Hard luck image | FCC initiative says those involved in agriculture have a responsibility to promote optimism
With grain prices high and storage bins bulging, the evidence is clear: most Manitoba growers have had a fantastic year.
Many farmers describe it as a “once in a lifetime crop,” which may be true, but the choice of language is curious. It suggests 2013 was a rare occasion when farmers, by random luck, actually made a profit.
However, another interpretation is that 2013 may have been a good year, but farming remains a precarious profession.
Farm Credit Canada unveiled its Agriculture More Than Ever initiative last year to counter that type of message and transform public perceptions of agriculture.
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“Image matters,” FCC president Greg Stewart said at the program’s launch in May 2012.
“To attract the people skills and investment needed to meet the growing demand for food, those of us involved in agriculture have responsibility to promote the industry.”
The crown corporation has signed up 226 farm organizations and businesses to collaborate on the campaign since it was launched. Program partners have promised to spread good words about agriculture through blogs, Twitter, speeches and any other means that is at their disposal.
FCC polling of 4,500 Canadian producers in 2011 found that farmers were hopeful but they didn’t share their optimism with consumers.
Asked if their business would be better off or worse off in five years, 80 percent of Canadian farmers said their farms would be more affluent. As well, 58 percent planned to ex-pand or diversify their operations over the next five years.
However, FCC also asked urban consumers to rate the mood of Canadian producers by estimating the percentage of farmers who would be better off in five years.
“We gave them multiple choices: 80 percent … 55 percent, 32 percent and 12 percent,” said Lyndon Carlson, FCC’s senior vice-president of marketing.
“Guess what? The vast majority of respondents guessed 12 percent (of farmers) would be optimistic. What’s more, when asked to associate words to farming, urbanites offered up pessimistic phrases. ‘Struggling’ and ‘underpaid’ and those types of words were right at the ready for urban Canadians.”
The polling results and anecdotal evidence convinced FCC leaders they had to reverse agriculture’s hard luck image, which led to the Agriculture More Than Ever campaign.
Johanne Ross, executive director of Agriculture in the Classroom Manitoba, which collaborates on the Agriculture More Than Ever initiative, said farming’s image is an obstacle for her organization.
“We are constantly saying as a staff, ‘how are we going to engage with these high school students … that they should be curious about agriculture, that this is an industry that they should want to look at,’ ” she said.
“There are always financial challenges for any industry … but what is a best kept secret is that agriculture is one of the fastest growing and most opportunistic for these young people…. There are going to be jobs (in agriculture) that we don’t even know about (yet), so I think it’s going to be very lucrative, and that’s a message we have to get out there.”
Carlson said a proportion of Canadian farmers are reluctant to broadcast their success because it might erode public support for agriculture. Communications strategies that focus on maintaining public sympathy risk giving the public the impression that government funding for agriculture programs or research is a subsidy for unfortunate farmers.
“I bristle at that. It’s not a subsidy. It’s an investment in one of Canada’s most important industries,” Carlson said. “Talking positively about our industry has a better chance of attracting investment, whether that be private sector … or support from the government.”
Lydia Carpenter, who grew up in Winnipeg and now runs a livestock operation near Nesbitt, Man., said most people believe farming is a high risk, low return business.
“They wonder why would anyone get into a business with such low margins and such high expenses,” said Carpenter, who direct markets chicken, lamb and other products to urban customers.
She said awareness is a bigger issue than negative perceptions.
“For someone in the city … I don’t know if their first thought (about farming) would be, ‘it’s too hard, I’m not going to do it.’ The thought would probably never occur to them because we’re not encouraged to become farmers.”
Ross said the lack of communication between producers and the public remains a problem, but things are moving in the right direction.
She said farmers would usually have responded with a “deer in the headlights” gaze five years ago if she had asked them to make a presentation to students. Nowadays, producers are more willing to share their enthusiasm for agriculture.
“I think it’s one of the most important shifts in our industry.”
