Our family was privileged to attend this year’s American Pastured Poultry Producer’s Association Conference in Dallas. It was three days of wonderful networking and sharpening of farming minds. If you’re a farmer type, we highly recommend attending. If you’re a beginner, it’s an ocean of information to drink in as fast as you can. If you’re a middle-experience farmer, it’s an opportunity to gain the knowledge you need to break through to the next level. And if you’re experienced, it’s the pep talk you need to keep the fire burning year after year. So beneficial. A few of our readers are farmers, so here’s my plug to attend APPPA next year!

But there’s much more to this article than what is only relevant to farmers.

This year’s theme was Leadership and we heard from the CEO of a successful teen summer camp as well as a former Navy Seal. They each shared their wisdom of managing their teams to get the hard work done. It was enlightening and helpful and we look forward to implementing some new mindset themes to give our farm the longevity we desire.

There were also many discussions of more concrete concepts, like production, efficiency, and marketing. 

Marketing is always a big discussion among farmers because it always feels like we need more customers or more sales to be successful. But so many farmers (like us) feel unequipped to reach the “right” people with the right message at the right time. Marketing is hard!

So as Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a promising new ticket to easy marketing,  naturally, farmers who would rather pluck a chicken with their teeth than have to design a website… are gravitating toward AI to solve the problem of “how to market.” They must make sales. Their current marketing (which is often nearly non-existent according to the many farmers that I have talked to about it) isn’t working. AI can do it cheap and fast. The farmer feels he doesn’t have time or knowledge. It makes sense to use AI to solve this part of the puzzle, and leave him more time to do the actual farming. Right?

That is the question for 2025. And so I sat in on a couple of talks about using AI for marketing. I tried to get to all of them, but alas, carting 6 kiddos to a 3 day conference is no small task, so I was not able to make it to all the talks I wished to attend. I wanted to see what all the hype was about. Because I’m about to let you in on my unpopular opinion… 

I am against AI. 

Well. I guess I’m not wholly against it. I mean, what is the definition of AI, exactly? Is it something like me Googling where is the nearest gas station on my route that does not require a left turn? Can AI spit out the average low temperature in East Texas in January for me? Or convert Celsius to Fahrenheit? I’ll take it. Is AI offering to clean the shower or fold my laundry? Yes, please! But if AI is crawling the internet “borrowing” information from human writers, putting it in a metaphorical blender, and spitting back out “original” content without giving proper credit to authors… or as Matt described his “bottom line” objection–are businesses using AI to create a false personality where no personality really exists… Take it to the extreme and you start hearing stories about the AI girlfriend. How are these good things when what we all really want is authentic connections to actual people? 

If AI were to replace all composition today, creativity would be forever stifled because there could be no new ideas. Only reconfigured versions of the old ones. You may say, “Well, people won’t stop writing so there will always be new content added to the mix.” But are those people consenting to the use of their content? I know I certainly haven’t and will not. I work hard to write the content I create. I know “there is nothing new under the sun.” I don’t claim to be the most original or most creative. But it is my work, a unique conglomeration of my experience and study. I don’t mind sharing it if someone asks. But I don’t like being stolen from. 

Even if all the writers consent “for the good of the many,” is AI really what consumers want? 

This is where I really push back. You marketing teams out there… hear this: 

I DO NOT WANT ARTIFICIALLY COMPOSED MARKETING BLABBER. 

Especially from small businesses. When you buy from mega giant corporations, sure. You expect highly aloof, impersonal messages at all times. “We appreciate your business.” “We are committed to the highest quality blah blah blah.” There is no personality. That is expected. In fact, it would be ultra creepy if the biggest companies in the world started interacting with us as if they were a person… but they weren’t. Wouldn’t it? Why would we tolerate that behavior from a small company? Does anyone believe Alexa or Siri really exist?

I remember the very first vinyl sign I ever had printed for our farm. I was very new to graphic design. But I managed to use our own photos to come up with a large backdrop sign to hang up in our farmers market booth. We hadn’t gathered as a farm family to discuss logo, colors, slogans, anything. All we had was our farm name and a few homemade cliparts. 

I found a cool font and made a pretty, farmy brown sign with white and blue trim. I added our farm name and city (it’s a famous small town, plus we planned to attend a farmers market out of state and we wanted shoppers to know where we were from), and then I wanted to come up with a slogan. Not too wordy. Personal. Truthful. It was a big purchase for us back then and we were brand-new to farming. I didn’t want to mess it up by putting on some statement that might change.

Here’s what I came up with in my rookie year of marketing:

“From our family to yours.” 

