Be accountable to public | Counter activists by holding media tours and using social media to tell message, says expert
“Trust me, I’m a farmer,” isn’t good enough to persuade increasingly engaged consumers that they should support what producers do, says the chief executive officer of the Missouri-based Center for Food Integrity.
Charlie Arnot told the Agriculture Awareness Summit in Regina Feb. 6 that plying them with scientific data won’t create trust either.
While farmers are more comfortable dealing with science and numbers, their consumers are looking for producers who share their values and are ethically grounded, he said.
“Science is critically important, but it can’t play the lead role in building trust,” he said.
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Arnot said people want to know that farmers care for their animals, employees, the environment, customers and communities.
Farmers have the social licence to operate without excessive regulations or restrictions if that kind of trust exists. They obtain that social licence by telling people what they’re doing.
He said farmers have to be willing to say that while production practices have changed, their values have not.
“Challenging today’s food system has become part of popular culture,” he added.
Activists and lobbyists have risen to the top of what Arnot calls the ethical hierarchy because people have a perception that they are acting for the greater good and are accountable to the public.
The good news is that farmers can easily gain that ethical high ground, he said. “It costs nothing to move from the bottom to the top. Claim that position. Talk about doing what’s right.”
For example, Farm and Food Care Ontario holds farm tours for media and stakeholders to help open the barn doors.
Program co-ordinator Heather Hargrave said people want to know more about agriculture and should hear the information from farmers.
She said there are a lot of individual efforts within agriculture to create awareness programs, but most of the money is spent on development, leaving little for implementation and evaluation.
“This is a national conversation we need to have,” she said.
Several people at the summit noted that being open and transparent takes on added meaning in today’s world of smartphones. Geographic isolation doesn’t mean technological isolation, and people can quickly learn whether farmers’ values are truly aligned with theirs.
“Assume someone is watching everything you do all the time,” Arnot said.
The industry must ensure that images used in awareness campaigns properly reflect farming, he added.
Nostalgia and romance tend to prevail.
