22 Jul, 2008
Can Social Media and Web2.0 save Agriculture and Environment?
Posted by: dean In: eExtension
I just had the opportunity to present a workshop at the National and Trans-Tasman Horticultural Science Conference on eExtension i.e. the use of Social Media and Web2.0 in Sustainable Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, and the Environment.
After some explanations and introductions we had about 25 huddled around laptops creating wordpress blog, subscribing to rss feeds, blogging on twitter, checking out seesmic and a whole lot more. The participants were scientists and extension officers from around Australia and New Zealand. The challenges facing agriculture and the environment are no secret, however not everyone would realise that extensists are a rare breed working hard to support farmers and others with good science and knowledge to make industry profitable and sustainable.
The group spoke about some of the challenges of extension like rising cost of travel, shortage of resources, and difficulties in sharing information. My presentation proposed that Social Media and Web2.0 are very suitable tools for sharing and creating sustainable agriculture knowledge.
However I am keen to know what Social Media specialists think.
If you are a blogger, podcaster, twitter freak, sultan of seesmic, what are your thoughts? Leave a comment, if you think you have social media strategies to help save agriculture and environment and would be prepared to participate in a podcast?
If you think eExtension has an important role in Sustainable Agriculture and caring for the Environment I’d love to hear from you too.
