Is Education Working? Is it The Answer?
I decided this canola season to try something. A targeted social media campaign to help our farmers. Last year I watched in horror so many farmers livelihoods had been put at risk by selfish instagrammers chasing the fields of gold.
Canola and crops costs farmers tens of thousands of dollars to put in. They need to buy seed each year, fertiliser, upgrade or fix machinery, diesel fuel and pesticides. They pay for agronomist to check their crops for disease and pests that will decimate their livelihoods and downgrade crops. They then PRAY for rain over the winter and early spring months. If they are lucky they get to use their half a million ($500k) mortgaged or loaned machines to harvest their crops, they then pay a royalty to the company that produced the seed, pay for transport and then storage/silage and a percentage to land owners if they share farm. A few months later the get paid for a years hard work to make their annual income to pay bills and support their families for the next year.
For some if they break even they are doing well. Many are taking HUGE losses. But the heartbreak is not the drought or the weather. It’s the thousands of people that climb into crops. Social media, influencers and photographers are the new breed of pests.
What people don’t understand is it is multigenerational farming families not multinational corporations they are impacting. So many farmers in the last few weeks are leaving there farms. what’s left of crops being destroyed by lack of rain and people. Instagram has become a serious issue!!
This season, we embarked on a social media campaign. Our own social media accounts attract more than 10k followers, but it’s the influencer effect of our own social media accounts to send the right message. Facebook post showing the videos of what happens when you post a canola photo, Instagram posts and stories promoting education and sending the right message. The result was we gained so many re-shares, landscape photographers from around Australia joined the fight and posting messages of the concern. If a photographer posted a photo, they shared the message they did not gain illegal access to the farms, they shot from the fences. Is this actually the right answer?
To say I am so proud of the landscape community is an understatement. If someone did the wrong thing, people started to say “hey you’ve just jeopardised a families livelihood”, HUB accounts asked where the images were taken, they didn’t mark locations and they asked questions and or have not shared canola images at all. With an entire community and the right people in HUBs the message got out and the result is seemingly less images of people doing the wrong thing. It could be them not geotagging and or not hash-tagging but if people don’t post images, the hype remains low.
Through the inaminstafamous.au instagram page, we have contacted Instagrammers politely and discreetly, we don’t want to SHAME them, we educate them. I can honestly say in most occasions the people have apologised and removed the post and or added disclaimers… FANTASTIC… A great result. Some have blocked us and or posted negatively in which we have shared posts and the community hasn’t abused them but continued to educate. Typing in canola, many high respected members of the photography community have commented and engaged in conversation. The result… A united industry.
There are many accounts like LeaveNoTrace and others that abuse, shame and preach and its a negative page, are they having impact?… No I don’t believe so… it only makes people dig in there heals and engage trolls.
But the next generation of landscape photographers all sending the right message, not doing it themselves and posting stories and commenting on others posts seems to have had a greater impact and has influenced in our opinion tourism accounts and hubs for the better. The message has been shared by more than a hundred photographers all with varying influence but attracting a target audience of over a million unique people.
Maybe the answer after all is education.! Not shaming but a united industry sharing the right message.