Sustainable Solutions: Creating Conscious Communicators with Crystal MacKay

 Learn about University of Guelph OAC graduate Crystal MacKay’s journey in the agricultural communications industry. Crystal, founder and CEO of Loft32, created her company with the vision to change the agricultural communications field in Canada through directly working with farmers.  

Crystal discusses her background before Loft32, how Loft32 operates, and how she sees sustainability within agricultural communication. 

This episode of Sustainable Solutions: From Guelph to Gainesville was hosted by Jessica Czipulis, a University of Florida master’s student studying agriculture and natural resources communication. 

Transcript

Jessica Czipulis   

Hello everyone and welcome to Sustainable Solutions: From Guelph to Gainesville, a podcast brought to you by the Streaming Science project. Streaming Science is a student driven program committed to connecting you with leading experts, exploring how science shapes our world, and how we can build a more sustainable future together. Throughout this podcast series, we're not only delving into topics related to sustainable agriculture, natural resources, and science communication and literacy, but we are taking an international perspective as we connect with alumni and experts from the University of Guelph, Ontario Agricultural College in Ontario, Canada.  

I'm Jessica Czipulis, a first year Master's student at the University of Florida and I'll be your host for this episode. For this podcast, I interviewed Crystal Mackay and we talked about her experience as an agricultural communicator in Canada. During our conversation, we explored Crystal's journey, her exciting work in advancing agricultural communications and her insights into how we can all continue to pursue a more sustainable future in agriculture, natural resources and broader science. So without further ado, let's dive into our conversation with Crystal and explore the sustainable solutions she's championing, bridging the gap from Guelph to Gainesville. So today with me, I have Crystal Mackay. She's a graduate of the University of Guelph and the Ontario Agricultural College, and she majored in animal science and had rural extension in minor. Thank you for joining us today, Crystal. 

Crystal MacKay   

Thanks for having me. 

Jessica Czipulis   

All right, already. So do you want to tell me a little bit more about your background maybe? 

Crystal MacKay   

Sure. So I didn't quite start in agriculture. I actually was born in Toronto, the largest one of the largest cities in Canada. And when I was seven, my parents moved from the city and bought a farm which I thought I was the luckiest kid on the planet. I went from, you know, one house cat to 25 barn cats. Lots of cows, a pony, you know, all the things. And it was life changing on all the levels. But I felt I always was an ambassador for agriculture. Because I have lots of city cousins, I have 100 first cousins. We're a big family. And so you know, of course, all my cousins would come to visit on the farm. And I was so excited to teach them and show them and have them experience what I was luckily lucky enough to grow up with. So from a young age, I wished to have a career talking to people about farming. And here I am. 

Jessica Czipulis   

Amazing. And I know that you're also the co-founder and owner of Loft32. You want to tell me a little bit about that real quick?  

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, absolutely. So five years ago, I made a really hard decision to leave a job I loved one that I created, which seems to be a theme for me, which was the CEO of the Canadian Center for Food Integrity, which I helped create and served as the founding CEO for the first three years. And after three years as CEO of that group, I was on the plane a lot. And you know, I have two teenagers that play sports, and I'm a mom as well. So just trying to figure all that out. And I came up with this concept together with a really good friend and also an animal science grad from Guelph, who we came together and said, what problem can we solve? And the answer was people. If we want our agriculture industry to be successful, we need to elevate people. And we do that with a speaker's bureau, with training and coaching, which is my favorite thing, and some strategy and projects. So I get to choose where I spend my time and with you, which is the ultimate gift. 

Jessica Czipulis   

That sounds like the perfect job almost. I mean, you get to do whatever you want. 

Crystal MacKay   

Kind of. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's no. The negative of being an entrepreneur is there's no pay fairy that automatically automatically deposits pay every two week. But it is absolutely no regrets. I love it. And I well by design, I get to spend my time where I choose. 

Jessica Czipulis   

Amazing. So tell me a little bit about your first job out of college. I know many of our students are always looking for different ideas after graduation.  

