Agriculture United

March drew near and my excitement grew higher, as I knew I would soon be attending the Canadian Young Farmers’ Forum annual conference, this year being held at the Vancouver Harbourfront in British Columbia at the end of February.  Agriculture United was the theme of the conference and this couldn’t have been more fitting, as members of the farming community and industry need to stick together or for use of a better word, farm together!
 
A day prior to leaving I sat in a workshop with several other teachers and discussed media and different perspectives people can have.  We talked about developing a voice for oneself and critical thinking skills.  In this case, we were talking about how students can develop a voice, but my mind (of course) wandered to farming…as it always does several times throughout the day.  I started to wonder if what this facilitator was saying to us teachers could be considered in a different context.  Just like students having no prior knowledge of a topic, there are many consumers who have no prior schema of agriculture.  I wondered how we can put that knowledge in their minds and thought about it more over the length of my flight and course of the weekend.   
 
There are many missing voices in information, in the media, from consumers and from the farmers.  Many people become used to one single story about something (culture, religion, agriculture) and make their mind up before it has even happened or before they are aware.  Consumers may have a single story in their head already about farm products and methods and my voice may not be enough to inform them or change their mind.  Often, I feel silenced to the general public because my words about agriculture may come out wrong, but then I watch an Ag More Than Ever video or listen to a representative and realize I am just one of them.  I remembered back to last year’s CYFF where we were told to brand ourselves, speak about agriculture orally, through articles and social media and always do it in a professional manner.  There are many missing voices out there and when I silence myself I am not educating anyone and CYFF speakers and peers always remind me of this. 
 
A Dutch farmer from Alberta, who is a producer of potatoes for Frito Lay chips, said “the customer is King…”  This caught my attention because it’s true, when it comes to livestock, crop size, etc. farmers work for the consumer.  We educate ourselves regularly in the field, but we always need to have our audience in mind to help them make informed decisions. More importantly, sometimes we need to educate on the “one bad apple…” whether it be media, consumer complaints, or something one farmer has done to anger consumers.  What sets the tone for “bad agriculture?” one speaker asked us.  One farmer can paint the wrong picture for many and it is up to us to regularly inform about standard and non-standard practices. 
 
During the conference, while listening to the CEO of the Egg Farmers of Canada speak about our “Social License,” I asked the person beside me “What if the consumer could be the farmer and vice versa?”  Of course we are all consumers, but we are not all farmers.  What if a consumer woke up as a farmer?  He looked at me in curiosity and probably thought this girl is weird.  However, we continued to consider the impact of alternative perspectives.  There are always missing voices and it is important to identify which voices are present in pieces of information.  Furthermore, the face of a farmer should be more present on products to fill in gaps of knowledge.  This has increased considerably over the years, but still I wonder why a Disney Princess is on the side of a can of beans or corn.  Why can’t a farmer in action be on it?  The face of a farmer is much more important than a cartoon princess (…but maybe not as pretty!).  Our children need to be educated to understand purpose and context of marketing communication.  This helps kids develop skills to interpret in the context of our daily lives. 

While engaged in a virtual farm tour given by a young girl from Newfoundland I was amazed at what her family had done to educate the public about agriculture.  She reminded me of myself 10 years ago and I made sure to tell her because I would never want to see her lose her passion for the industry.  Through a lengthy promotional video about her family’s farm, they toured adults and children and fed them products from their farm.  They branded themselves and shared their face to the public.  They included the consumers in their agriculture journey and lifestyle and regularly held events at their location.  The virtual farm tours have always been my favourite, because they are the same as me just wanting to share their story and I see myself up there one day!  I noticed a theme in all the other farm tour presentations, where many of them said “we have made mistakes on our farm, but mistakes are good.”  I tell the same thing to my students, as we can only learn to do by doing and sometimes that means we do things wrong.  These farmers took the words from my mouth because in farming (and life) we are always learning from our mistakes.  On our farms we are all looking for continuous improvement, but go about it in different ways.  There are always new learning opportunities (some fail and some succeed) and that is how we continue to innovate and build in almost every context or career.     
 
All the lawyers, representatives of organizations, business owners, writers, politicians and farmers who speak leave thoughts lingering in my head, but the virtual farm tours I can directly relate to and measure their successes with mine.  As I walked up to my hotel room that evening I asked myself how I measure success.  This isn’t the first time this thought has crossed my mind.  I see success in others in abundance and when asked about my farm I find myself slightly affronting what I have because I don’t feel as though I compare (in the agricultural industry) to farms on a larger scale.  Later in the evening over dinner, someone at my table stopped me in conversation and turned the conversation around.  Instead of me making myself sound less than successful, he made me sound very successful and told me to never speak less about my farm just because it is small.  There are farms of all different sizes and each can be successful.  Often, I caught myself saying, “We only have this many cows…” or “I only sell this many eggs a week..,” but there was never a need for me to say the word "only" at all.  I was telling a story of myself that made me sound less than successful to an American Young Farmer, while on the other hand, this Ontario farmer made me sound the complete opposite and worth telling my story.  It is neat to consider various perspectives of success and what success looks like in agriculture. 
 
With that being said, the power of words from one to another can be really diminishing or strengthening.  We (farmers) tend to be supportive of each other, while at the same time often critical.  Conventional farmers shouldn’t devalue organic farmers and vice versa.  There shouldn’t be an idea in our heads that we can’t work together because in the end we all unite for the same purpose.  I overheard a board member say that next time we drive by a neighbours farm and see something we don’t like, such as a messy field, poor layout or potentially comment on the way a crop looks, that maybe we should rather look at their successes or pull in the driveway and find out their story.  We can’t measure a farmer’s success based on one story.  I’ve learned this first hand being a teacher because I would be a very poor teacher if I measured my students’ successes and failures based on a single story about them. 
 
On my plane ride home, my seat partner, ironically, really concluded some of my thoughts about different perspectives and “single stories” one may have about farming.  It was a timely way to end my weekend experience.  We exchanged what we do and when I was explaining why I was in Vancouver his face lit up.  He was so grateful that I was a farmer.  I hesitated telling him, but he had nothing bad to say about agriculture.  Firsthand, I worried because many people do have negativity towards certain agricultural practices and related issues or they are just unaware of all the good things we do!  In fact, he does urban planning and is a large part of rooftop agriculture in major cities.  I was expecting the worst in a conversation about farming but rather than silencing myself, I told him this and he had genuine shock on his face that anyone would be angry at farmers.  He said “farmers feed the world!”  We had more in common than I thought and had similar thoughts on agriculture even though both from very different backgrounds.  I was ready with conversation skills and strategies in place that I have learned from agricultural conferences over the years.  These skills have helped in some situations when I felt that I needed to be defensive of our awesome industry, but that wasn’t the case on my flight home to Ontario!  More so, he told me that I didn’t look like a farmer.  I laughed because the Saturday morning speaker at the conference said “farming isn’t about the guys with the grey hair anymore!”  I told my seat partner this and said “we come in all different shapes and sizes…” and I was glad in that moment to be a proud face of the industry. 
 
Let’s show the public all the different faces of farming!  As farmers we need to stay in touch with each other, maintain good relationships with customers, lawyers, bank managers, family, agricultural organizations, and the government.  We need to farm together (#farmtogether), not just with other farmers, but with the rest of the world in mind too!  
   
Thank you to the Beef Farmers of Ontario for supporting me in my adventures to the Canadian Young Farmers’ Forum.  

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