Activist groups and groups disguised as “authorities” on agricultural issues often use manipulative persuasive fear appeals in ways that impacts many segments of the agricultural industry negatively.
Recently, I wrote about these types of fear tactics used by Only Organic (an activist organization that shares an office floor in Washington with the Environmental Working Group and is funded by corporations in the organic food industry), which is doing a big fear-mongering campaign against conventional agriculture called “Skip the Chemicals.”
Their fear tactics had Facebook lit up by encouraging consumers to only buy organic, deleting comments that disagreed with their points, and ignoring fairly common scientific facts easily found with a Google search!
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We must build trust through feelings and common ground, connect on shared values, logic, personal experience, and more. That’s when facts are much more readily accepted.
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Science communication is so important, and we must go to the source, stop the fear-based marketing and raise awareness on why it’s out there, and check out popular hashtags that debunk these myths like #factsnotfear.
I am but one small piece of this effort, but I am driven to make a difference!
