A single raindrop doesn’t do much to alleviate a drought, but one good rainstorm can sure help the grass grow green. The same can be said about the voices advocating for agriculture. A few quiet statements don’t feel like much, but when everyone in the industry makes it their mission to connect with consumers, ours is suddenly a story that can’t be ignored. Even better—we don’t have to wait for the clouds to darken before we prioritize advocacy in our daily lives.
Keeping ag in business
Though the family has been in the seedstock cattle business since 1982, Amanda Radke said she and her sisters were encouraged to see more of the world while growing up. At 18 years old, Radke had her eyes on the capitol. An internship in Washington, D.C., had her rooming with a vegan animal rights activist from New Jersey.
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“I learned a lot and realized there were so many of misconceptions about everyone I loved in farming and ranching back at home,” she explained to WLJ of the memory. “It was a major pivot point for me.”
There, her mission to correct the inaccuracies being told about agriculture took root—Radke is proud to note the roommate was eating meat at the summer’s end. Radke came home to South Dakota, but never lost her passion for advocacy. Today, she lives half a mile from her parent’s operation, raising four children with husband, Tyler, at Radke Land and Cattle.
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She put her pen to paper, writing for various industry newspapers and magazines, but her venture into children’s books propelled her reach as an advocate. An ag-based podcast called The Heart of Rural America, social media channels, consulting and public speaking, and even a new auction platform to get beef directly to consumers called “Bid on Beef” all round out her résumé today.
“My perspective is very laser focused,” she said, noting her goal is to keep more families on their farmland. “To be a free nation, we need to be a fed nation. It takes many hands, not just a few, and I’m committed to helping ag families continue to do what they love to do.”
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Her voice is an infusion of optimism with the realist attitude ever present in rural agriculture.
“To me, it all boils down to private property rights,” she explained. “If we can maintain the ability to own and manage our land and livestock as we see fit, without the interference of crippling government regulations, we will have an abundance of opportunities as farmers and ranchers in this country.”
The mission is solid, but Radke said her presentation style and voice does shift to better reach the crowds she’s talking to.
Cattlemen share similar stories, but consumers are usually three to four generations removed from farm life. Luckily, Radke said there’s common ground to unite them.
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“Whether you’re a rancher or consumer, we care about the same things,” she adds, listing animal care, environmental stewardship, taste, nutrition, safety and cost as top concerns for all.
When she focuses on those shared values, Radke said connections are made. Those relationships are what’s helping protect the future of our industry.
“At the end of the day, our consumers vote on the future of agriculture with their dollars and in the ballot box,” she said. “If people had the chance to meet us and hear our stories, they would see our hearts for being stewards of land, livestock and people.”
No matter the platform, Radke picks an individual persona she’s trying to hit with her messaging. Some days it’s a ranch spouse who needs a pep talk, others it’s a suburban parent searching for the best steak dinner. On hard days, maybe it’s a family stressing about losing their multi-generational operation.
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The communication method helps her stay authentic, while still sharing valuable information to people who want to hear it.
“If you spend your life trying to be everything to everybody, you’ll be nothing to nobody,” she explained of the strategy.
Radke knows the reality is, if she doesn’t put herself and her story out there, someone else will tell her story for her. The only way to fight for the lifestyle she believes in, to correct the inaccuracies others might spread and ensure her children can stay on the ranch she and her husband have fought to own is to step up and do the talking herself.
It’s a big task, but one she promised she won’t back down from.
“I don’t want to be well-rested at the end of my life,” she said. “I’m trying to share the truth, no matter the cost. At my core, my faith drives me, and I believe the good Lord put me here to use my voice to share that truth.”
Cultivating trust
Tucker Brown of RA Brown Ranch has found advocacy is all about pulling back the curtain on agriculture for the consumer. Like Radke, he feels it’s more of a calling than a choice.
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“I know the ranch is ours, but how the Lord expects us to care for his land and his livestock … I think the best way I can care for it is to talk to those people who are voting,” the Texas cattleman told WLJ. “If I can show them my side of the story, I can help them understand why this regulation would really hurt us or help us.”
He’s always loved the ranch, but when Brown went off to college, he found a career in sports broadcasting. The business helped pay the way back and forth from his six-generation family operation to campus.
Brown fell in love with creative media and took that interest to the cattle business. Social media was the perfect marketing tool for the ranch.
When it was consumers rather than potential commercial customers in his comments section, however, Brown realized the accounts might take him a different direction than he had intended.
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“I found there was pure curiousness in the ag industry and the beef industry,” he recalls. “People wanting to know where their food comes from—I would rather them hear that from a rancher than someone who may not be telling the whole truth.”
He followed along with the National Cattlemen’s Beef (NCBA) Advocate of the Year award, eager to see who else was answering these questions from consumers. Scouring the list of recipients, Brown saw countless first-generation producers who were stepping up to the plate.
