Genetics (and other AgTech categories) needs better messaging. Here's a plan to help.

I have spent some time talking to growers and genetics providers at multiple events the past couple of months. One of my current reads on the space is that if you take a 40,000 foot view of AgTech across some of the key segments, for some of them messaging is potentially as or more important than actual product. Take genetics, for example. In many cases the products are fine and getting better with a solid product roadmap of features yet to be built and launched. However, the messaging could stand to up it's game. Why do I say that?

Let's start with a look at one of the more controversial areas of AgTech - the crossover segment of genetically modified organisms (GMO) and gene editing. At ASTA there were multiple panels and presentations around innovation and this topic came up a lot because different regions and countries handle this space differently. There have been labeling requirements by countries and bans by other countries. The early work during the emergence of GMO by the food activist community was used to label the new foods "Frankenfoods."

Many in the food-tech space and genetics space, including Ohalo CEO Dave Freidberg, now acknowledge that the production system's unwillingness to engage in a dialogue left them with a quality product that was truly innovative losing not because of product quality but because of fearmongering by the food activist community.

In short, many of the innovators ceded the battleground around GMOs to the activists and either started working with different genetic innovations or worked on different types of innovations to evolve food production. One of the ways forward was to start to educate regulators and customers on the alternatives to what the activists called GMOs with a new category called gene editing. Now it gets technical quickly, and I will get out of my depth about as quickly, but here is the short version. If genetics are evolved in a way that could be done with time tested genetics tools and with no foreign materials introduced, products are generally under the gene editing category, which has fewer regulations and not nearly the mindshare challenges of GMO. In short, if you could evolve food the way the gene editing does, but gene editing merely speeds up the transition to new genetics, that is allowed. However, if there are foreign materials introduced, it quite often falls under the GMO category and can be banned or subject to label requirements.

Here is why I believe this is primarily a messaging opportunity and one that ag will want to get right. There are going to be a lot of additional innovations in genetics and other tech segments. The interesting thing is that some of the limited progress on GMO usage came when some alternative protein manufacturers with big plans (who used GMO) were using GMO soy beans as one of the core ingredients. You would think the activist community would have branded this as Franken-food Part Duex and crushed the alt-protein manufacturers. But no – instead because the alt-protein companies were sign as a potential conqueror of the livestock industry (particularly beef cattle), all of a sudden the GMO activists stood down and were fine with GMO products in their food products. It was an important lesson to learn in taking on the activists. Now it didn’t do much to the alt-protein categories long-term prognosis and the space remains an over-funded and over-hyped dumpster fire of a food-tech segment (and we have them to thank, err, blame for part of the venture capital crunch we are facing - along with their vertical farming friends), but their ability to develop messaging that got them out of GMO jail was a fascinating case study. Here is what it tells me going forward about innovations in ag and food:

1)?????? There are going to continue to be activists around many of the key innovation segments, particularly now that we have had a round or two of alternative proteins, GMOs, gene editing solutions, and solutions that can complement chemical inputs to make them more efficient and require less usage. In many cases, the technology will have data behind it, customer stories behind it, and quality metrics around health, nutrition, and production quality. In those cases, the company with the innovation has to strategically plan on investing heavily in marketing. This will not be an entirely welcome development to potential investors in the space, and will require some extra burn rate be spent on the messaging platforms and execution, but in many cases this will absolutely be the best approach.

Think of this as an investment that benefits the whole space. Every time a product comes to market and has to address the GMO v gene editing v whatever, they're actually spending a lot of time discussing items that do not move the sales motion forward. It's a distraction and adds length to the sales cycle. If we were doing it again and had a mulligan, I firmly believe that the folks around the genetics side of innovation would have pushed back longer and harder and earlier on Franken-food. We don't get a mulligan unfortunately - this is real life. But we do get a do-over on future products in the category.

2)?????? The specific marketing to be done should be done on a few major platforms to a few major target audience segments. The first big platform is social media. We need to meet younger audiences, who are amenable to new data and will react with their purchasing decisions. I have 5 kids – 4 in their twenties and a teenager – and their generation invests far more product research into purchasing decisions in the food space then prior generations ever have. Partly because they can, yes (it’s easier than ever with the internet and social media accounts to follow in addition to core search and emerging Gen AI tools), but partly because they choose to make the investment. We have always said we want educated consumers and now we have a full generation plus of them and we’re not doing the best job of reaching out to them. We need to take ownership of the 20-something food buyers and help them understand the benefits of gene editing and GMO and identify and quantify the risks versus the benefits in plain sight with transparency.

