
Because our vulnerability to misinformation is growing every day, the easy-to-use SMELL test needs to become like an app that we turn on every time we connect to the web, listen to a radio, or even talk to each other
Reading Time: 6 minutes If our food looks bad, tastes bad, or smells bad, we won’t eat it. So why don’t we treat information the same way? After all, we are told information is power. Information has value. Information is essential to modern society. So if information “smells” bad, shouldn’t we be wary of consuming it as well? Dr. […] Read more
We’ve been misinformed
Put this eight-page debunking handbook on the top of your reading list, and let’s stop making consumer misinformation worse
Reading Time: 6 minutes The good news is that farmers are finally recognizing the damage that misinformation is doing to our industry, and we are responding to it. The bad news is that the way we respond may actually be increasing consumer opposition rather than alleviating it. We’ve been misinformed about fighting misinformation. Agriculture is not the only industry […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
