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UC Cooperative Extension leader to 'Tweet' from White House garden on Friday
Follow the event in real time from 5 a.m. to 12 noon Pacific Time on Twitter using the tag #whgarden.
White House Social is a series of in-person meetings of people who engage with the White House through social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Hayden-Smith has followed Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and the White House on Twitter since Obama's election in 2008. She won the invitation after entering a contest that asked contestants to describe in 140 characters why they wanted to visit the White House garden.
"I'm really excited to be part of this,” said Hayden-Smith, who is also a UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Ventura County, specializing in 4-H youth, family and community development. "The fact that the Obamas are cultivating a food-producing garden on the grounds of the White House says really wonderful things about our country. The First Family is showing its concern about the health of Americans and reducing childhood obesity. That's something we at UC Cooperative Extension care a great deal about.”
Hayden-Smith Tweets as "Victory Grower” (@victorygrower) a persona she created to reflect her interest in a national revival of the Victory Garden movement, in which increasing food production was considered vital to bolstering national security by creating a more secure food supply.
"It's a different 'victory' now, but many of the goals are the same," Hayden-Smith said. "Gardens connect people with food and food production. Food is fundamental. It's what everyone shares in common. As we are entering a more challenging era of increased population and pressure on resources, it is vital for people to understand how to cultivate food.”
Hayden-Smith travels to Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Oct. 17. On Thursday, she and her colleague Rachel Surls (@rachelsurls), UCCE advisor in Los Angeles County, will tour urban garden projects in the nation's capital. They will be Tweeting about their tour on Thursday afternoon using the tag #urbanag.
Though not an official part of White House Social, Surls will have a brief tour of the White House Kitchen Garden on Friday. She will Tweet on Friday using the tag #whgarden.
Surls and Hayden-Smith are joining with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources to promote urban agriculture in California, an effort that is expected to generate multiple benefits. Gardening provides a way for people to be physically active, to improve food access, to increase fruit and vegetable consumption and to reconnect people with agriculture.
Following are background articles related to Victory Grower and urban agriculture efforts:
- Victory Gardens: A boon in hard times
- Summon us to service
- Kitchen table memories
- Urban Agriculture: A good model then, a good model now
- On the future of food
- UC helps you design your landscape and eat it, too
- Outlook: UC's land-grant mission fuels nation's growth, prosperity
- Setting agricultural science strategy in tumultuous economic times
Farmers tell their stories with social media
Frustration at being the targets of technologically savvy environmental and animal rights groups has inspired farmers to get involved with social media communications outlets like Facebook and Twitter, according to an Associated Press article by Julianna Barbassa.
"There is so much negative publicity out there, and no one was getting our message out," Denair dairy farmer Ray Prock Jr. told Barbassa. Prock writes blog posts and tweets regularly on everything from emergency drills for handling manure spills to lactose intolerance. On his blog, Prock said he took up the pen because he is tired of having someone else tell his story.
Besides giving them a voice, farmers are finding that social media can help them build community and share valuable information. One source of information is the Facebook and Twitter pages developed by UC viticulture specialist Matt Fidelibus and UC Cooperative Extension viticulture advisor Steve Vasquez. Last week, for example, Fidelibus' Twitter followers learned that swarms of small flying insects in a Parlier vineyard resembled leaf hoppers but turned out to be false chinch bugs.The AP article said the duo started using social media as a way to get important information to grape growers quickly — if the risk of powdery mildew on grapevines was high for a particular region, farmers could react in time, for example. In fact, Fidelibus tweeted on July 1, "Parlier Grape Powdery Mildew RAI threshold on 07/01/10 is 70. For additional SJV locations visit http://ow.ly/2603J."
A tool like Facebook, Barbassa wrote, also allows farmers to share photos or video. They can post an image of something problematic and get advice from experts like Fidelibus or each other immediately.
A photo gallery on the San Joaquin Valley Viticulture Facebook page.