If our products can’t stand up to the scrutiny, we don’t have a chance of getting the buyers to trust us and the new innovative products we want to build over the next few decades. But if the products can stand up to 20-something scrutiny, messaging can not only help them feel comfortable with trialing the new food products, it can also help them become positive advocates for the food products and help re-enforce industry messaging through their own complementary messaging. The 20-something crowd loves to score points by identifying early products before their peers, and so helping them identify new options can be a win for both sides. As important, the messaging can bring us back to the table for future discussions around new innovations instead of tiptoeing away quietly and trying to avoid a social media mob. If we are afraid to engage in support of the new food products we innovate on, then we risk activists being able to own the messaging around our products, and that is a losing position, particularly given what we have learned the past few decades. Great products need great marketing, and great marketing deserves marketing campaigns that show off the strengths and consumer wins from the new innovative products.

3)?????? There is more to this exercise than product marketing and messaging. We (the genetics and food manufacturers and the growers and advocates) find the right messengers. Social media has a few players in our space with significant followings – Shay Myers of Owyhee Produce (farm kid Shay) and Kaitlyn Thornton (aka Apple Girl Kait) are two I know who have large Instagram followings. They speak to 20-somethings the way they want to listen – in video, in sound bites, with data and logic that go beyond the sound bite, and regularly. They admit where the industry has had challenges, and advocate for it proudly with no apologies. They are authentic and real voices. There are others, but never enough. The 20-somethings they are reaching will be buying food for 50-60 years or more, particularly if they buy the healthy food provided by specialty crop genetics and growers. Let’s win them early so we can have them for life. Are there folks in your crop category or food category who have authentic voices and can help you share your message with new potential buyers and consumers?

There are other voices that reach out to audiences beyond the 20-somethings on additional platforms. The Discovery Ag podcast, hosted by Tara Vander Dussen and Natalie Kovarik, does a great job of talking about ag in a way that seems like it is attracting a new and non-ag audience to engage and learn more. Food producers have two choices. Find someone in social and podcasting they can engage with, preferably more than one. Or, if that isn't going to work, you need to work on building your own Shay, Kaitllyn, Tara, or Natalie. And if you're going to go that way, you better get moving because it takes a while to build your brand, your following, and your street cred. You need to head that direction way before you want to try to sell anything.

This brings me to one of my emerging really important points. When we advocate for ag and are looking for advocates to join us in the arms race that is ag v food activist, we need to do a better job of identifying advocates who feel comfortable being uncomfortable. Those of you who know me that I am so comfortable being uncomfortable it's almost my normal state of being. What do I mean by that? You have to be willing to take on topics directly and ask the tough question, then listen for answers and attack their weakness with conviction. For example, it would be really easy when advocating for new genetics to just try and skirt past the GMO discussion and stay in the gene editing swim lane. But long term we need people on all sides of these conversations to understand that GMO and genetic modifications have contributed a lot to the food conversation and food supply over the past few decades. They are a positive evolution and have some risks. But we need to be fair asking someone who squeals "Eeek! GMO!" "tell me what makes you uncomfortable about that topic?"

I have this conversation a lot - no more than that - even more than that - yeah, about that often on a variety of tough topics. My experience is for a lot of the "Eek! GMO!" crowd their rationale goes about 2 sentences deep so if you're willing to ask them to tell you more, you should just grab some popcorn, give them a microphone, and start taking notes or even pressing record. Way too many (and I mean way too many) are limited to only emotional arguments and can't bring real data to the conversation. It's uncomfortable but very rewarding to expose this reality to them 1-on-1 (and I rather enjoy doing it in group setting these days because that way it scales beyond 1-to-1). For decades, food activists have fearmongered their way into "winning" arguments that are really just won for fear of cancellation or social media shaming. We need to stop that, and the only way to stop that is to advocate with people who are uncomfortable AND (equally important) have the data and know how to articulate it effectively.

