<p style="text-indent:0px; line-height:12px;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Atlantic City, NJ-</span><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">By ANUK Staff<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">2.8.13</p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><p>The New Jersey Farm Bureau was awarded with a U.S. Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Grant for the New Jersey Farm to School Twitter program by the state’s department of agriculture. </p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><p> “Creative and innovative programs like this, utilizing new technologies, are vital to advance New Jersey agriculture,” said New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher. “Using social media to help connect farmers and school food service will increase the amount of Jersey Fresh fruits and vegetables in schools."<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"> Farm Bureau is teaming up with the New Jersey Farm to School Network to coordinate the program and training was held in Atlantic City during the New Jersey Agricultural and Vegetable Growers Convention and Trade Show on February 7.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"> “This social media/twitter training between school produce buyers and produce farmers is the type of experiment that may lead to new practices in communication for many other perishable crop producers and thereby improve the financial viability of those farmers,” said New Jersey Farm Bureau Executive Director Peter Furey.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">The 10 participants in the training received instruction on how to set up their Twitter accounts, to operate the program on their smart phones, and how to communicate using the program.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"> The six farmers and five school food service professionals will use GroupTweet to communicate. GroupTweet is a secure third-party Twitter application that allows multiple people to tweet to others in the group using a single Twitter account.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"> “Direct communication between farmers and their representatives and institutional food service buyers is a must for increasing local purchasing of New Jersey grown produce,” said Beth Feehan, director of the New Jersey Farm to School Network. </p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><p><a class="btn btn-sm btn-primary col-lg-12" style="white-space: normal;" href="http://www.njfb.org/" target="_new">New Jersey Farm Bureau</a></p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">
