Introduction
To track industry leaders’ perceptions of emerging and critical issues within the agriculture and natural resources industries, the Wedgworth Leadership Institute (WLI) and the PIE Center collaborated to distribute a web-based questionnaire to the 30 members of WLI’s Class VIII. Tracking opinion leaders’ perceptions of issues will allow WLI and the PIE Center to:
- Identify the agriculture and natural resource issues believed to be most important in Florida
- Document industry leaders’ attitudes and opinions over time
- Compare industry leaders’ and consumers’ attitudes and opinions
- Utilize collected information as a construct to positively affect policy decisions
As opinion leaders, or filters of ideas and information, the members of Class VIII were asked to list what they believed were the five most important issues facing Florida agriculture and natural resources, as well as how they received and shared information about those issues, what they thought policymakers needed to know, and what outcomes they predicted from each issue.
Key findings
The five issues consistently identified by opinion leaders were water, labor, regulation, food safety and land use. Because water overwhelmingly received the largest number of mentions, it served as the primary focus for analysis in the study.
Although the opinion leaders were able to determine “water” as the most important issue, they were unable to come to a clear consensus about a specific issue within water. Therefore, opinion leaders were unable to come to a clear consensus about a specific issue. Consequently, opinion leaders send mixed messages to policymakers about the issues involving water in the state of Florida.
The opinion leader respondents stated that they shared the majority of their information with family, friends and co-workers, who tend to think similarly to the opinion leader, resulting in pockets of information and well-informed individuals instead of widely-spread knowledge.
Recommendations
Agricultural opinion leaders should work to frame their messages consistently and in a way that appeals to policymakers, who look for items to be framed in a way that highlights public benefit. Currently, however, opinion leaders discuss the issues in terms of individual freedoms or affects to the agricultural industry. Consideration should be given to crafting a message that conveys the effect of the issue on agriculture while simultaneously highlighting the impact this issue could have on the general public.
Once a consistent message has been developed, agricultural opinion leaders should engage in agenda building techniques surrounding issues to get it in front of the elected officials and news media. In order to effectively engage in agenda building, opinion leaders should work to influence the public agenda, the media agenda and the policy agenda.