“I just felt so called out that I had this really cool story of six generations … going through droughts and wars and great depressions to keep the ranch in the family and the family in the ranch,” he said. “And I’m not telling it.”
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A few fun videos released during the height of the pandemic did well with viewers, and Brown was hooked. Hoping to draw a picture of ag consumers could understand, Brown took to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
As he played around with edits and trends on video content, the list of avid followers quickly grew. It went from a fun side hobby to a full-blown business.
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Today, Brown is gracing stages like the Texas FFA Convention to help teach others about the importance of advocacy. He hired his first employee this past February to dive into YouTube and LinkedIn.
Having another set of hands on deck will allow Brown to keep his family and his herd a priority while still exploring longer form content to post. Video editing is his passion, but Brown said he won’t let anything stand in the way of time out in the pasture, working calves along his father, grandfather and the newest Brown generation, his two daughters.
“There is so much unauthentic stuff on social media, but I think by them seeing that I am working, rather than just saying I work cattle every day … I think things like that help build trust,” he described. “I need to talk to be able to talk in a way that (consumers) can hear it, trust it, understand it.”
There’s not a lot of topics off limits. Footage is captured in the moment—if it’s a part of ranch life and he can explain why it’s essential, Brown said it’s something worth showing.
While he is naturally a people person, Brown has found ways to help himself grow as a spokesperson for the industry. NCBA’s Masters of Beef Advocacy program helped him use the right language in the right crowds, the Trailblazers Team gave him media training on a national scope and the Young Cattlemen’s Conference connected him to peers who shared his passions.
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Couple the enjoyment he gets editing videos with the knowledge from these programs and Brown has a near perfect equation to success as a communicator, but the smile he wears isn’t dependent on likes or follows.
“All I have to do is tell the truth of the beef industry, the truth of agriculture, the truth and the life of Jesus Christ,” he said. “If we can do all those things, I think that just makes everything better.”
Open arms
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As a rancher’s daughter from Montana, Natalie Kovarik has never once doubted the truth that ag is a necessary part of life. She said she’s always respected the lifestyle but didn’t know if it was in the cards for her to stay active in the industry. She got a pharmacy degree and moved close to the family’s ranch but kept herself out of the day-to-day.
When she met her husband, Luke, that all changed.
Kovarik followed the Nebraska cattleman down south to his cow-calf operation, and they started both a family and a small, registered cattle herd together. It took a few years, but with time, Kovarik stepped away from her pharmacy job off the ranch. Hours were now solely dedicated to her family and the herd.
“I always credit Luke himself,” she explained to WLJ of the change of heart. “I think he is—as many ranchers are—just very passionate about the ag industry. I always say it’s hard to be around someone that passionate and not grab on to it.”
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As she thought of ways to make the lifestyle feel even more like home to her, Kovarik pivoted from a direct beef-to-consumer business she was running with a friend in Montana to creating something more personal.
She told Luke she wanted to create a new brand: a brand for herself, for their family and for their life as cattle producers. Kovarik had hopes of building a community where she could serve as a looking glass into the industry for others. Luke was supportive, but neither had any idea what the platform would grow to.
“It was very serendipitous,” she described of her content’s initial success. “I don’t think my husband could see it was happening. I don’t think I knew what I was creating.”
Instagram is Kovarik’s longest and most consistent account, as she said she’s always liked the “easy kind of romanticized content about the Western industry” her followers love to see from her.
As more and more people flocked to her page, she’s added LinkedIn and Twitter to her list of personal accounts.
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Lately, however, advocacy has taken on a different form for the cattlewoman. Kovarik’s focus now lies with a podcast she co-hosts with friend, Tara Vander Dussen, a dairy farmer from New Mexico. Each episode of Discover Ag offers their top three viral food and agriculture moments from the week, broken down to fit a female and millennial vibe.
“It is just what our name says, to discover agriculture,” Kovarik adds. “We love to meld entertainment and education together.”
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The podcast was created to combat the push for shorter form content that was being rewarded by the algorithms on social media channels, as Kovarik said she was inspired to be more than just a quick headline or sound byte.
The podcast itself is a more rigid form of communication for her, as weekly episodes have to be scheduled and planned out, but Kovarik thinks she has the best of both worlds. With her personal pages, she’s able to lean more into her creative side.
Through it all, Kovarik’s goal is to just to introduce new faces to the ag industry.
“I try to soften content … to make people feel welcome to agriculture,” she explained.
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For Kovarik, determining what to post is simple: if it’s something that makes her happy, it worthy of being shared. There’s gratification in hitting “post” on a collection of pictures, a reel or a new podcast episode.
“If I want to have a say in what I believe about our industry and the topics I believe are important to me, it comes down to initiative,” Kovarik said. “If you have a voice and an opinion about things, take the initiative to share about it.”
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