The FarmED Podcast
Farming Storytelling with Anna Jones of Just Farmers
Presenter of the FarmED Podcast, Alex Dye, caught up with journalist, educator, author and founder of Just Farmers, Anna Jones, earlier this summer, just before Cereals and Groundswell. It’s a fascinating conversation during which Anna recalls her early career working as a newspaper journalist and making the move to the BBC where she worked as a reporter for the flagship ‘Countryfile’ and Radio 4’s ‘Farming Today’ as well as a brief stint as Farming and Countryside Advisor on The Archers. Her Nuffield Scholarship looked at the barriers to communication for farmers negotiating mainstream media. This led her to establish Just Farmers as a way to create opportunities for farmers to engage with journalists. ‘They can see that we're just normal people, too, trying to do a job in stressful circumstances like farmers. You know, we're up against deadlines, and I always say journalists are as obsessed with time as farmers are with weather. So, if you can understand the pressures that weather puts on you as a farmer, you can understand the pressures the clock puts on journalists and why they can be so impatient. So, let's try and understand each other better.’
