The Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan says Canada's Agriculture Day celebration offers an excellent opportunity for farmers to interact through social media with the non-farming public. Canada's Agriculture Day observance, February 11th, will feature various agricultural activities and discussions in communities across Canada.
Farmers are encouraged to join in by sharing their experiences through social media using the hash tag cdnagday.
Clinton Monchuk, the Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, says last year's observance ended up being one of the top discussed things on social media.
Clip-Clinton Monchuk-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:
When you have that opportunity to get the ear of those individuals who don't have the ability to go to a farm or a ranch, some of these people will ask questions. You're going to have an engaged audience that wants to know more about what you are doing. I think that's where events like this and other events we do with Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, the aim is really to engage consumers so they have a better understanding about food.
There's a lot of different issues that are out there but the main ones come back to "what are we doing on our farms?" Whether it's grain farms or livestock operations, consumers just don't know. Their experience is extremely limited.
A lot of them have never physically been to a farm so, when subjects like pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics, hormones come out, they just don't have the answers.
So that is one of the key things that we're trying to have people who are involved in agriculture do, is talk more about it. We need to be a little bit more transparent about what we are doing so consumers can have that confidence in the food system here in Canada and again we can feel more confident going forward to use the different tools that we do use on our farms and ranches to produce the food that they're consuming.
Source : Farmscape