A podcast produced by Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan is expected to become a gathering place for consumers seeking answers.
The podcast, Ask a Farmer, is a forum for consumers to pose questions about food, ranging from how it’s produced, transport from field to grocery store, nutrition and healthy eating habits and food inflation. Three episodes are already streaming.
“Within the Canadian Food Focus brand, we determined that it would be advantageous for us to have another opportunity to connect with consumers,” said Clinton Monchuk, executive director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan and host of the podcast.
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“So within the Ask A Farmer podcast, we promote people who are listening to write back to us and ask us questions they have about their foods.
“We will have everything from dietitians, people who are experts in the food industry, right down to farmers or ranchers who are talking about different things they do on their own farms,” said Monchuk.
The podcast was officially launched on Canada’s Agriculture Day Feb. 15, in conjunction with the annual Agriculture Awareness Summit in Saskatoon.
Adapting to an evolving industry was this year’s theme, jointly organized by Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Agriculture.
“The importance of public trust remains paramount,” said Penny McCall, assistant deputy agriculture minister.
The podcast is part of the organization’s wider platform called Canadian Food Focus, a consumer-oriented outreach campaign primarily designed to reach urban audiences hungry to find out more about food and how it is grown.
The campaign includes a variety of programs to connect consumers with food production and farming, such as farm tours, community events, online activities, classes and seminars.
Canadian Food Focus also features videos, articles and recipes to interact with consumers.
Tim McMillan, former president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, was a keynote speaker during the summit.
Drawing on his knowledge of the oil and gas industry, the former Saskatchewan Party MLA and cabinet minister talked about international activist and protest organizations and how they are trying to affect Canadian agriculture.
Those who want to negatively influence agriculture are getting stronger, he said.
“It’s really just an ongoing drip, drip, drip of opponents trying to get policy and regulatory change. … These groups are actively working on it. We see a bubble up with a fertilizer ban or pesticides or other tools that are taken off of our list of options. And it’s going to keep happening and it could be a slow drip that never really gets inflamed,” said McMillan.
The onus is on the agriculture industry to ensure its voice is heard by talking with consumers, Monchuk said.
“One of the biggest challenges for the agriculture industry was to get out of our bubble and out of the box to focus on primarily urban audiences,” he said.
“We were doing a great job of talking to ourselves. And this is one of our break-out brands, Canadian Food Focus, where we actually looked to the market research of exactly how we should be talking to consumers.
“We get sometimes caught in the trap of using our farmer meetings to talk to consumers and it just clouds over.”
Canadian Food Focus is that avenue to engage with Canadian consumers.
“We believe in bringing people together, just like a good meal does.”
