Pillars of Advocacy

Recently, I got asked how to do advocacy for agriculture. I found it to be a great question. 

At Emerging Ag, we’re not really a PR firm or a conventional consulting firm. We work on issues management in the sectors that we care about passionately. These are agriculture, food, and health.

I share below some of the pillars that shape advocacy for these sectors.

Passion 

When you’re trying to work on an advocacy project, that’s the first task you have to bring, is that you have to have a true passion for the topic. We take our passion very seriously. We pick the things that we want to do with care. 

Know Your Stuff 

It’s really important that you know your stuff. Pause and do your research, not only for your side of the equation, but for the side of others. Understand the perspectives of the range of conversation that’s going to be happening on the topic that you’re working on. 

Clarity of Purpose 

And from that, you can distill the facts that you are going to be talking about in your outreach. If you don’t have your research done on what all the thoughts are and all the different varied opinions might be, you can’t present your facts in a way that makes them the most compelling and addresses the broadest range of issues. 

Coalition Building 

Once you have a clarity of purpose, it’s really important that you make friends along the way as you engage in these endeavors. The people that you are working with through your advocacy really are about building a consensus, building a coalition. 

That coalition building act makes your case better because you are modifying continually what you’re asking for and how to get the best outcome for the most people. And this involves building a lot of bridges. It can be bridges with the people who are already in the concentric circles of like minds, but it can also be the very challenging task of talking to those who are not as convinced. That bridge will help bring them along and to find ways where you can really see a win-win. 

Shape the Outcomes 

The best outcomes on advocacy, the ones that give you the most influence, are the ones where you have seen the position that you wanted to take and the best position that can ultimately be taken. By making it bigger, adapting as you go, and listening to others, you can have an influence on how entire sectors are moving forward. 

It’s been a privilege to be a part of those processes many times. We love what we do.