A farm research facility in Manitoba is taking on the ambitious goal of putting urban schoolchildren back in touch with the agriculture industry.
The Glenlea Farm Education Centre will be built alongside long-term research into sustainable intensive livestock practices at the new National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, which is already operating at the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea Research Station south of Winnipeg.
“We needed to have a vehicle where we could actually showcase some of our research directly to the public,” said Michael Trevan, dean of agricultural and food sciences at the university.
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Trevan, who until two-and-a-half years ago lived in the United Kingdom, said efforts to educate Canada’s growing urban majority about agriculture must be increased before it’s too late.
“In Europe and the U.K., I saw this divide happening between the rural and urban population, who regarded the rural bit as their playground. It was, ‘how dare you plow up my footpath.’ That hasn’t happened yet in Canada, but you can see all the reasons why it could.”
Universities have a role to play in addressing that imbalance, he added, even if it means serving the community in a way that the community hasn’t yet thought about.
The Glenlea interpretive centre, which is in the final design stages, will be built onto the side of a conventional hog barn, with gallery windows so visitors can observe modern hog farming practices.
Due to rising construction costs, the original $4 million in funding will likely fall short, he said. To fill the gap, additional private sector money will be needed.
“With a bit of luck, we will be opening for business in about 18 months time.”
With support from Manitoba’s poultry, dairy and hog producers, the interpretive centre’s objective is to tell the entire story of food production, from the farm to the supermarket.
“The whole thing ends up in a supermarket, where the visitors can actually scan goods and learn about where they come from and how they are produced,” he said.
“At various points, there is also something about what sort of person works in this part of the industry, what their qualifications are and what their job is like.”
The centre will be heavily focused on hands-on activities, both high and low-tech. Mock-up tractor simulators will let schoolchildren harvest a virtual reality crop and learn how modern GPS guidance systems work. Visitors to the food processing section will mill grain by hand and use it to make pizza dough.
Aimed at a Grade 5-8 level of communication, the program ties in with the school curriculum, especially the Ag in the Classroom initiative. Organizers are expecting 30,000 visitors a year.
Trevan hopes the centre will encourage more students to consider careers in agriculture, which is experiencing a serious labour shortage.
“Agri-food companies are having an increasingly difficult time attracting graduates because people still think that it is all about farming. In fact, 90 percent of the jobs in the industry are in other aspects of the production process.”
The U of M typically has 80 to 90 diploma and degree graduates a year. This year, companies have sent in more than 450 job listings.
“If you think we have problems, you should see Alberta and Saskatchewan,” Trevan said. “There are more jobs out there than there are graduates to fill them.”
