Changing attitudes | New website will promote the industry and explain farm practices and how food is safely produced
GATINEAU, Que. —Regina-based government lender Farm Credit Canada plans to spend more than $1 million on a national campaign to promote Canadian agriculture.
And a senior FCC official who announced the program Feb. 22 at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual meeting said it is not a way to market services the crown corporation offers to farmers.
“It’s not about us trying to make more loans,” Lyndon Carlson, senior vice-president for marketing told delegates. “This is a cause, not a campaign.”
The centrepiece will be a soon-to-be-unveiled website at www.agriculturemorethanever.ca, which will promote the industry, give farmers a chance to tell their stories and tout the industry to its consumer customers.
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“Never has agriculture mattered more to Canada and the world,” he said. “But we haven’t been good at getting our story out.”
Carlson said later that the campaign, including advertising, social media and video production, does not yet have an established budget.
“But what we are planning cannot be done for under $1 million so it will be that or maybe more,” he said.
One of the key and early targets of the campaign will be farmers themselves.
Carlson said farmers over the years have grown accustomed to emphasizing the risks of the business, the bad years and the regular need for public support.
“I ask all of us in the industry to change our attitude, to get away from the glass-half-empty message,” said the FCC executive. “It’s like we’ve always been looking for sympathy.”
That, in turn, gives younger people little incentive to get into the business.
The first phase of the campaign will be to accentuate the positive and give agriculture a more positive image. It will explain modern farming practices, emphasize the role agriculture plays in the economy and in providing safe nutritious food and also give farmers information they can use to answer their critics.
He said a confident industry will be a stronger industry.
As a sample of the message that will be available through the website, the campaign will tackle the widespread farmer argument that their children should look for a career that is more predictable, stable and profitable.
Nova Scotia farmer Lisa Jenereaux takes the opposite view.
“If my daughter was interested in farming, I couldn’t imagine a better life for her,” she says. “I mean, what could be better than farming?”
