Dr. Kevin Folta was barred from speaking at SeaCan in 2020 after harassment from activist groups targeting scientists. He handed his talk to Michelle Miller, the Farm Babe, and urged scientists to speak up on social media about agriculture, saying public trust depends on it.
Chapters
Good morning, Canada. And after you get— compose yourself from laughing after I tell you it's freezing here— you can see a little bit of fog there when I breathe out— it's, um, -2 here in Florida today, which means we had to freeze protect lots of crops. And my family does a small specialty crops thing up here— down here. I wanted to I want to first say thank you very much for inviting me to the conference. It was a great opportunity and I was very excited to join you. Unfortunately, there's been some circumstances that keep me from participating in today's discussions. We have been really cognizant of the— how activists and others within the science communication community have really seceded off and have done a lot of damaging harassment of scientists. We've known that for some time. This has now gotten to the point where they're now directly affecting university scientists' willingness and ability to participate in the conversation. And so my university had me cancel all of my 2020 talks and not accept any new ones. And so it's— it is really, really disappointing that as a Um, public scientist, I have now been removed from the public discussion. And it's an important discussion, not about DNA and labels and all that stuff. It's about trust and how we as an agricultural community, how we as scientists, and how farmers, anyone in agriculture, the associated industries, can, can help control the perception of what we do by talking about why we do it. And we can do that. And that was what I was going to talk about today. Now, since I can't be there, I asked a friend who is an outstanding advocate for science, Michelle Miller. Now, some of you may know her as the Farm Babe. Michelle is an extremely competent speaker and extremely good friend who I feel carries the message extremely well. And if I, well, if I had to handpick somebody, when I was asked to recommend somebody, Michelle was first on my list. Thank you. So Michelle will cover the topics I wish to cover today. Now, what I want you to take home from this is not just what she's teaching you in terms of tactical communication, but I want you to use it because my inability to speak at your conference because I'm a scientist who has collected complaints by an activist community, it means you got to dial it up more. And that all of us need to be raising our voices. We need to be more present in social media in soft and constructive ways that help to influence the people who have questions about what we do and why we do it. That's the take-home message. So follow her instructions, follow her lead, listen to what she's telling you today, but then participate in the conversation. It has never been more critical. So thank you very much again for the invitation. I'm working on reconfiguring my relationship here with the university, and I hope to be able to speak to you in 2021. It may be that I'm completely free of the university system altogether because this is so critical that we're participating, and nothing should stop us from doing it. Have a wonderful conference. Thank you again for the invitation, and we'll see you in 2021. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
