Washington dairies embrace live video chats

The Washington dairy industry, seeking to bridge the rural-urban divide, has turned to social media’s biggest platform, Facebook, and its most-informed spokesmen, farmers. In a live video cht, Yakima County farmer Bill Warvin fielded questions about his dairy practices, including why calves are taken from their mothers at birth. “I think it’s a great question,” he said. “It seems unnatural for someone not close to animal livestock.”The video was the second of four chats planned by the Dairy Farmers of Washington, the state dairy products commission. If the live videos go well, there may be more, the organization’s spokeswoman Chelsi Riordan said.“We thought, ‘What a great tool to teach our customers about farming,’ ” she said. “We have learned from talking to customers that it’s not the same coming from us, as coming from farmers.”The forum allows viewers to type comments and questions, which are posted online and relayed to the farmer by Seattle food writer Ashley Rodriguez. The first live chat was Sept. 18 and featured Skagit County dairyman Jason Vander Kooy, who remarked that farmers are slowly learning to respond to critics on social media. “We got beat to the punch,” he said.