Early indications are that Canada's Agriculture Day observance was once again a great success. Canada's Agriculture Day observance, which occurred yesterday, featured agricultural activities in communities across Canada and discussions on social media intended to connect those who produce food with those who consume it.
Clinton Monchuk, the Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, says early indications are that the observance was extremely successful.
Clip-Clinton Monchuk-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:
I think, in the most part, we're not going to know on the social media side until we tabulate all the analytics but it appears that the pickup was fairly huge. I know we were trending for a little bit throughout Canada using the hashtag CDNAgdays so I think the level of consumer interest is high.
Some of the stats to back that up, from the Canadian Center for Food Integrity, indicate that roughly 60 percent of Canadians want to know more about how their food is being produced. In terms of questions, I had a wide gambit of questions from simple things like "what do you use to harvest your crops and plant your crops?" and we had pictures of that to more complicated issues like "royalty rights for seed."
An urbanite, somebody from Edmonton asked me some fairly in depth questions around farmers' right to save seed and some of the new legislation that the government is looking at. So it really varies from end to end on some of the questions. But, again, having the opportunity to talk with consumers about what farmers are doing is an excellent opportunity to share the message.