Before Storm Jonas rolled in over the weekend I had the opportunity to attend the national Common Ground conference in Washington D.C. The event, sponsored by the United Soybean Board and the National Corn Growers Association, was created to help farm women learn how to better communicate with urban women about the safety and security of their food.

“The ideas is that women are the primary grocery shoppers in the country. So we wanted to connect women to women because that is the way we build trust, because they are credible sources of information, and to take women who understand farming, and have conversations about farming and ranching with the non-farm audience,” explains Nancy Kavazanjian, a Farmer Volunteer board member for the United Soybean Board.

“The conference here was just about educating [farm women], training them further, about how they can communicate even better. It’s just a great way for us to talk and have a conversation about food,” says the Chairwoman of the Grower Services Action Team at NCGA, Patty Mann.

Listen to the full interview: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/nancy-kavazanjian-usb.mp3″ text=”Interview with Nancy Kavazanjian, United Soybean Board”] [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/Patty-Mann-ncga.mp3″ text=”Interview with Patty Mann, National Corn Growers Association”]

Common Ground is funded by checkoff dollars and works in collaboration with Osborn + Barr.  You can join the conversation by following CommonGroundNow on Facebook.