4) One of the things we need to do is great content marketing. Twenty years ago every e-commerce seller had to have a great strategy around two things - Google AdWords and SEO. Google Adwords were how you purchased keywords to pay for traffic to your view item page or website where visitors could be turned into initial buyers and ideally repeat customers. Making the most of your search engine marketing (SEM) dollars via AdWords were a very successful tool for building up a buyer audience for new players. On the other side, search engine optimization (SEO) was the process of creating great content - often both short form (social media sound bites) and long form (blogs and videos) - that could get indexed by Google and show up high in search results for the right search results. In a perfect world, you owned a niche product (like pool tables), did a great job of building content for SEO, and then complemented that with cost-efficient SEM. That would be the trifecta of internet marketing or the Holy Trinity of product and product marketing (product + optimized SEM + optimized SEO).

So if we roll it forward to today, the new trifecta is the innovation itself (the new product - in this post genetics), the right message (why is this new genetics product a better option than current ones?), and the right messenger/platform combo (i.e. is this Shay or Kaitlyn and are you buying ads on Instagram or TikTok? Is this Discovery Ag ads or are you getting on a podcast to reach new buyers directly via the actual pod content, not just the ad space?) The one new wrinkle on genetics is you need scientists that are comfortable being part of the marketing discussion with the ability to walk through the really in-depth technology portion of the conversation. They can be part of the pre-sales team or part of the marketing team or part of the customer support organization but they need to be available to help marketing and product marketing when things get tough and go in-depth.

5)?????? Some of you have likely already guessed point 5. For the rest of you, here we go. The Universities have a key role to play, and by that I mean both the 4 year Universities and the 2 year Community Colleges. Both have a part to play. I see a lot of Community College students at our events at places like Hartnell College, Hancock College, Imperial College, and others. They are open to this messaging, particularly in person. I visit 4 year ag schools regularly – Cal Poly SLO, Fresno State, and UC Davis among them. These are the schools that need to be developing the next generation of great ag communicators that can develop the narratives with facts to support and put messages together that get through the noise and get heard. If Universities can produce graduates that can develop strategy and execution around social media and content marketing, from Instagram to TikTok to YouTube to podcasts, the market is eagerly looking for more of them to help in this space. Ideally they get some hands on experience helping to sell some of the Cal Poly products grown and sold on campus or in local producers and markets. Hands on experience is such a plus one for grower organizations, and the more internships and in the field (and that means dirt field and in super markets and restaurants) experience they have when they walk across the stage in May and June of this year the easier they will find that initial get the career started jobs that they are all looking for (or should be!)

At the same time, we need Environmental Scientists that can do the work of developing and explaining the benefits and risks of the products they are building, and can collaborate with the communicators on messaging. If we don’t have these two groups working together effectively, we lose to the activist groups who do have communicators and scientists working together. Activist groups have been recruiting Environmental Science grads for years. It's time for ag to do an even better job of recruiting them so we can compete on a level playing field.

Finally, community colleges have a role to play. They may not be able to go into as much depth as the 4-year programs, but they should be able to educate their students on the importance of these new platforms and get them familiar with them. Even if they can't do as much hands on or don't have a Cal Poly store experience to get some first-hand experience, they should come out with an AA degree knowing about some of the items above that matter and knowing how they can make some of the magic happen.

Executive Summary

My thoughts on the state of play in genetics (with an eye on the GMO-gene editing topic):

1) Product is not enough. These days, you need great genetics products and great marketing to support it - and you need an answer to the activists that may be interested in doing your messaging for you. That must be avoided - you own your message, nobody else.

2) Marketing is not just about message. You have to figure out where and how to invest in getting that message out there in a way that heads the desired target audience. In many cases, this means not just talking to ourselves. Invest in channels that can get to new buyers. This can be social media like TikTok or Instagram, or podcasts, or videos on YouTube.

3) The key to so much of working may be getting the right messenger to get to your audience in a way that is authentic. Voices like Shay Myers (Farm Kid Shay), Kaitlyn Thornton (Apple Girl Kait), and Tara and Natalie (Discovery Ag) are all big platforms with big voices in the space. Can they help amplify your message to the right audience? Do you need to start to build one of these for your crop or farm marketing efforts?

4) In addition to great content marketing that delivers the right message to the right audiences somewhere they already are, you need some environmental scientists/technical experts to help get the story out there. They are a key part of the go-to market action.

5) Universities and Community Colleges have a big role to play by getting students direct experience in the marketing and messaging activities, starting with awareness of platforms and key players and growing into the direct hands -on experience that every employer finds so valuable during interviews.