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, so my first job I created and I went to a group it was called the Ontario Farm Animal Council, which is now Farm and Food Care, but it was representing all the livestock and poultry groups. And they had a job working at an exhibition in Toronto, which 1 million urban visitors go through a model farm and so it was for three weeks for the summer. And but you know, as a student, you need more than three weeks work. So I went to them and I said, you know, I would love to do that kind of work for you at events all year long. So I was the summer student it turned into a full time job right after I graduated where I spent 100 days a year at public events, which was absolutely a dream job. My joke was I would pay them every week, you know, to come in, but I did have student loans to pay so that that was probably a bad idea. The pay wasn't great to be honest. So when I when I think of you and your colleagues at school, my advice would be to chase the experience, not the money, particularly for your first job. The money will come if you get good experience and if you're doing what you love, you'll be good at it. So I call that my time in the trenches for communications having real conversations with humans who have many have never seen a farm animal of some having very strong opinions about certain farm practices, others just so excited to talk to a farmer. So that was I call that the ground, my grounding in how to communicate with one on one. 

Jessica Czipulis   

Amazing. So tell me about like what one of your typical weeks would look like I guess.  

Crystal MacKay   

So it was a great mix of, you know, going to events, obviously 100 days a year. So you know, those days in the first of August, I would say to my family, like I'll see you in December. Like literally it was like one event after another. I also the other advantage of working for a very small nonprofit, there were only two of us, myself and the executive director, was I got opportunities to give presentations and go to a lot of industry events as well. So you know, I would give a presentation to a group of CEOs of animal health companies or you know, in front of a roomful of 500 farmers, which new grads wouldn't normally get that opportunity. So another insight I would share is in smaller organizations, maybe the pay isn't as good or you know, the training isn't as formal, but the opportunities, you know, you're making coffee one minute, and then you're giving a presentation to CEOs the next. So every day was different, which I loved. 

Jessica Czipulis   

That's always something I feel like a lot of people look for, especially nowadays is a little bit of variety in their everyday job. So it sounds really amazing. Let's transition a little bit into how you became CEO.  

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, so I'm the summer student who became the CEO, which is, you know, a bit of a Cinderella story, I would say. At that group, the Farm Animal Council, which is now Farm and Food Care, as I mentioned. So I left on the Farm Animal Council and I went to work for Ontario Pork representing the pork producers of our province, which would be akin to your states. And they they came to me with a job offer, which was amazing, which was half producer relations and half public relations, which is again, a dream.  I've just had lucky, lucky jobs. And so that was amazing. I learned to work with and for farmers more closely, and again, with the communications focus of helping them become better storytellers, creating, you know, some of the first work on talent sharing the farm story, you know, as opposed to just how we farm but about the people, you know, like, I'm a hockey coach, I go to church, you know, I love working with youth or whatever it is, right? So I perfected that there and then my old group where I was summer student came back to me six years later and said would you come back and lead our group that was again, you know, a great transition for me. And the one request I had for them as an animal science grad is I have no business training. So with my job offer, which was not, again, not big money, I asked for executive business training. So some an executive MBA, some business management training. And so that's advice I give to my animal science friends is get some business skills and get some business training. So got that and and then I helped merged what Ontario Farm Animal Council was with all the crop groups into which is now Farm and Food Care, to be better equipped to have conversations with consumers. 

Jessica Czipulis   

Amazing. So what did it look like a little bit different once you became CEO?  

Crystal MacKay   

Well, it's a little less fun, to be honest. You know, the joke was, you know, my communications manager, who now ironically is the executive director of Farm and Food Care, you know, and like you get to do all the fun things because she got to do the fun projects. You know, the real dirt on farming is a publication, breakfast on the farm, virtual farm tours, The fun projects that you actually you know, you get to implement things. As the CEO, you know, you're doing more of the executive management, budgeting, all the tough issues when people are cranky. You know, you have to, you know, manage stakeholders and board member expectations. So I would say a little less fun. But I the joke is my my grade, one teacher wrote on my report card, "Crystal has to learn she can't be first att everything and you know, she needs to follow rules". Well, I'm a slow learner, so being the boss is a good place for me to end up or at least to be, you know, the boss of some programs, just knowing my style. Then I only have myself to blame, you know, if it's frustrating. 

Jessica Czipulis   

I love that your first grade teacher said.  

Crystal MacKay   

Nailed it.  

Jessica Czipulis   

My mom's a first grade teacher, so I can relate to those kids.  

Crystal MacKay   

Tell her. Yes. Tell her you know, her insights. It's still true for adults.  

