Vocal stakeholders from all walks of life continue to challenge intensive food production and processing systems. Foundations, environmental NGOs, public health groups, medical associations, celebrity chefs and government officials from USDA’s secretary to local government planning agencies continue to support initiatives like home/community gardens, smaller local farms and sustainable agriculture.

Feeling threatened, some farmers and agricultural leaders are responding defensively. There’s anger and frustration about “inaccurate and unfair movies, magazine articles and undercover videos attempting to turn public opinion against agriculture.” Some are publicly framing agriculture’s critics as fringe elements or “crazies.”

But is this the way to respond? Many rational people embrace messages farmers consider misleading or inaccurate, and they are not likely to accept being told they are not sound in their thinking, beliefs and concerns. Isn’t a more constructive response one that acknowledges agriculture’s challenges and emphasizes that the sector is seeking solutions with an attitude of continuous improvement? Our Food Foresight panel would suggest that rebuilding agriculture’s brand around wholesome, straightforward and individual identities is a better route. “We are not angry, resentful or avoiding our responsibilities,”says Food Foresight panelist Nathan Rudgers, former agriculture commissioner for the state of New York and now with Farm Credit East. “We’re farmers doing the best we can to feed people healthy, affordable food in a responsible way.”

Big agriculture and agribusiness tend to be portrayed as industrial villains raking in big profits and government subsidies while running roughshod over the environment, farm animals and often their own workers. One would expect these voices to be from activist NGOs fighting for their causes — which they often are — but these are also views shared by everyday consumers increasingly interested in how their food is produced and where it comes from. There’s a clear dichotomy in perceptions about farmers and agriculture: On one hand, family farmers are seen as good. The romance of the farmer is highly valued in popular culture — multi-generational families caring for the land and struggling to maintain their farming way of life and their rural communities. On the other hand big agriculture is increasingly seen as bad in spite of large intensive agriculture being for the most part multi-generational family farms.  Is there an opportunity for bridging this great divide? We would say it’s an urgent imperative.

Authentically re-branding agriculture is one way. While agriculture may not have star communicators like Michael Pollan, it has an army of farmers who can put a face to farming starting in their own communities and expanding out through the Internet. There also can be NGO partners who might be engaged to speak out on mutually beneficial issues.

Getting more fully engaged in the issue discussions affecting the sector – like climate change, hunger and obesity – is still another opportunity. As the tenacious leaders of California’s Ag Vision will attest, it isn’t easy. These issues require straight talk – but with science as a foundation – and a long-term commitment to stakeholder engagement and two-way education.

The need to merge feeding objectives with increased productivity, poverty reduction, improved health and wellness, and sustainability is surfacing in multiple professional forums around the world. A sustainable international food system, inclusive of all kinds of food production on all sizes of farms, with increased application of science and technology is an emerging opportunity to change the conversation about production agriculture.

So Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship rose from rags to riches kicking the mining community in the family jewels.  In every case study and textbook on crisis management and crisis communication, values are the compass that guide individuals, governments and corporations through the most trying circumstances.

Massey Energy and Blankship’s values?  Money and power, and if there’s a ring of truth to the cascading revelations on safety violations and the wielding of political influence, we’re witnesses to what could be the most shocking view of corporate greed.  This could make Enron look like a hiccup.

Twenty-nine coal miners died in the April 5 mine explosion in West Virginia, and Blankenship’s communication strategy is ignorance – void of action and commitment for the victims, their families and the community. “It’s natural that the enemies of coal would view Massey as the primary enemy . . . I think that I’ve proven that we run safer coal mines — you know, most of the time — and accidents sometimes happen. We’ve got to figure out what happened here,” he said, according to Associated Press.

Human instinct puts us all in a defensive position when faced with potential blame, but smart and careful thinking of our impact on others makes us realize compassion is critical in the worst of times.  Rather than displace blame on “enemies,” or ridiculously state Massey sometimes runs safe mining operations, Blankenship’s better approach would have been to focus on the tragedy, its impact on employees, their families and the mining community, and an investment (whether intellectual, financial or both) in working with federal regulators in determining the cause of the accident and ensuring the mitigation of something like this happening again.

