Who Gets To Tell Rural America’s Story?

Land O’Lakes Seeks to Partner With Hollywood to Get it Right

Land O’Lakes says Hollywood is getting it wrong when it comes to visually depicting rural America. The company is determined to change the way urban Americans perceive the nation’s rural communities.  By partnering with Getty images and Imagine Entertainment they hope to give rural America a visual makeover that captures the authentic reality of farm families and agricultural communities.  In doing so, Land O’Lakes is aiming to bridge knowledge gaps and foster a more complete understanding of both the blessings and challenges that come with being on the front lines of America’s commodity production.

The Power of a Good Visual in Storytelling

Visuals play a big role in storytelling.  According to Michigan State research, our brains can process an image 60,000 times faster than words or numbers.  We also tend to remember what we see better than what we read because images create an emotional connection quicker than words.  Photographs and illustrations are leveraged millions of times a day to convey large quantities of information as fast as possible or simplify big concepts. 

Unlike other industries, agricultural images are more stereotypical than storytelling. Stock photos are red barns, fields of wheat and spotless green tractors.  It's hard to tell where the farm is or who might live there. As Land O’Lakes CEO, Beth Ford relates, these images are so over simplified they rarely convey the richness of farm life. We’ve relied on stereotypical visuals that fail to capture a farm family’s relationship to nature, how policy helps or hurts their day to day life or what knowledge these small towns possess and how they use it.

If you’re like me, this information is making you pause to think about when you last saw a farming visual that really captured the nuances and layers those of us who work in agriculture know exist in rural America.  Where did the image come from?  Who was telling the story?  Maybe it hit the mark perfectly, or maybe it was another good stock photo we’d expect to see in a collection.  But, I wonder what my city friends would gather from some of the Getty images that pop up when we search rural America.

Rebranding Rural America

It turns out, Hollywood used to do a better job.  Up until the 1970s, television programs did portray life in rural America and urban residents regularly interacted with agricultural themes.  But, as programs shifted in favor of city settings, it left a void.  Most of the country has spent decades filling the gap with stereotypical images that look a lot like the Beverly Hillbillies.  White, undereducated families who are happy to get out of unstable communities that lack sufficient infrastructure.

Whether you love it or hate it, the Yellowstone series engaged America’s urban residents in a way that other visuals haven’t been able to.  We could argue its popularity was in its complexity.  We saw rich cultural heritage that incorporated multiple ethnic groups in different parts of the country, highly educated family members working to protect what they had built so they could pass something on to the next generation and we saw what happens when multiple purposes are vying to use the same piece of land. We got a glimpse into how a state builds policy and how that policy shapes the way agricultural goods are produced.  And we also had to wonder what would happen to a rural community if agriculture left.

Yellowstone gave us lots of issues to debate and ponder, but the success of the show also caused problems for rural Americans.  The romanticized depictions made housing prices skyrocket and boosted tourism in certain areas over agriculture causing pockets of communities to wish the stereotypes had remained in place.  This further supports the idea that it can’t be only Hollywood telling the stories.  They have to originate in rural America if they hope to do more than just win views.

Public Perception of Rural America Matters

Land O’Lakes isn’t aiming for the next hit miniseries, but they are ready to keep the ball rolling when it comes to challenging stereotypical imagery.  Taking the story beyond infrastructure and landscapes into the towns and homes of rural America to tell authentic stories could do more than romanticize ranch life, it could make agriculture and small town living appealing again. The company believes the strategy has enough potential that they sent their own delegates to the Sundance Film Festival to better understand the industry and share their mission of creating a toolkit to help media companies build better imagery.

Farmers, after all, are business men, mechanics, soil scientists, ecologists, vets and accountants depending on what the day requires of them.  They are African American, Hispanic, Native American and white.  They are men and women and families and generational legacies. What they build adds to or strains their local community.  

If a company like Land O’Lakes, a co-op made up of individual family farms and representing all fifty states, can leverage the pulse they have on rural America then Hollywood would be equipped to share richer stories.  A good image can prompt a viewer to change the way they value the subject.  If more Americans value rural communities for their history, diversity and knowledge, then we start to see things like policy shifts, infrastructure investments and young people migrating towards a lifestyle they hold in high esteem.

Is it a lofty goal? Possibly.  But not one that is unrealistic in light of Land O’Lakes’ strategy to foster partnership and make Hollywood an agricultural ally.  Public perception matters for agricultural communities and rural Americans should be part of telling the stories.

I’ll add my two cents, which, as you can imagine, is rooted in the numbers Land O’Lakes has compiled more than imagery.  Of all the counties in the United States, 63% are defined as rural and agricultural.  Roughly 87% of the food you and I consume comes from these counties.  Yet, according to data collected, only 5% of the images you would pull up in a google search are accurately portraying rural America.  The numbers tell a story and that is, we owe it to the people who produce our necessities to get their stories right.