Department does MORE during National Agriculture Week
It’s been a fantastic National Agriculture Week! Earlier this week, Governor Greitens officially proclaimed March 18-24, 2018, as National Agriculture Week in Missouri. The agriculture industry showed up in a big way through events, online promotion and tons of energy.
At the Department, our events were extremely successful and our social media campaign reached more than 100,000 people. The added bonus was that many other Missouri state agencies helped reinforce the importance of agriculture through their social media accounts as well. This is another example of Missouri government’s “one team, one mission” approach.
In Missouri, a staggering one in five children is food insecure. In rural Missouri, that number changes to one in three children. We used our passion to feed MORE and hosted our own food collection, resulting more than 125 peanut butter jars destined for the Buddy Pack Program. To support our efforts, the Missouri Department of Economic Development will match our peanut butter donation with a donation of jelly. As Rob Dixon, Director of Economic Development, put it “agriculture and economic development go together like peanut butter and jelly. ”
Under the reach MORE pillar, the Department hosted the “Show Me YOUR Ag” employee photo contest, showcasing our staff’s pride in agriculture. The submissions included selfies with livestock, photos of staff when they were children on the farm, shots of staff enjoying Missouri ag products, and images of them working in the field. More than 50 people from our team participated in the contest, and it was really neat to see how they see themselves as part of agriculture. We’ll be sharing some of these photos on social media in the coming w
We want to send a big thank you to everyone in agriculture, our partners in state government and our employees for making this an ag week we won’t soon forget.
