Farm Journal was recently named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in the agricultural category “for cultivating a change-making relationship with farmers.” Amy Skoczlas Cole and data are major reasons why.
Skoczlas Cole is president of Farm Journal’s Trust in Food initiative, a purpose-driven business accelerating the adoption of regenerative agriculture across the U.S., and America’s Conservation Ag Movement, “one of the largest and most diverse public-private partnerships in conservation agriculture’s history.”
“You think about us as a media company,” she told me in a Zoom interview recently from her home office in Minnesota. “Yes, we can do communications and outreach. But really, what this award is about is actually Farm Journal as a data company. And so what’s exciting for us is that this is recognition of the power of the data that we have and the power of the data that we have to help all sorts of stakeholders—whether you’re a procurement officer working on the supply chain in a food company or you’re a sustainability officer at a conservation organization. Or you’re a government official.
“What we’re really trying to do is help get data about how farmers make decisions into the right people’s hands so that they can build programs more effectively for them.”
Skoczlas Cole joined Farm Journal after serving as managing director of The Water Main, a social impact enterprise of American Public Media, focused on people getting clean, accessible, affordable water. While there, she launched the farmer-to-farmer sustainable ag podcast “Field Work.”
“And make no mistake,” she reiterated. “Farm journal is a data company. It is hand in hand with our media properties. So we have this incredible advantage. Right? Like, on one hand, we reach just about every farmer in the United States. And, on the other hand, everything that we learn through that becomes data and information for us. So we’ve got these two really powerful strands of work that feed off of each other.”
Skoczlas Cole credits new CEO Prescott Shibles—the announcement of his hiring came exactly a year ago—for much of the success. “Prescott really came on board to complete our transformation to being a data and information company. We’ve done a lot of hiring and are finding the talent that we need. Because in our world we want people who are well-versed in agriculture and well-versed in data analytics. And so I wasn’t sure. But we are finding those folks as we grow.
“It feels to me, like many positions across the company are going to be using data and information to help them get their jobs done, if that makes sense. So we’re finding the people that we need right now in the specialization that we have. And we’re really trying to help our staff build this into their job. Even if their job isn’t data analytics today, it has a piece of that.”
That means digital advertising teams are using proprietary data more and more to optimize their campaigns, giving them “a leg up in the marketplace. Because we have data that others don’t,” she added.
And, of course, content benefits as well. “Our editorial team loves getting the data and information that we can share. They are great journalists that are pretty savvy about weaving in data as additional sources, additional proof points into their storytelling.”
Wrote Fast Company: “For 2023, Farm Journal‘s initiative Trust in Food tapped into its grower database—the country’s largest—to study the links between farmers’ attitudes, behaviors, interests, and values and their willingness to voluntarily switch to climate-smart growing practices.” The initiative will continue in full force with Skoczlas Cole leading it.
“It’s nice when you see the good that you can do and the business benefit from it, going hand in hand,” she said. “And so our work here is really about, how do we make sure that agriculture can evolve the way that it needs to to stay the competitive powerhouse that it is.”
