"I'm trying to be a modern deputy here," said Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of Agriculture, during the department's first monthly Facebook live chat earlier this month.

She's not the only ag player trying to take the plunge into social media. In the last year, many farm lobbying groups have established a presence on Facebook and Twitter in an effort to reach out to farmers.

Americans farmers are old and getting older, with an average age of 57.1 in 2007, up from 55.3 in 2002. Social media, like most technology trends, is still thought of as the domain of young people, but the two fastest-growing age demographics on Facebook are 35- to 54-year-olds and those 55 and above, according to a Jan. 2009 analysis by iStrategyLabs, an online marketing company.

"Every single advocacy group is thinking about how they can [use] social technology and social media to engage people who are passionate about their causes," said Peter Corbett, CEO of iStrategyLabs. "We don't have an excuse to think, 'We don't need to focus our marketing campaign there because our audience isn't there.' Because it is."

Ag groups are getting the message. The Center for Rural Affairs (CFRA), a Nebraska-based rural advocacy group, started seriously investing in social media less than six months ago, but they already have more than 700 fans on Facebook and nearly 300 followers on Twitter. "We've had way more success than I anticipated," said Brian Depew, rural organizing and outreach program director at CFRA.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, active in social media for nine months, has engaged an even bigger share of the farming community. With 4,000 Facebook fans and nearly 2,300 followers on Twitter, the Farm Bureau created a social media committee to design rules of use.

Independent Twitter user @followfarmer has put together a list of more than 500 fellow tweeters who share an interest in agricultural issues.

Leading the pack on Twitter is the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, who has about 100 more followers than its national counterpart, despite only officially announcing their social media presence in June (they'd been tweeting unofficially since last November). "We know that we can't reach the people we need to reach by just posting up on our Web site and hoping they find it through Google or a search engine," said communications specialist Dan Toland, who spearheaded the group's social media effort. "It's not all about the people coming to us, but reaching out to our members."

Toland's goal is to make it easy to get connected, so he added a Web page devoted to social media on the group's site, complete with tutorials on how to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. "With most of our members, active farming members... being of the age that's a little bit slower to getting on social media we wanted to provide the right training for them," he said. "A lot of people are confused about how to get value out of it."

But the Ohio bureau has seen a surge in activity due to a controversial proposed amendment to the state constitution which would create a board with the power to regulate animal care of livestock. The ballot initiative is favored by farmers who see it as a safeguard against tougher animal care regulations proposed by organizations like the Humane Society. "We're seeing, on Facebook especially, members are becoming very, very active," Toland said. "More people are posting pictures of their 'Vote Yes for Issue 2' signs." OFBF posts videos of ads and announcements about upcoming rallies on its wall. and encourages people to post their own photos from rallies.

It this kind of direct contact with supporters that makes social media an important and effective organizing tool, farm groups said. "We can write letters to the editor until we're blue in the face," said Tracy Grondine, director of media relations at the American Farm Bureau. "But it's a lot more efficient and effective to post directly on someone's site."

CORRECTION: The original version of this post misstated @followfarmer's Twitter handle.