A Professor of Applied Swine Nutrition with Iowa State University says the big challenge for pork producers in today’s age of the internet and social media is separating the important information from the unimportant and avoiding the information that’s flat out incorrect.
With the explosion of social media inaccurate information, junk science and fake news have become a growing concern.
Dr. John Patience, a Professor in Applied Swine Nutrition with Iowa State University, says one of the biggest challenges that faces not just pork producers but everybody in society now is this massive explosion of information.
Number one there’s new information being generated at a furious pace on a global basis and secondly, because of the internet, we’re able to access that information. That presents a real challenge to people in agriculture but really anybody in society. How do you access the information you need, how do you not waste time on the information you don’t need, because every hour that you spend on the internet accessing information that’s of no real value to you is an hour that you’re taking away from your farming operation.
Secondly you’ve got to filter that information, what is true and what is not true. We know there’s a lot of information out there that is completely made up. There’s other information which is only partially correct and how do I as a pork producer or somebody in the feed industry and frankly somebody who works in an academic environment as I do, how do we make sure that we’re acquiring the right information and that we’re identifying the information that is flat our incorrect and we avoid it.
~ Dr. John Patience, Iowa State University
Dr. Patience warns inaccurate information is worse than no information.
He says, when accessing information, its important to focus on sources we know we can trust but, the joy of it is, we don’t have to rely on just one source.
