Specialty Crop Growers Unite in Storytelling
By Phyllis Coulter
Illinois Farmer Today
Daniken, however, does plan to take some storytelling skills he learned from Janice Person, the keynote speaker and workshop leader, to promote his farm in the future.
Person, a food and farming blogger active on Twitter, calls herself a “fourth-generation urbanite” — a non-farmer with roots in Memphis, Tennessee. She is immersed in the world of urban moms, foodies and millennials and knows how their experiences may filter messages from farmers.
She recalls the first time she interviewed “Mr. Ray,” a Louisiana cotton farmer. It was a miserable, rainy day and he was talking about soil and roots and conservation tillage. She wasn’t accustomed to writing agriculture stories and was nervous out so far from the city. But to her surprise, “I was captivated,” she said, describing how he pulled out a shovel and showed her soil.