Growing Your Farm or Homestead Community with Photography
/You want people to engage with your farm so that you can build resiliency through community. The best way to foster community around your farm and farm products is through transparency.
First, we will look at the core concept of Community Supported Agriculture, and then we will look at the resources on your farm or homestead that are going to enable you to start and grow a CSA.
Community Supported Agriculture
Community Supported Agriculture is more than just a sales technique. It is a guiding philosophy which can see you through your farming career – and something you can utilize even if you never run a CSA. If you think about the core sentiment of a CSA, it really is quite moving: Someone is willing to invest in you when you have nothing, so that both of you may gain. Those mutual bets can be applied no matter how you market your farm products.
To start and maintain that relationship, you have to build trust between your farm and your customers. Trust is built through communication and transparency. The good news is that a farmer has a serious competitive advantage – one that can set you apart in the market, help you acquire new customers, and keep them coming back for more.
That advantage is this: We can foster life in a beautiful setting, while simultaneously sequestering carbon and helping save the planet. No matter what type of operation you choose, there are regenerative practices and frameworks which allow you to provide food, fuel, and fiber while working in conjunction with nature – not against it.
Regenerative farmers work with nature, and nature is beautiful – sometimes, seemingly magical. The mental, physical, and emotional benefits to humans are well-documented. Unfortunately not everyone gets to experience it on a regular basis. Part of the value you can bring to your customers is to share your piece of nature with them.
Sharing Nature Photos with Your Customers
Even though the benefits of nature are clear, it is still challenging to convince people to visit farm country. How can you entice a city-dweller (or suburbanite) to experience more of nature?
One of the best ways is by sharing photos, which let us openly and honestly show what we enjoy about working the land. With so few people experiencing nature in person, photos may be the best way to deepen our relationships with customers: Photos can help build the trust necessary to ensure continued business with them, and can even better our customers’ lives.
If your farming practices align with the holistic goals of a better tomorrow, then it’s likely you are already caring for baby chicks, nurturing seedlings, assessing the impact of your animals on the grass and ground, and building a balanced life that is in tune with the cycles of nature.
In the Farm Marketing Solutions Mission Statement, we explore the difference between a leader and a boss: A boss tells you what to do; a leader shows you what to do, through her actions.
We regenerative farmers are leaders in our field, showing people – through our actions – that we can feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, and keep ourselves warm, while still being good citizens of the planet. Now we must get better at sharing those practices.
In the modern era, the most accessible and effective type of marketing is visual marketing – the sharing of your individual story through the visual media of photographs and video. With the recent advances in smartphone camera technology, and the popularity of photo-based social media, there has never been a better time for farmers to share their photos. And, given the worsening climate crisis, there may never have been a more important time for you to share your farm wisdom through photos. When you move chicken tractors, then photograph that process and share those photos with your customers, everyone wins.
With a single photograph, you can:
give someone a much-needed taste of nature
educate your customers about the delicious benefits of carbon sequestration
convert a potential customer – from being on the fence, into a paying customer
deepen your relationship with your existing customers
grow your email list
get ahead of that greenwashing competitor of yours
sell out your backlog of inventory
change the world
Honesty Through Radical Transparency
The secret weapon that all farmers have is honesty through transparency. We share our stories through our photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it is easy to tell a full story in just a few photographs.
Through your everyday examples, show people why your methods are better for the plants, better for the animals, better for the people, and better for the planet. We need more photographic proof of the benefits of our regenerative practices.
Embrace the change you are making, and do not be afraid to scream it from the mountain top – or from a well-managed pasture.
If you are interested in learning more about visual marketing and how to take better photos and videos, you’re in luck! My third book, Pastured Poultry Packet #2: Marketing Grass-fed Chicken and Eggs has everything you need to get started taking and sharing better farm photos with your customers.
Not only that, you’ll get advice and checklists on how to set up your farm website, manage your email newsletter, get press for your farm, and much more!