If Blankenship were smart enough to rise to the top of the mining industry, he’d be wiser to do a little homework on best practices in crisis management and communication.  Here’s Johnson & Johnson’s, which has been in the textbooks for decades and will be for decades more.

This is when true colors come out, and right now Massey and Blankenship’s is green – everyone else, no more than the victims’ families and the mining community, is seeing red.

It’s interesting to read news reports and analysis of Tiger Woods’ April 5 press conference, most notably the comments that follow from readers and viewers.  For the most part, we’re witnessing an icon who has fallen from a very high perch take baby steps to repair a once-golden image, while detractors try mightily to chip away at an already-fractured and fragile persona.

There appears to be an expectation that Tiger will be a changed man a few months after his world came crashing down.  Seriously?  It took more than a decade for Tiger to build this image on and off the course, and while it may not take as long for him to right his capsized ship, he’s looking at a couple of years – if not longer – to regain both the trust and accolades he’s been so accustomed to enduring.

Meanwhile, he’s doing the right things: becoming more public again, taking on more questions while keeping close to the vest what he feels is private (good for him, and can you blame the guy?), and constantly owning up to his errors and commitment to doing what’s necessary to regain trust.

Tiger doesn’t have an easy road ahead of him, and the detractors aren’t going away soon.  Here’s hoping he stays the course and proves them wrong.

Toyota is curiously sitting at no. 7 in Millward Brown’s top-10 list of most trusted brands as Congress spent the better half of the week giving Toyota a tongue-lashing for its handling and mishandling of the automaker’s quality control crisis.

The study’s authors readily point out that the data was collected over the course of 2009 and doesn’t reflect Toyota’s current dilemma as it unfurled at the beginning of this year.  The authors also note the automaker could learn from Tylenol, which in 1982 recalled 31 million bottles of pills after seven people were killed in the tampering scare.  That brand, which was forced to recall children’s liquid medicine last year, sits at no. 6 in the study.

Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson has a history of effectively managing crisis situations, though the FDA earlier this year ridiculed the company for being slow to respond in its most recent crisis.  What this goes to show you, however, is a history of doing the right thing and acting aggressively in a crisis situation can maintain and build trust among stakeholders, consumers in particular.  Trust is fragile, and how you respond in a crisis situation can build and maintain trust, the authors state.

Toyota started off this week with public apologies before Congress.  How it fixes its problems, communicates with stakeholders and develops systems to prevent further lapses will determine if the automaker regains or builds trust, and where it will stand in next year’s report.

The ongoing public discussion about sustainability tends to make agriculture wrong unless its local or small farms, but the reality is feeding our communities, whether they be next door or around the world, lies with responsible food-production systems that produce all kinds of foods on all sizes of farms.

Some deplorable U.S. hunger statistics were published a couple of weeks ago in the Institute of Food Technologists newsletter.  A study from Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger relief group, reports more than 37 million people – one in eight Americans – receive emergency food annually. This is an increase of 46% over a 2006 study. Hunger in America 2010 is the first research study to capture the significant connection between the recent economic downturn and an increased need for emergency food assistance.

Couple this with estimates that the world will need 100% more food than currently produced to feed increases in world population by year 2050 and you see a daunting challenge in need of new and innovative solutions. The need to merge feeding objectives with increased productivity, poverty reduction and sustainability is surfacing in multiple professional forums around the world.  It’s a movement long overdue.

The Wall Street Journal published an article last month focusing on trends in strategic planning that suggested the tactic is losing favor among today’s executives, who are opting for a more flexible approach to deal with the ever-fluctuating economy.

