The power of social media and new technologies to help agribusiness better position itself in urban society.

According to the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA), last year, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the Brazilian agribusiness advanced 24.31%, compared to the previous year, and had participation of 26,6% in the country's GDP – in 2019, it was 20.5%. This represented, in monetary terms, almost R$ 2 trillion – Brazilian GDP totaled R$ 7.45 trillion in 2020.

Brazilian agriculture in 2021 fed 1.5 billion people, that is, one in every 4 people in the world consumed our food, all of this in a very competitive and above all sustainable agriculture. We use only 30.2 TP3T of our territory for agriculture: 21.2% for pastures, 1.2% for planted forests and 7.8% for agriculture. We have 66.3% of our country still protected and of that total 25.6% are preserved by the farmers themselves, thanks to a modern and active environmental legislation.

We have a farmer whose average age is getting younger and younger, and this facilitates the adoption of technologies, which brings more and more productivity, greater environmental preservation and greater social impact to all involved. The ESG issue is increasingly on the agenda of our agribusiness and this has become a booklet followed by all of us players in the sector.

The big problem is that we are unable to inform and communicate with society about how we produce food and we have to fight lies and untruths about how we do this production at all times. Discussions are made in a senseless and immature way and the main reason for this is the democratization of social media. 

And unlike many, who want to silence social media to control the narrative, I am in favor of this democratization, which gives everyone the ability to express their opinion, as I am doing here in this article. 

But how can we improve our influence and how can we break our “bubble” to reach our population with facts and data. I always see people from the city criticizing farmers for the use of agrochemicals and forgetting that we are one of the biggest consumers of medicines without medical prescription, I see people from the city criticizing how we preserve our forests and without charging the authorities about the open sewers that run in our cities, that is, people from large centers dominate communication and it is much easier to accuse than to have a more critical view of oneself.

  In a recent study, I was curious to find out how many followers Brazilian agribusiness companies had on their social media. I took the largest crop protection companies, the largest cooperatives and the largest distributors, as shown in the tables below.

If we take the sum of all the followers of these 3 sectors, we will have 11.3 million people and that is certainly with people who follow several of these companies like me, who follow most of them, that is, this number is much smaller than that reflected in these pictures.

Just for the sake of comparison, there is a large digital influencer in Brazil that has children and teenagers in its audience, a platform with 43 million followers on Youtube alone, that is almost 4 times the total number of people from the main players in agribusiness, and many sometimes without any authority to speak about agribusiness, he makes videos and publications criticizing our sector without any scientific study and throws untruths and false accusations at the sector. As an example, we have several articles on which Brazil is the largest consumer of agrochemicals in the world without knowing that here, unlike countries with a temperate climate, we have 2 to 3 harvests per year, that is, the fight against pests, diseases and weeds it is much more difficult, or the fallacies about the increase of CO2 by the flatulence of our cattle.

As much as we do competitive and sustainable agriculture, it will be difficult to fight against this narrative of misinformation and attack on our business. It would not be difficult for digital influencers to research the works of Embrapa, universities such as USP/ESALQ, UNESP or listen to authorities such as Dr Evaristo de Mirando or Dr Gustavo Spadotti who have images, data and know Brazilian agribusiness like no one else in the world and in help publicize how powerful, competitive and the most brilliant sector of our economy our agribusiness is, but misinforming and attacking is much easier and seems to reverberate more.

My conclusion is that today “we evangelize those who are already evangelized”, that is, we talk about how we produce, how we respect nature and the rules established for those who already know agribusiness. Sometimes the communication that we want to impose can sound heavy to someone who doesn't belong to the sector, like the one that a big television network did here in Brazil: “Agro is pop. Agro is tech” which I thought was fantastic, for being from the sector, but it could be a little arrogant or arrogance.

Sometimes, out of malice or ideology, people attack our agribusiness. We have a productive agribusiness, we are in the top 10 in most foods consumed on the planet, only the farmer preserves 25% of the national territory and where we have agriculture we have the highest HDI indices in Brazil (Green and blue on the map), and also the lowest unemployment rate are also in these areas. 

But what to do in the face of all these adversities we face when communicating with the market?

– Increase our presence on social media and seek simpler, more transparent and less arrogant communication

– We interact more with these digital influencers and seek their support and support with facts and data

– Greater interaction in schools showing the impacts of our agriculture on the economy, the environment and the social aspect. 

– Greater dissemination and help from the sector in the distribution of explanatory books such as Nicholas Vital, Marcos Fava, Xico Graziano, which should be in all Brazilian schools. The books are true encyclopedias and in simple language to help understand our agribusiness.

We cannot wait for someone or some “divine” being to come and help with this, we need to mobilize and start acting as sector players, and here I report an example of what happened in 2017, where a group of friends who work in the agro universe, find it very difficult to obtain relevant and unbiased information about good practices in agriculture, they created YouAgro. 

This agribusiness startup is a social network where users can exchange professional experiences and have access to relevant content. The community, research institutions and companies, share relevant information in an impartial and collaborative way and its main objective is to offer a safe environment focused on what really matters, finding ways to obtain good profitability in its activity, in a sustainable way.

Although people have occupied spaces and spend countless hours on social networks, the flow of irrelevant content is very intense. In addition to chain letters and fake news, we are constantly bombarded with purchase announcements, suggestions and data collection. Instead of navigating smoothly and really connecting and exchanging experiences, the networks have become environments for inviting likes, comments and likes that really have no meaning.

The world is increasingly concerned about how our food is produced and the likely impacts on the environment and rural communities. Thus, consumers, students, farmers, researchers and professionals in the food production chain need to be tuned in and well-informed.

Just like this group of professionals or the renowned writers I mentioned here, our role is to bring the best information to our community, through the most diverse channels and formats and social media and new technologies are strong allies for our purpose.