person that buys the grass that is important. It’s the person on the golf course or in the stands. Without the game, or those people wanting a nice natural grass surface, your buyer is going to spend his money on something else. We all ultimately work for the consumer.”
“Te problem we have influencing the consumer is that they don’t understand what we do. Ten we try to tell them in our own vernacular and the environmental working groups and Green Peace use it against us. Tey’ll never understand what we do. It’s like beer, sex and ice cream—my wife says I’m an expert in two of them.” Damian then told about a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream plant tour. He was the only factory farmer and dairy farmer in the group of 24. One lady was upset that they were getting caramel out of a barrel. She had no idea where caramel came from. “Ice cream, turfgrass or meat—they are grossed out by how we make stuff.”
Social media is adding another whole dynamic. We can put out an instructional video on YouTube that might be watched by 500 people. A dancing cat video is viewed 13 million times. People get concerned about things they don’t need to. “Seven-tenths of one percent of the population is gluten intolerant—last year Dr. Oz made a general statement that eating wheat is going to kill you. Only two percent of the population is allergic to peanuts and an airline has banned peanuts throughout their system.” After a line of jokes about those, Damian talked about color blindness and continued with some shtick on that topic. Having grown up on a farm, raising livestock and showing animals in 4-H and enjoying meat, I really chuckled at one of his lines. “Indignant lady, ‘How can you eat beef from an animal you’ve raised from a calf?’ Simple reply, ‘with a fork.’”
Te 89 seat Merchant Amphitheatre at the Heldrich Hotel was nearly filled for Damian Mason’s Keynote address at the TPI 2017 Summer Program.
Damian offered many other examples of specific groups and politicians using all sorts of concerns to attempt to control people’s lives. Te information about what is good and what is bad keeps changing, on average every 5 years. In 1980, the first year of the president’s health campaign we had five percent obesity. It’s now at 37 percent. What does that say about information and regulation. Te ag business is not about the food pyramid, hasn’t been for 50 years. We need to stress specialization, purpose needs, esteem needs, love and affection needs, security needs, and physiological needs from the tip of the pyramid going down. Start at the bottom with physiological, food, water, shelter and clothing and move up to security needs. “Learn how to fight—take lessons from the National Rifle Association.”
“Stop the cheap food argument—what we’re doing is still 1950s. In America, we only spend eight percent of our income on food. Help all ag make what we do special. Tink premium paid for organic food, Starbucks fair trade, tofu hot dogs, craft beer, etc. Sell feelings, not facts. Use patriotism and natural. We need to keep the message simple. Twenty-six percent of Americans don’t know that the earth revolves around the sun.”
“Agriculture is important because starvation sucks. If you eat it, drink it, or smoke it agriculture produced it. Natural grass is good for the environment. What are we losing when we remove it?” Consumers pay more for other natural items. Let’s get them thinking that natural grass is needed and rally them to support its use.
Damian Mason draws the crowd into his passion for helping grow the positive perception of agriculture.
TPI Turf News September/October 2017
Steve Trusty is co-editor of Turf News. All photos by Steve Trusty
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