So, are we witnessing the death of strategic planning? Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Businesses and professionals that effectively use strategic planning to help achieve their future vision and long-term goals are constantly revisiting their plans – quarterly, monthly, sometimes even weekly – to evaluate their performance in the short term. Strategic plans were never designed to sit on a shelf and collect dust, but instead are a tool by which executives can weigh day-to-day decisions to ensure the business stays on track toward achieving it’s vision for the future.

In any industry, there will be variables that impact business – market fluctuations, shifts in industry, consumer perception, crisis situations – but planning for these changes and weighing the organization’s reaction to these variables against a solid strategic plan will help the business come out of volatile times even stronger.

For a blessing-in-disguise view on the situation, one could argue that the panic, which is causing businesses to focus on being flexible and shift to accommodate marketplace changes, is actually helping these organizations get back to the core purpose of their strategic plans – to provide direction in uncertain times.

So rather than predict demise for strategic planning as we know it, I’d like to think the recently economic uncertainty has actually infused the process with a renewed sense of life. Let’s reserve the feelings of bereavement for those organizations without a strategic plan, as they’ll quickly discover that without direction, you’re going nowhere – fast.

Driving any highway or back road, you can barely miss a Toyota.  The brand is an automaker’s version of the six degrees of separation.  Wherever you turn, you see one, or you know someone who has one or know someone who knows someone who drives a Toyota.  Quality was the axis of its brand.  I had a Camry a few years ago; loved it and wish I got another after wrapping my front end around the rear of an F-150 (even the best-made car won’t hold up to a monster truck).

Expectations were high when word got out that Toyota had a problem. Surely, a company that built a brand and a massive following of consumers into the world-leading automaker would do the right thing: Aggressively address the issue head-on, right its wrong, profess mea culpa and produce a solution.

And that’s precisely what Toyota did this week.  Problem is, Toyota’s crisis began to unfold last fall, and when the automaker unfurled its media-mix campaign this week, including plopping U.S. honcho Jim Lentz in network studios, critics attacked – and rightly so.

Toyota succumbed to the growing media and governmental pressure too late.  The automaker, and this isn’t backseat driving, knew well enough and long ago it had a problem that would only get worse.  Instead of being proactive, Toyota chose to stick its head in the sand.  That right there can tarnish any brand.

The very premise of issue and crisis management is prevention – not just stopping the headlines or social media storm, but anticipating internal and external threats or vulnerabilities and shoring up those gaps at the operational level.  It’s spending painstaking hours in the C-level suite agonizing over what gives the CEO insomnia and working with the senior management team on systems and protocols, and collaborating with industry, academia, vendors, suppliers and any other party in the supply chain.  It’s putting procedures in place to minimize the likelihood of disruption in business.

The automaker had to have had a crisis plan in someone’s filing cabinet.  Instead, millions of Toyotas are sitting idle in sales lots; even more consumers are now questioning the company’s mettle.

The annual Edelman Trust Barometer shows modest gains among three-quarters of the industries monitored, and findings point to these institutions doing the right thing and a level of increased transparency amidst a perilous global economy.  What’s more interesting, however, is an expectation that governments and companies will revert back to old habits.  That only tells us these gains are fragile and there’s a likelihood for future Barometer reports to highlight declining trust and expectations.

What better time is there to further build relationships and credibility than when trust is climbing?  Smart institutions will invest emotionally and intellectually by working with their stakeholders in identifying what stakes in the ground their trust is rooted in, tap into those beliefs and build upon them.  Doing so, these institutions could emerge from this recession not only stronger, but also with a competitive advantage – stakeholders in their camps.

The report also lays out a suggested path in building trust – a mosaic.  In short, it’s actively involving and engaging a network of stakeholders, including NGOs, to affect change within your organization and industry.  The concept isn’t so new.  Conceptually, it’s much like the coalition building model many of us toy with, yet primarily in issue and crisis management situations.  What the report is suggesting, and it makes perfect sense, is deploying this model as an everyday, long-term business principal, not for short-term objectives and means.

