Pesticides were the creak in the floor that woke a foe, beginning a slow and steady erosion of public support for modern agriculture.
Farmers took issue and still do, wondering how a group that seemed disinterested and/or unaware of the goings-on of rural Canada felt they could accuse growers of tainting their food supplies, their water and the environment without understanding the science or how these chemicals are used.
In 2016, the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity (CCFI) was formed to build consumer confidence in Canada’s agri-food system. In 2017, the Public Trust Steering Committee (PTSC) was formed to serve a similar mandate.
In late 2018, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada gave more than $400,000 to be shared between the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA), a group that administered its share of the money through the PTSC. The stimulus was for the building of consumer confidence in Canada’s food systems.
This year, the Public Trust Steering Committee empowered CCFI to lead the charge in tackling this growing problem.
“This welcomed announcement provides an opportunity to have one, united voice with a national focus to coordinate efforts to build public trust in Canada’s food system,” said CCFI CEO John Jamieson in a September news release. “We appreciate the work the PTSC did and look forward to executing on our newly defined mandate to work collaboratively to coordinate trust activities, provide credible resources and to up the ante on proactive communications.”
The work these groups and others like them are doing is research-driven, comprehensive and important. Their findings are public.
The hope is that an increased understanding of and confidence in agriculture will help the industry thrive and allay skepticism over current food production practices.
But in the sector’s efforts to push for a pro-ag, pro-transparency environment the agriculture industry has laid the groundwork for something it never intended.
In some cases, the impulse of industry and its influencers to tackle this issue has become so strong they have become blind to their blunder of treating trust as a marketing campaign, the contents of which often contain clever, empty one-liners about the great things ag is doing and just how sustainable and environmentally conscious farmers are.
Having the trust of the public would be a market and policy booster for farmers. Cities have the voting power, the clout, and farmers are vulnerable to their attitudes. It’s a systemic weakness the industry has tackled through a narrative that prods at something deep, like the word trust.
Trust is not won; it’s earned. Slogans won’t get us there.
If farmers want to shed the stereotypes foisted on them and talk openly to consumers about the realities of agriculture — and they should want this — then they need to do more than commission the help of marketing agencies.
The agricultural community has urged the public to be critical of misleading food labels, such as “does not contain GMOs,” “organic,” and “all-natural,” arguing that consumers shouldn’t be convinced by coy marketing. There’s more to the story. Organic doesn’t mean pesticide-free. GMOs are not unhealthy. And all-natural is an unregulated designation that allows the consumer to believe what he or she wants to believe about the quality of that product.
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