Farming First has for a long time been at the forefront of social media trends, growing to be one of the most influential operators within the agricultural, development and food security space, continually shaping and encouraging discussion.

Today, we are delighted to announce that we have reached a landmark 20,000 followers. Just last week – and as testament to our ever-extending influence -Farming First was named in a list released by the Food Tank of the ‘118 Twitter Feeds Every Food Activist Must Follow’, which recognised the role that Twitter plays in raising awareness of the role of agriculture in food and nutrition security.

Farming First would like to thank everyone for sharing our content and joining in the global dialogue on sustainable agriculture that takes place everyday.

Today, social media allows everyone to be a part of the critical conversations that are at the heart of development, making for a more inclusive world. To celebrate our 20,000th follower we wanted to ask the question can social media change the world? We look at a variety of campaigns that prove that it can. To ensure that development is really responsive to the people it is intended to benefit, then we must ensure social media remains at the heart of what we do… 

Winner of the Cannes Chimera Challenge in 2012, ‘BeHere – BeThere’ is a project by Serviceplan in Hamburg, Germany, which uses location apps, such as Foursquare and Facebook Places, to connect consumers to charity projects in the developing world.

When a consumer uses the app to ‘check in’ at a certain location, such as a bar, a restaurant or a cinema they find that the place they are checking in at has been replaced by a development project such as a school in Sierra Leone, a well in Kenya or a farm in Malawi.

The project works by partnering with a variety of businesses, such as Starbucks, when the person ‘checks in’ a pop-up appears on the screen of their phone, tablet or laptop with information on the development project. For example, Starbucks partnered with Tongo’s Elementary School in Sierra Leone sharing images, videos and detail about the project whenever anybody checked in. At every check in, this information was then shared with the customer’s friends and contacts on social media.

An extra incentive was that businesses donated to the projects whenever anybody checked in, Starbucks for example donated 10 cents everytime anybody checked in at their Hamburg coffee shop.

For more information about the project click here

It’s difficult to pick a single campaign from the variety of videos, infographics and images that the Gates Foundation share everyday.

With 626,000 likes on Facebook and over 900,000 followers on Twitter, the Gates Foundation has built a strong following of people willing to share vital information and resources in order to raise awareness of the world’s most pressing challenges.

The strength of the Gates Foundation’s social media lies with Bill and Melinda Gates, who have optimised their positions in society to strengthen the digital campaigns of their organisation.

It may be our campaign but it’s one we are very proud of for helping to illustrate the power of social media.

On International Women’s Day 2012 we launched an infographic entitled The Female Face of Farming in partnership with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Female Face of Farming aimed to raise awareness of the gender gap that exists in agriculture and the need to ensure that women were offered a voice at policy level.

The infographic reached over one million people on Twitter on the day of the launch and continues to be one of our most popular campaigns, helping raise awareness of the vital role women play in food security.

To keep up to date with all these campaigns follow

BeHere-BeThere – @serviceplaner

Gates Foundation – @gatesfoundation

Female Face of Farming – @farmingfirst