The report also seems to paint a picture of traditional media being left out of the loop in this mosaic.  Traditional media, unsurprisingly, continues to witness declines in trust, giving organizations more reason to question traditional media’s necessity.  Smart traditional media companies, however, would be wise to heed to the report’s call to get closer to stakeholders.  Even smarter ones will make drastic changes in their business model – and that’s not figuring whether a paywall for online content makes sense.  It’s about delivering upon expectations.  Right now, according to the report, that isn’t much.

A major fundraising milestone was set this past week, as the American Red Cross Mobile Giving Campaign for Haiti has raised more than $21 million in text-based donations in less than one week. A landmark campaign, not only because of its creative use of America’s growing obsession with text messaging, but also because the organization used its established presence on social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to kick-off the fundraising effort, which quickly “went viral.”

To help the victims of Haiti's recent earthquake, you can make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross by texting the word “HAITI” to 90999.

As our hyper-connected society becomes more comfortable communicating through devices and social networks than via phone or face-to-face interactions, this social media/technology campaign makes it easy for consumers to become donors by breaking down common barriers to participation. It uses a format that Americans are closely familiar with, and requests a relatively reasonable donation (a comfortable $10 for those still feeling the effects of the recession) without having to pick-up the phone or find an Internet connection.

As NST’s Director of Social Media Teresa Siles mentioned in a News and Smart Talk blog post in July:

“Digital trends expert Steve Rubel has said, “An entire generation is growing up that will never dial a 1-800 number to reach customer care.”

And while Rubel’s comments focused on customer service, the same concept can be applied to picking up a phone, or logging on to a computer to make a donation.

Kudos to the American Red Cross, who despite being a nearly 130 year-old institution, has kept up with America’s changing habits to execute one of the most successful social media fundraising campaigns for a nonprofit organization in recent history. The Red Cross’ success has already spurred some imitators, and is sure to inspire nonprofit fundraisers throughout the country to start incorporating more technology and social media as fundraising tools.

Will it work for every nonprofit organization? No. But it’s a great testament to the power of blending social media and technology, and understanding the barriers to getting your key audiences to take action to help those in need.

Next up in the Tiger Woods pandemonium is the privacy debate.  Did a man in the public eye get stripped of his privacy by being forced to reveal his “transgressions?”

Let others take chip shots at that.  Instead, Tiger Woods the brand lost any privacy when he carved an image that personified high family and moral values.  Since his junior golf days, he, his family and his handlers meticulously crafted a brand of integrity, dignity, determination, competitive fire and loyalty.  His charitable endeavors and commercial endorsements further exemplified the Tiger Woods brand.

Successful brands reflect character – who you are and what you stand for, and clarifying that character is paramount.  It’s the centerpiece of an authentic and transparent brand proposition.  The Tiger Woods brand consistently delivered on its expectations on and off the golf course.  The brand experience was highly attractive to be repeated by fans, endorsers, news media and even his competitive foes, all telling of great stories and experiences with anything Tiger Woods.  Like any great brand, it’s more about what people say after you’ve left the room than what you say about yourself, and the Tiger Woods brand was molded perfectly to suit that.

But then the mold began to crack around Thanksgiving. It happens.  No brand will last without error, especially one that is human.  The smart brands, or at least those with smart handlers, realize that and are equipped to address any fissure in the brand – quickly. That’s where the crack in the Tiger Woods brand began to widen.  Rather than address any issues head on – the late, great golf teacher Harvey Penick always extolled “take dead aim” – the Tiger Woods brand went into bunker mode.  Control of the brand was lost – others filled the void while the brand was mum – and it was exacerbated by a refusal to talk with cops on three different occasions and apparent denials about extra-marital affairs.

And then the skeletons started coming out of the closet.  Instead of a New York City nightclub promoter, and we may hear more on that down the road, we’re hearing about hook-ups with a reality TV star and a Las Vegas nightclub marketing manager.

A brand is also your every action and deed, including inaction in a crisis situation.  The Tiger Woods brand ceded control; it can be regained, but it will be the longest tee shot in the man’s career.