Jessica Czipulis   

So obviously, there's a large transition within your jobs within these organizations. So what do you think is an important lesson you learned while being with them? 

Speaker 1   

I think, I'm a continuous improvement model person, and I encourage that and everyone I work with and for to say you know what, no one's perfect. We're always a work in progress. I mean, professional athletes still practice and they're already pretty darn good at whatever they're doing. So I apply that to communications and business and life and so yeah, I would say that's the biggest thing is to just have that open mind learning mindset. It doesn't stop when you're when you're done university that it's, we're a continuous improvement model.  

Jessica Czipulis   

Amazing. And I know you said earlier when we talked that you learned a little bit about consumers, especially with with how much you worked with them, what would you say your best advice is for someone that's going to start working with consumers hands on? 

Crystal MacKay   

Oh, yeah, great question. So, yeah, my work between direct relations with consumers and engagement as well as I spent a lot of time with research, managing and directing consumer research and insights for many years, and I still love that piece, is begin with the end in mind is to just get to know your target audience. So for one thing, I don't call them consumers, you know, because we all eat, you know. So in agriculture, we often go producers, consumers, you know, well, we're all we all eat, so we're consumers too. So I, you know, for example, my target audience, if I'm talking to what I would say consumers is Canadians, or you would talk to Americans, not consumers, producers, so less divide, The other piece is, unless they signed up for a degree in agriculture, they don't want to be educated, but they do want to know more. And that's an important distinction. And what they want to know is based on their curiosity. So too, so my best advice would be to ask questions, and be interested in what their concerns are. You know, some of my best conversations started with someone walking up to me, you know, saying, "I'm a vegan, and they don't wear leather". You know, I'm like, that's cool. You know, I don't like broccoli. So why did you choose to be a vegan. You know, like, I'm not here to sell you a beef on a bun, I just want to have a conversation and maybe give you some insights that might help give you some more credible information about the realities. It's a very different approach than a salesman or trying to sell lots of facts which you people have to give you permission before they believe your facts.  

Jessica Czipulis   

That's really good advice. Because some of the few experiences I've had just communicating with the general public or anything like that, they definitely are wanting to know what they want to know. But you like you said, you have to do it and how they want to hear it. 

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, you know, if they want 20 facts, they can look up Google and you know, find a fact sheet. So when they're having when you're having a conversation with someone and just think about a topic you don't know about, you know, maybe steel manufacturing or something. You know, you meet somebody, you know, you're like, well, I drive a car, but I never thought about how steel was made before. And I never really cared unless I heard there was a problem with the environment or something. And then you meet somebody in steel and you don't want them standing up on a soapbox giving you the 20 facts about steel manufacturing. You know, you're like, no. Here's what I'm interested in knowing about. You need to know that first and then you can share your experience. And if I feel you're credible, then I'm going to listen to you. But one of the downfalls we have in agriculture is you know, we try to shout from the rooftops, you know, our facts. And if people aren't open to hearing them, it doesn't matter how loud you you just getting louder is not going to change the conversation.  

Jessica Czipulis   

Absolutely. So going back to Loft32, little bit, tell me about your tagline. "Loft 32 is created to elevate people, businesses and the conversations on food and farming." 

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, so when we were brainstorming the vision for creating Loft32, we did this problem solving approach to say, you know, what, what does agriculture need to grow and thrive in the future? And the answer and which is the place I love is people. And so our industry spends billions of dollars on research, technology, equipment, all the hard things in our industry, we spend a lot of money on. We spend relative pennies on humans. And that needs to change. I think the people shortage in our industry, is it's borderline crisis. And it's going to be worse in the next 10 years with all the people retiring. So we need to have a culture shift in our food system that people are really our most important asset. We often say it but we don't put our money where our mouth is. So investing in people first is going to help grow our businesses and then it's going to help with just, like some of the advice I just gave on having better conversations on food and farming. So they all go together. So one of the things we've done is create an online learning platform called utensil.ca. So that's kind of our investment in helping people and having better conversations and in turn will help businesses. So utensil.ca, a helpful tool from farms to kitchens, hence the utensil, right and it's pretty farm focused now nut the goal is we will put content in there all the way through to read through the forks basically to restaurants and retail. But there's a few different components. The first one is a plain language guide to food and farming. And we started with that and we actually hired some students from University of Guelph to help us. We've got over 700 terms, including acronyms, because you can't have a better conversation if people don't even know what we're talking about. So my favorite is AI, you know, what is AI? When I say AI to you, Jessica, what do you think it is? What's the first one that comes to you? 

