Farming industry embraces Twitter

It’s hard to open a newspaper or watch the news without hearing mention of Twitter.

It is a free service which has become an internet phenomenon by allowing people to share short messages– a maximum of 140 characters. The basic premise is that you “follow” interesting people and people “follow” you.

But what, you might be thinking, has this got to do with farming? Well, farming organisations and producers are starting to get involved in Twitter to talk about farming issues.

There are already quite a lot of people from the US doing it and it is good to compare notes with what is going on elsewhere.

But if you want to stay closer to home there are some UK-based ones too. Here is Farmers Weekly’s guide to 15 farm and rural based people on Twitter.

FarmersWeekly (684 followers)
Heather Gorringe – farmer’s wife and Wiggly Wigglers (411 followers)
Soil Association  (295 followers)
Commission for Rural Communities (268 followers)
Organic Farmers and Growers (174 followers)
Caroline Stocks, FW deputy news editor (162 followers)
Museum of English Rural Life (127 followers)
Johann Tasker, FW chief reporter  (112 followers)
The Pink Pigs – organic pig farmers  (98 followers)
Philip Gorringe – farmer (53 followers)
Matthew Naylor, farmer and FW columnist (48 followers)
Harper Adams  (42 followers)
Jonathan Riley, FW news editor (45 followers)
Stephen Clarkson, ex-dairy farmer working in organic certification  (28 followers)
Tim Teague – farmer (22 followers)

Are you on Twitter and we’ve missed you out? Drop us a message and we can add you to the list.