Speaking up for agriculture — Meghan Haws
When Meghan Haws' parents moved her from Noblesville, Indiana, a suburban community, to an 11-acre hobby farm, the third grader was upset. Now a sophomore studying agricultural communication in Purdue's Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication (ASEC) Department, Haws says she “wouldn’t change that move for the world.”
Her family’s farm brought her an unexpected new community. In 4-H, Haws practiced photography and creative writing for 10 years — skills that she still uses to this day — and showed goats.
Coming into my senior year of high school, I realized I really love the ag industry and the people in it. I was the president of my FFA chapter and participated in a bunch of FFA competitions, and, wow, I knew that was my thing. But I also loved media and communication.”
- Meghan Haws, sophomore majoring in agricultural communication
From broadcast to public relations classes, Haws found a passion for running campaigns and designing meaningful messaging. ASEC gave her a chance to combine her interests in agricultural and natural resources and communications.
Mark Tucker, a professor in ASEC who Haws said is always intentionally getting to know and help students, met Haws during an interview she did with him. After having her in class and seeing her potential, Tucker sent her a flyer from the agronomy department to build communications for a new project called the Indiana Organic Network (ION).
ION seeks to bring together organic farmers from across the state together to share knowledge and resources. Haws creates a social media presence for the group, writes newsletters and communicates the science going on behind the scenes.
To get farmers involved, ION began with a soil census, where they collected soil samples for organic farmers across the state and conducted free tests. Haws is designing the reports and crafting communication strategies to make the results useful to farmers and welcome them into the network.
“There’s been a lot of discussion to understand the farmers’ needs and how they will best receive this information — like, should we send them digitally or print them off? The reports are very science-heavy as well, so we’ve laid them out to include the definitions of academic terms and procedures and make them as clear as possible. That way, when the farmer reads their report, they know what they are looking at to take that information and apply it to their farm,” said Haws.
When she’s not designing or writing social posts for ION, she’s learning to tell their stories through video, her favorite part of the job.
“I’ve always loved movies. Growing up, I honestly thought about going into film,” Haws said. “Video is a great way to tell stories and show emotion, so something I want to take with me from this experience is incorporating video into my career.”
For Haws, her job with ION also offers exciting chances to learn more about the science side of agriculture and to try her hand using the theory and skills she’s learning in class to help scientists and farmers connect with each other. She is grateful to Yichao Rui (the agroecology professor who hired her), Annie Benson and Ismael De Lara (the graduate and undergraduate students who she works with), and the rest of the ION team for teaching her so much.
One of Haw’s high school agriculture advisors once told her, “There’s a place for everyone in ag.” She’s living that motto now, not only carving a path for herself within agriculture where she can use her communication skillset, but also through her strides towards building a new community for organic farmers to find their place as well.
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