Jessica Czipulis   

Well, with my animal science background, I think artificial insemination automatically.  

Crystal MacKay   

Yes, you do. Yeah, cuz you're the same as me. So we could have a conversation about AI and immediately carry on. Now, the average person would say artificial intelligence, right? My poultry farmer friends will say avian influenza, and my crop friends will say active ingredient. So we are talking about four very different things, right. So the plain language guide, it's on there. It's free. It's searchable. And it's searchable by sector, not just term, which we think is really important. Because say you're a new person coming to the dairy industry, or you know, a vegetable section, you can search by the sector, because you don't even know what terms you need to look up, right? So, that's our free gift that was really like to have better conversation, you need to know what we're actually talking about. The middle pillar is more about content. So we created a tool called Utensil 101, which is designed for smart people who just don't know about that topic. So it's a video resource library. It is a paid subscription. And we kept it reasonable at $99 a year, which would only be like 75 US dollars a year. And it is short videos, we boldly say better than Google, to help people get started on a topic. So it's like, what is the difference between hay and straw? You know, how to farmers get paid? You know, how are antibiotics used on a farm? Just short videos to help you get started with credible context, basically. So if you're a new person into agriculture, and you get a job, or if you are from a berry farm, you don't know dairy, our sector is so diverse. So that tool is getting some really great pickup. And then the third pillar is more skills. And that's where I spend my time. So media training, presentation skills, social media, just helping people become more confident communicators, which is my favorite thing. 

Jessica Czipulis   

And then so in that last pillar, is that where your speaker's bureau is?  

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, well, the speaker's bureau doesn't live on Utensil, because that's more of our online on demand stuff. So somebody could go on Sunday night at 10pm. And say, you know what, I'm going to do a media training session, you know, they can, it's on and that's meant, it's designed that way, for a reason. Our speaker's bureau is more on request, and it's very customized. So I have about 30 speakers, including some American friends, that someone like you could call and er message and say, hey, we're having this event with this target audience, we're looking for this topic. And we'll create custom content for the audience and with agriculture first. So unlike many speakers bureau, you know, where you pay money for a big name, and you know, they have a canned talk. It's very custom based on what our audience needs. So that one's fine. And you never know what the next event is the next email or phone call coming your way. 

Jessica Czipulis   

So with those speakers, they go all over the nation, right? 

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah, all over the globe, really, by predominantly North America. 

Jessica Czipulis   

Going back to utensil one on one a little bit. Tell me about how you created those videos, like who's in them and like, the scripts and everything like that? 

Crystal MacKay   

With Utensil 101, our target audience, we designed it for people without farm backgrounds or thinking specifically for people without knowledge on that topic. So they're very conversational. They're not boring. So for example, my favorite one I did was "why do farm animals in Canada mostly live indoors"? And I started the video with me outside it's like minus 20 you know, snow blowing past you know, and I'm like, I'm here to answer you know, why farm animals live inside of Canada. You know, then let us know, you know that it's like next question, right? You know, and then I go on to a more serious answer inside but the people like myself and my co-founder is a dairy farmer who's a former journalist. So now he jokes about he's gone back to farm now, so he jokes he milks cows and thinks about communications. He's amazing. Andrew Campbell's his name. And so he and I are the main co-hosts and then we bring in subject matter experts. For example, we just did a series on aquaculture. Well, you know, I visited a fish farm a few times but I'm no expert so we get the research manager from the aquaculture research station. She did the videos on aquaculture. So just like what you need to know you know, aquaculture at a glance and then how fish like what the lifecycle is, you know, starting with the hatchery, but just in very conversational terms so it's not dry and boring. And people learn by video these days better than reading so you know, my kids look up YouTube first when they're doing homework, which I find crazy you know. They would never open a PDF you know, they want to see a video of someone explaining it right so that's what Utensil 101 is, 

Jessica Czipulis   

Interesting. So where do you look at working on next for Utensil 101. 

