Members of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation Communications & Public Relations Department recently received the Best Media Relations Event award from American Farm Bureau Federation.
Jon Kalahar, Alex Lowery and Karen Miller were recognized during the AFBF Communications Conference in Omaha, Nebraska, for their media relations work on the Noxubee County Farm Bureau Farm Safety Fund Media Day.
“Communicators at the state level are integral to the mission of Farm Bureau,” said AFBF President Zippy Duvall. “These professionals help ensure we are closely linked to our grassroots members and serve as critical partners highlighting the important work farmers and ranchers do each day, allowing us to be a powerful voice of agriculture across the country.”
The award entry can be found below:
While the number of workplace fatalities on American farms has declined over the last 20 years, grain bin entrapment deaths have not, reaching an all-time high in 2010 with 31 deaths related to grain-entrapment incidents. The Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation works every day to spread awareness to prevent these incidents and provide agriculture workers and first responders with training to improve rescue techniques.
In 2013, MFBF started a campaign to combat the rising number of accidents involving grain engulfment by contracting with a professor in Iowa who had access to a portable grain entrapment simulator. MFBF’s safety team and field staff coordinated and organized grain bin safety and extraction trainings throughout the state using this simulator. Through a private grant program, MFBF purchased the first portable grain engulfment simulator in the mid-south in 2015. Since then, MFBF has conducted hundreds of training sessions for farmers and first responders in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
By performing these training sessions throughout Mississippi, local farmers and first responders gain a greater understanding of the dangers of grain entrapments and rescue methods. Seeing the positive difference this information and equipment can make in a community, Noxubee County Farm Bureau established the Noxubee County Farm Safety Fund in 2021 to raise money to provide local emergency responders with the education and equipment needed to make a successful grain bin safety rescue.
In July 2021, MFBF assisted the county Farm Bureau in hosting a Farm Safety Fund Media Day to discuss the importance of farm safety, the purpose of the Noxubee County Farm Bureau Farm Safety Fund, recognize the sponsors of the fund and present local first responders with new equipment to perform a grain bin safety rescue. Prior to the event, MFBF sent a media advisory to the local news outlets, including The Macon Beacon, The Daily Clarion and WCBI – Your News Leader.
On the day of the event, two news outlets attended. The WCBI – Your News Leader story can be found here: https://www.wcbi.com/noxubee-co-first-responders-received-new-tools-for-farm-rescue. Media outlets that did not attend published the press release MFBF sent out following the event. The story published to MFBF’s website about the event can be found here: https://msfb.org/2021/07/27/noxubee-county-farm-bureau-hosts-farm-safety-fund-media-day/.
MFBF also published two social media posts – consisting of a link to the MFBF event story and photos of the event – about the event, resulting in a total reach of 3,511 people and total engagement of 422 (reactions, comments and shares) on MFBF’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages combined.