The website for the campaign has a host of resources available for promoters and educators to use when talking about soil health. The website focuses on promoting soil health management strategies by showing educational YouTube videos and printing educational pamphlets.As a soil health promoter I'm always looking for great resources and sites that I can direct people when talking about soil health awareness. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is leading an educational campaign called "Unlock The Secrets In The Soil". This campaign focuses primarily on the importance of soil and soil health management strategies. This quote taken from the websites' mission clearly states their objective."The resources on this soil health section of our site are designed to help visitors understand the basics and benefits of soil health—and to learn about Soil Health Management Systems from farmers who are using those systems."
A few weeks ago I shared a set of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that this campaign put out, which sheds light on the important functions of soil. These PSA's highlighted the amount of biological activity in the soil and the importance of cover crops in regards to soil erosion. These PSA's a just a mirror image of what the USDA is doing to educate people on soil health. When directed to the website, they have a link dedicated to educational materials. I have often used these materials when talking to different groups about soil health. The part that I find the most intriguing is that they have different materials prepared for the selected age group your targeting. I have found that promoting soil health to younger age groups as a difficult task, due to the little understanding of basic soil concepts. But this campaign does a great job to bring soil health content to a younger generation by making it fun and interesting. Below is a graphic that I obtained from the campaign's website that in my opinion demonstrates this point.
Another beneficial tactic that the USDA uses is highlighting successful producers that use these soil health management strategies. This in my opinion this uses the bandwagon persuasion theory. By stating that these producers are successful because they used these management strategies, therefore and you can be successful to by using these strategies. Usually I'm against this form of persuasion, but in this case I think that's the most effective when targeting producers that are weary of making drastic changes to their operation. Producers need real life success stories to feel confident in making these drastic changes to their farming operations. These success stories are really a great tool to target these producers.
But in my opinion this campaign is successful because of their use of YouTube as a promotion resource. They have multiple series that focus on basic soil education and soil health awareness and management strategies. These videos have over 100,000 views which is pretty exciting for soil science. One of the popular series "Soil Health Lesson In A Minute" highlights aspects of soil health in multiple minute lessons. These are very effective in delivering their message in a fast and effective fashion.
Anyone that wants to learn more about soil health or wants resources when promoting soil health this campaign does a great job. I encourage everyone that's interested to go check it out!
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