Crystal MacKay   

Um now we're looking to add more regional content. So you know, Canada, like the US, you know, it's very rare regional. Texas is not New York is not California. And the same thing in Canada. You know, our East Coast is not the West Coast is not the prairies. So we're we have a little bit of regional content, but we're going to add more. So you know, so basically like province by province or state by state going through and adding, you know, overview of farming in Ontario, where I live at a glance and working with farmers in Ontario is different than working with ranchers in Alberta. So adding some regional differences, and then we add hot topics all the time. We just added a few on avian influenza as an example. And that is very customer driven, you know, so are their clients that are signing up their employees, they'll say, oh, well, we just added some on mushrooms as an example saying, hey, we need to know about mushroom farming, cool, we can add that it's very, it's meant to be responsive. 

Jessica Czipulis   

I love that you guys are focusing on the region a little bit more, because I feel like especially in college, we're taught how to communicate about things in our specific states here, at least in the US. And I'm sure it's probably similar to other countries as well. But that doesn't mean we're going to stay in the states, because that's not necessarily where jobs come up. So I think it's really amazing that you're focusing on communicating the differences between all these different areas. 

Crystal MacKay   

Exactly like a simple one we came up with is in the eastern Canada, we call it planting we plant crops in Western Canada, they call it seeding, you know, just things like that. Right? I don't know, what do you call it in Florida? I'm guessing planting? Because you're more? 

Jessica Czipulis   

I think so I'm a livestock person sooo. 

Crystal MacKay   

Yeah. Yeah, no, we need the crops. We don't plant them. Yeah. 

Jessica Czipulis   

Yeah. So I know you mentioned a little bit more about the media training and things like that. Do you want to go in a little bit more depth for me on that? 

Crystal MacKay   

Sure. Uh so I feel if you know, if I had a magic wand, I would have every person in agriculture take some brand ambassador training. So I have some training called Grow Your Brand, which is the base. Which I feel you know, every ag student in the country should take it, in the in the world really, but let's start with with the US and Canada, which is what's your personal brand? And then how do you represent the company or organization or in your case, your school when you're you know, you're wearing the logo on your shirts, right? So how do you represent them? And then really, you're representing the whole food system. You know, if you hop on a plane or chat with someone for like, what are you doing, you know, I'm going to school I'm taking this or I'm working here, I'm working on this project, then you're really a brand ambassador. You might be the only person in agriculture that a person gets to meet. So just getting people aware of that is the base. Then building on that then we do more specific training like media trainings. Everybody's nervous about not wanting to say the wrong thing in media. So I've conducted over 600 media interviews and when I was building the Loft, one of the things I committed myself to is helping everybody else be better at media. So media training, there's an online Utensil 101 Intro to Media Training. And it's again $99 it's meant to be accessible, online on demand. Anybody can take that or the Grow Your Brand, again, priced the same. And the price I think you'll appreciate I got from a good friend of mine is a farmer outside of Guelph. And he hires a lot of students. And I asked him, you know, what you do for training for your students. He said, they're my most important brand ambassadors, because they're seeing all my biggest customers all the time. And I said, Well, what you know, tell me about onboarding, which everybody cringes at onboarding, what do you what do you do? And he's like, Well, I give them a hat and a golf shirt with my logo on it. And then the keys to an $80,000 pickup and I you know, I send them on their way, right? So I said, Okay, well, a hat and a golf shirt would cost about $99. So that's where we came up with that price to say, if you're going to give someone your a shirt and a hat with your logo on it, you should invest that same amount of money in actually equipping them to be a better ambassador. So the media training is online anytime. And then on top of that, I do media coaching and also presentation skills coaching. So for example, I had a young grain farmer I worked with in the past year, who was giving a presentation at a fitness conference, which is amazing, right? We want agriculture's voice in different channels. And so I worked with her just giving her feedback on how to position her story and make it more interesting and engaging for the audience. So that was one on one, but media training I do all the time. And this form that we're talking at on is really realistic now for media training, because the media will call you by zoom right? You don't go into the studio anymore, you know so we can do some really good media coaching online. 

Jessica Czipulis   

That's a lot. How do you juggle all the different pillars?  