Ug. If ever there were a hijacked phrase, it’s that one. You hear it so often these days that you don’t even hear it at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that on several major grocery store billboards in years since. Was it Kroger? I can’t remember now. So much for being original. And to think if I had hired a marketing agency to come up with that slogan it would have run me upwards of $10,000! For a handful of meaningless words. Not because I didn’t mean them. But because giant corporations were trying to make it sound like they were still a mom and pop just like the mom and pop in your neighborhood. 

(Now there’s nothing inherently virtuous about a mom and pop business just like there’s nothing inherently evil about being a large corporation. Different topic entirely, so let’s try to stick to the main point here, which is: Marketing should NOT be about making a company into something it isn’t.)

That phrase was 100% true when I printed it on that sign. It was our family there at market, week in and week out, selling to other families. Even today, our shoppers have all met at least one family member, if not nearly all of them! I’ve never met a family member of Kroger’s CEO that I know of. It is that kind of misleading use of such a phrase that makes it sound so wishy-washy when I use the exact same phrase with such genuine intentions. Today’s marketing is awash with empty phrases just like that. I guess I thought that’s how it is supposed to be done. I have learned better since then what people are really looking for. At least our kind of people!

I would have done better to choose some meaningful practice descriptors, or perhaps just a summary of the products we grow. Maybe even just a nice photo of our family with the cows. Forget the empty slogan! People need to know who you are. YOU.

There’s just something different about buying from a small business. A cupcake company, a coffee shop, a farm… Somehow, ESPECIALLY a farm… 

You want to hear from the FARMER, don’t you? The farmer (or his wife/son/daughter/dad/mom/uncle) needs to be composing the copy for his farm. However raw and riddled with typos it may be. Hopefully it’s reasonably legible. Farmers are smart people. And they probably have a family member or two that can proofread a few paragraphs in a hurry. We’re always in a hurry. But we always get the critters fed. One takeaway from the conference was, “You make sure those animals are fed and watered everyday, don’t you? You need to treat your marketing the same way.” 

I had a couple of fellow farmers approach me during the conference, either suggesting that I try outsource marketing to AI, or stating that they were considering doing so since they really felt they didn’t have the skills to do all that writing themselves. I may have shocked them with my response, but I told them all what I’m telling you. Customers, at least those bold enough to exit the supermarket model of eating, want authentic communication as much as they want authentic food. AI can never do that for you. Sure, let it write code or come up with a synonym so you don’t have to walk to the bookshelf to crack open that dusty old thesaurus (make sure you check the real definition of the words before you use them!). But don’t let it try to make a personality for your farm. Your words need a voice. Unlike my dumb Kroger slogan.

I have given seminars on how to get started and I’d be glad to help you if you’re a farmer struggling with how to get started. I can’t do it for you. Just like I can’t build your fences or deliver your orders or feed your chickens. But if you’re a farmer, you’ve got it in you to find a way. 

And since most of you reading aren’t farmers, now you know our stance on the latest ethical dilemma of our time. Hope you like the fact that it means you’ll get sporadic, rambling newsletters that are punctuated with interruptions by phone calls, homeschool questions, and random minor farm disasters, hah! I do try to read back through my jabberings to make sure the dots are mostly connected…

Now that my soapbox is getting weary from all the stomping… I have a question for you: 

*** (End of completely optional background story for the in-a-hurry-readers.)

Am I crazy? Am I the old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud poo-pooing the newest technology? I’d like to hear from our CUSTOMERS on your thoughts on AI generated content coming from our farm. And no… I think it’s safe to say, just as we are committed to grass-finishing our cattle and rotating our chickens on pasture… I am committed to writing 100% of my own content (or at least using actual consenting and participating human writers–perhaps my children someday, or a guest writer here and there? Matt even occasionally dictates an article for me!). I feel the authenticity of content is part and parcel to authentic farming. 

I want to prove it to other farmers if I’m right (or prove it to myself if I’m wrong… and then perhaps I will hang up my writer’s hat for good… or not!). Will you, my loyal customer, take a few minutes to participate in this survey? With the results, I plan to reconstruct this article and present it to the APPPA bimonthly magazine for publication so other farmers can hear from real farm customers about what they really want and expect. I haven’t seen survey results like it yet (although I haven’t really looked). I’ll be interested in reading your feedback. 

We want your opinion! Do YOU want Artificial Intelligence to aid in farm marketing and communication? Please take our brief survey here. It should take 6-10 minutes or less. It’s all yes/no questions. No essays required 🙂