Farmers and others in agriculture need to shift how they communicate with consumers from telling to showing how food today is grown and raised, said Will Fett, executive director of the Iowa Agriculture Literacy Foundation (IALF).

"If you think about the way that information is presented in our society through commercials, through television, through newspaper articles, it’s storytelling," said Fett to farmers attending the Iowa Farm Bureau annual meeting last month in Des Moines.

"We need to stop messaging to consumers and start...