Brandi Buzzard Frobose discussed the Green New Deal in 2019 and shared the benefits of working hard to advocate for the farm industry during a recent Nebraska women in agriculture conference.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, hosted a two-day Women in Agriculture virtual conference on Feb. 18-19. Keynote speaker and rancher Brandi Buzzard Frobose is a communications professional and agriculture advocate from Greeley, Kansas.
In 2019, Frobose wrote an open letter to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, addressing the concerns she had with the proposed Green New Deal bill.
“The Green New Deal blamed global warming on ‘farting cows,’ and I really took issue with that because cattle are not a major contributor to climate change. The EPA, the best source of science that we have, shows that cattle are responsible for less than 2% of greenhouse gas emissions,” Frobose said.
Frobose sent an open letter to Ocasio-Cortez, posted it on her blog BuzzardsBeat.com and shared it to her Facebook account as well.
“After I posted it, my blog crashed about five times in 48 hours. The last time I checked, the letter had been seen about 275,000 times,” Frobose said.
From the public interaction with her letter, Frobose was featured on MSNBC and FOX News. She also spoke at The White House with senior officials to urge the inclusion of farmers and ranchers in conversations pertaining to climate change.
“I know that I have been very blessed with this career I have. I hear a lot of people say ‘You’re so lucky, or that’s great, I wish I could have that.’ But luck, I think, is measured in a lot of different ways, luck to me is when hard work meets opportunity,” Frobose said.
Frobose said that luck and hard work go hand-in-hand with being an impactful advocate for agriculture. She talked about ways to strengthen women on their journey to advocacy.
For Frobose, staying authentic to personal values heightens advocacy movements by showing the world who the voices are that drive the movement.
“You all know what your values are, and sticking to those is very important. But if you aren’t going to stand up for your values in a ‘tested time,’ are they really values? Or are they just convenient opinions,” Frobose said.
Frobose said another aspect that goes with creating luck through hard work in advocacy is learning how to accept the word no and turn it into motivation and strength.
“Everybody has heard the word no; the way that you deal with ‘no’ really defines your values and how hard you are going to work to overcome it. Knowing that you can hear the word no, bounce back, and be better and improve, is just one strength,” Frobose said.
Frobose said women in agriculture can use their advocacy to combat misinformation, educate the public on food production, and sustain farming communities livelihoods.
“Advocacy is such hard work because we have 2% of the population in the United States. Not many of us are involved in making that food and raising and producing it. We have a lot of work, the 2%, to connect and engage the 98%,” she said.
Agriculture advocacy is not only a passion for Frobose, it’s also a way to ensure farm preservation. She hopes that through her hard work, she can someday pass the cattle ranch she and her husband built down to their daughter.
Frobose closed her conference with the reminder that “no” should be turned into motivation and strength.
“My dad was quick to remind me that it’s not about the trailer that you show up to the rodeo in. It is about what your back out of the trailer and how you perform in the arena. That translates to advocacy, It does not matter if you have the fanciest blog or if you have 10,000 followers on Instagram, or if you get to go to the White House, or you’re on MSNBC. It’s not about the fancy stuff. It’s about doing little things that are hard work every day, to move the immovable middle,” Frobose said.
