Sprout Up Movement: A Paradigm Cultivating Future Agriculturists Through Social Media, Partnerships, and Capacity Building

Best Paper Finalist

Crop Science Society of the Philippines - Society for Advancement of Breeding Research in Asia and Oceania (CSSP-SABRAO) 2024 International Conference for Crop Science and Breeding. Crimson Hotel Filinvest Alabang, Muntinlupa City, Philippines. August 12-16, 2024

Analysts anticipate that the Philippines will confront a deficit of farmers within the next 10 to 12 years, given that the typical age of farmers falls within 55 to 59 years. This poses a significant challenge to attaining food security, as fewer youth are interested in agriculture. Therefore, in 2022, the Sprout Up Movement, an initiative aimed at spotlighting personal narratives of individuals involved in agriculture through social media, was launched. Banking on theoretical foundations like the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and social movement theory, its core mission is to rebrand agriculture and increase awareness among youth. The paradigm developed through TPB revealed that perceived behavioral control (employment opportunities and personal confidence), is strongly related to attitude (career prospects, personal interests, practical experiences, and societal impact). Additionally, attitude influences subjective norms and directly contributes to the intention to pursue an agriculture-related degree program. At the moment, the Sprout Up Movement has reached 140,060 people across social media platforms namely TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. Analytics revealed a 30-second average attention span with 40.27% video duration viewed, 25,734 impressions, and 2.5% impressions click-through rate. The Sprout Up Movement also promotes agriculture through partnerships and speakerships in 8 organization-led events with 1,648 engaged individuals from capacity building activities and conferences. These events focused on promoting agriculture and training activities empowering the youth on agricultural practices. Strategies were formulated through a pseudo-quantitative analysis, including Internal Factor Evaluation and External Factor Evaluation. An integrated analysis that included the I-E Matrix, SWOT Matrix, and Quantitative Strategy Planning (QSP) Matrix revealed that the Sprout Up Movement’s best way to move forward is to grow and build. The QSP matrix suggests that positioning and differentiation can be improved by exemplifying partnerships with higher education institutions and optimizing social media content that would complement the algorithm-identified audience span.

Keywords: social movement, social media, strategic management, analytics, rebranding agriculture