NAFB Internet Usage Study

The NAFB Internet Usage study has been one of my favorites for a number of reasons: one, because it is backed by people that really care about farming (the NAFB); two, because the study works hard to achieve an accurate distribution of respondents, both in terms of geography and in farm size. And with a sample of 2,225, the results give a pretty accurate picture of what's going on out there.
The numbers for accessing the internet continue to grow: 55% of Farmers access the internet personally, and that number grows to 70% when you look at only $500K+ operations. Approximately 13% of both groups have someone else access it for them, which bumps the numbers to 68% and 83% respectively when it comes to information (what I mean by that is, while they are not exposed to many ads, they might be exposed to online content).

The real eye-opener is the lack of the producer's use of social media. Only 2% use Twitter. Only 5% have ever participated in a blog (posted one or responded to one). Only 5% belong to any online community. And only 13% have ever even been to a social media site (mySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn). When you meet some of these producers face-to-face, believe me, you don't doubt it. Social media is 'sissy' to a lot of them.

Ted Haller, the director of this research and a colleague of mine, said it best: "The real issue with the internet, is that unlike the media analysis of the past, there seems to be more of a willingness to project one's own usage habits on the internet as 'universal' with not a lot of data to back it up. This is a very easy thing to do since agri-marketers have a very high usage level on the internet - maybe even into the 99% range".

I believe it to be a travesty that people who claim to be "marketers", who learned in marketing 101 that we need to understand the target audience, would be so willing to project our city-boy internet habits onto our target group.

Don't get me wrong, I work in the internet field and often recommend online strategies to reach crop and livestock producers. But until I see some reliable data that confirms a critical mass of producers using social media, I'm staying away from it. I recommend you do the same.