By Bruce Cochrane.
The Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems says the influence of non-traditional stakeholders will complicate discussions aimed at developing Canada's next Agricultural Policy Framework.
An Agri-Food Economic Systems Agri-Food Policy Note, released earlier this month, challenges governments and the agri-food sector to broaden discussions on the successor to Growing Forward-2, which expires in 2018.
Dr. Al Mussell, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems, says the influence of non-traditional stakeholders, those who may not be part of the agri-food value chain but who have an interest in how food is produced, will make this round of discussions more challenging.
Dr. Al Mussell-Agri-Food Economic Systems:
Just in the last couple of years we've developed this term that has come into our language which is called social acceptance or social license of what we do in agriculture.
Some of what we do in food marketing targets some of these concerns and issues directly but we're going to have to find a way to engage that and that's a little bit of a different flavor than the past 3 of these types of 5 year agreements have had to deal with.
In a way it's already on the agenda because the federal minister has been given a mandate to develop a national food policy and, by nature, that's going to bring in a range of considerations, some from the traditional agricultural community but also opinions and ideas from others.
This is coming to have such a strong impact in ag and food marketing, understanding of agricultural technologies, acceptance of different types of agricultural technologies.
There is a role for policy to work collectively to figure out how it is we can do this and get a social understanding of how food is produced and now is the time to be working on that.
Dr. Mussell says getting the kind of dialogue that's seen as credible by farmers and these new stakeholders will be a challenge but it's one we have to take on.
Source: Farmscape