Crystal MacKay   

Well, I've worked with really great people so you know, I prioritize my time on delivery as much as possible, you know, face time. But there is you know, the behind the scenes things, you know, you gotta do book work and pay bills and some of those things too, but I like to be busy but not stupid busy, if you know what I mean. There's a fine line.  

Jessica Czipulis   

Absolutely. I think we figure that out, especially as college students what that line looks like for us. 

Crystal MacKay   

Absolutely.  

Jessica Czipulis   

So I know you've worked a little bit with some sustainability forums and things like that. What is your experience with that?  

Crystal MacKay   

Yes, I chaired the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef Communications Committee the past four years. And that's been an incredible experience and if you're not familiar with the roundtables there is a US roundtable for sustainable beef as well and a global roundtable for sustainable beef and many others around the world. But Canada and the US, I would say, are two of the more advanced roundtables. And so my experience around that was, it's really interesting, because you get all the different aspects of the food system around the table, literally. So you know, you have a rancher sitting next to, you know, a major retailer sitting next to someone from an environmental group. And you're, and it's very outcome focused. So you have a common goal. So I would say the value of those experiences are recognizing players outside of your normal channels. And outside, you know, our industry, you know, use the term silos, which is ironic and appropriate that we often you know, dairy people know dairy people and grain people know grain people. And so the concept of the roundtables, I love because I'm a collaborator, and I feel collaboration is key to achieving more than you could ever achieve on your own and all of my work is bet has been based on collaboration. So the roundtables and to be successful for sustainability, it's the bars too heavy, an individual commodity group, or farm group cannot carry that bar on their own, and they shouldn't. It's harder to do it together, but it's much better and much more rewarding.  

Jessica Czipulis   

Interesting. So what is been your experience with communicating about sustainability? 

Crystal MacKay   

Well, I think being outcome based is key, you know, what's the vision? What's the point? You know, we're trying to do what's good for people, animals and the planet. So to help people expand, you know, sometimes people get well, how do you define sustainability? That's the first I call it a blocker question, you know, like, well, what's the defintion, we have definitions. So let's get past that and then move on about what we can do to truly measure what matters and then be prepared to make changes and communicate about it. And part of that authentic communications, which is key to earning trust in our food system, includes admitting when things aren't great. And agriculture is not good at this. We prefer the sunny day with the blue sky and the butterfly and we're going to talk about all the great things we do because we do great things. However, it's not all great. So being confident enough to say, you know what we're working on it. This is again, continuous improvement model progress. I think that's a really key principle to all aspects of communications to be willing, it's actually you'll be trusted more if you're authentic, and say, you know what, we're not doing great at this but here's our plan to make it better. The other piece that's really important on sustainability work is many voices and third party experts. University and government voices are really important in these conversations and some of my university friends do not like communications. They're not in your program. Again, with coaching and training and encouraging our researchers to speak up people do want to hear from the research community and they're too quiet and the other voices are conservation friends. So people that work for nonprofits and environmental groups. In Canada, that was a big part of our communications and we won a lot of awards and gained a lot of public engagement by having partners from like Ducks Unlimited, Nature Conservancy, just talking about the value of cattle on the land, and how they see it as valuable. So they're much more credible than then somebody from the beef industry, for example. 

Jessica Czipulis   

I love the collaboration, especially as someone who's in the beef industry, this is what I'm saying all the time. And I think Florida specifically is getting a lot better at working with a lot of our conservation groups and other like government agencies and environmental groups, but I say it all the time to them. And when they ask us as young people, what do you want to see and like well, the feedback I get from everybody is they think that beef isn't sustainable and that's the opposite if anything. 

Crystal MacKay   

And just beef industry voices is not going to change the dialogue because people are like of course you're gonna say that because your profit motivated. So having the other voices around the table saying we have common ground again, pun intended, and we we are both committed to these goals to improve the planet and you know, with legacy and sustainability in mind, it's it's the only way to go. 

Jessica Czipulis   

As much as collaboration is important in our field. How do you envision yourself and your role in Agricultural Communication moving forward? 

Crystal MacKay   

Um, I'm really enjoying my time as a coach and helping other people do better. So you know, if you think I've given over 1000 talks. Well, all those talks around the world and you know, to produce your audiences and public audiences, I think I can help a lot of other people do better. So that's where I kind of see my role as a coach. Now, you know, I was the player now I'm the coach. I could still play, but I like to help people like you are next generation and my, you know, new people in executive roles. So the coaching role is definitely where I find the most join. I mean, I can go and give a talk. But it makes me much happier to find a place for a speaker's bureau speaker to go in and give that talk now just as a coach, and that and utensil.ca is my way of putting it online, and it's accessible and available and on demand around the world. So that was my COVID project of course, when all our events were canceled. And in hindsight, I should have been really scared because might you know, of course, all are speaking income went to zero us. So the silver lining was it gave us time to sit back and reflect and say, Okay, what can we do that's online and on demand and accessible 24/7. 

Jessica Czipulis   

I love this concept. And I can really see Utensil being a valuable resource in both Canada and the US. We definitely need more resources like this, especially for students coming out of college right away. A lot of us don't have extensive backgrounds in technical ag areas so we struggled to find our place, and really be able to dive into our jobs. So thank you for being able to build this amazing resource for all of our students like myself to use. 

Crystal MacKay   

You're welcome. And we you know, we do have some colleges in the in Canada that are just starting to use it. But honestly, you know, we're a tiny team. We haven't spent a lot of time trying to sell it by any means. But any students who have used it have given us super positive feedback, for sure. 

Jessica Czipulis   

So going off that a little bit, what do you think the future of ag communications will look like in the next 10 years or so? 

Crystal MacKay   

I think it's going to look different. You know, your program is fairly unique. And I know there's work to keep increasing the number of ag communications programs. Most ag colleges are still very focused on the technical content, and we need technical experts, but every student I've hired over 15 years worth has said the same thing to me: my education has not prepared me for this job. I would love to see your program times 100 all over the North America really, cuz we need to equip our food system with effective communicators that know the industry but also know how to connect, you know, with the public or with farmers, both our communications skills, so I think it's evolving so quickly. Like I think about Twitter as an example or X now. I still call it Twitter. Twitter was the place for agriculture to communicate. Like it was number one by far. In the last six months to a year, I only go on there a few times a week. It's there's hardly any worthwhile conversations, there's a lot of political stuff and just it used to be hashtag ag Twitter was the place. So now you know Instagrams really picking up and again, going back to video formatting. So I see social media expertise is needed by channel. Instagram people are not Facebook people who are definitely not X people. My advice would be and you know, where I see communications is more specialized, so micro-segmenting. Really understanding like I know how to work with ethnic markets, or I know how to work with, you know, Gen Z. You know, more specialization. You just can't shotgun approach, I'm going to put out one piece of content and expect that to be to hit. So more specialized and we need more training and programs like yours, for sure.  

Jessica Czipulis   

Do you see sustainability continue to be an important focus in our communications moving forward?  

Crystal MacKay   

Well, I hope the model of collaboration will continue to grow. The sector-specific siloed approach by company or by industry or by state, it's not going to be effective. The leadership needs to be a collaborative model, for sure. And it needs to multiply to really move the bar. And so as we see individual companies ESG requirements, and that's coming globally, through banking, and you know, into other agribusinesses, it's going to push back all the way through to the farms. So individual sectors, and definitely individual farmers should not be trying to navigate that on their own. It's big, it's expensive. It's heavy and cumbersome and we don't want any of those things. So this collaboration leadership as early as possible, like run, don't walk to create it, is absolutely needed because either you're at the table or you're on the table.  

Jessica Czipulis   

I know we'vecovered a lot today. Do you think we missed anything? Or is there something else you want to add? 

Crystal MacKay   

I would just summarize by saying we shouldn't view communications as a separate department or a separate thing that we study. It's fundamental to everything we do. And so students and you know, when people working in our industry need to view communications more holistically. That it's something that they value on top of or in addition to their technical expertise.  

Jessica Czipulis   

Well, Crystal, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your wealth of experience with us.  

Thank you for listening to the Sustainable Solutions: From Guelph to Gainesville series on the Streaming Science Podcast. Make sure to check out our website and social media for more of our work. If you enjoyed this episode, we encourage you to tune into the other episodes in our series and to visit the University of Guelph Ontario Agricultural College webpages and social media for more information. Once again, I'm your host, Jessica Czipulis. Thanks for listening. For more information about this episode, visit the links in our show notes.