Farmscape for November 21, 2016

A Facilitator with Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan is encouraging farmers to take the imitative to share their stories about how they produce food with those who buy and consume that food.
"Advocating for Agriculture" was among the topics discussed last week as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2016 in Saskatoon.
Cherilyn Nagel, a Facilitator with Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, told those on hand those involved in agriculture need to be communicating with consumers, those people who have questions about the food they are purchasing on a regular basis.

Clip-Cherilyn Nagel-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:
Canadians are very interested in their food and they have a lot of questions about how it's grown.
So I'm encouraging other farmers and ranchers and those in the industry to speak up to the consumers who have the questions and see if we can connect the consumers with the farmers who are growing the food.
A recent Ipsos Reid survey has shown us that 93 percent of Canadians know little to nothing about agriculture so this is our opportunity.
They're telling us we don't know anything about agriculture and we have questions so it's our job to connect them with people who are in the industry and who are growing the food to help answer the questions.
Farmers just haven't done a great job over the last couple of decades in telling our story.
We get so excited about the modern agricultural practices that we have, it's even difficult for us to keep up with the newest technology and the safest way to grow food so we've forgotten and haven't made it a priority to tell the non-farming audience about what we've done and it's put us in a position where we no longer have public trust and that's the issue that we're working with today.

Nagel says, while consumers trust farmers, they don't necessarily trust agriculture and, because they don't know any farmers, they often seek out answers to their questions about food production through social media from sources not involved in food production that may not be reliable.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork