Two Manitoba towns want to draw people in and teach them about the importance of agriculture.
A Neepawa group has offered to buy 75 acres west of town on the Yellowhead Highway for the Great Plains Interpretive Centre.
And a Carman committee just hired consulting firm KPMG to spend four to six months examining the feasibility of a Farm and Food Interpretive Centre.
“I can’t see one hurting the other,” said Bud Birch, chair of the Neepawa group.
“There’s enough tourism in the province. As long as they’re a little bit different, it should be good.”
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The Neepawa centre will include a building with displays, meeting rooms and a cafe. Visitors will be able to travel a walking trail past crop plots showing practices like zero till and integrated pest management.
A creek running through the land will be used to demonstrate how to water cattle without ruining the river bank.
“We would like to show people how agriculture and environment can get along and work together,” Birch said.
The group got close to $25,000 from the provincial government to help with research and planning.
Birch said raising $1.5 million from government and industry comes next.
Brent Van Koughnet, chair of the Carman group, said he also thinks the two centres will complement each other.
The Carman group wants to focus on technology, food processing and the future of the industry.
Van Koughnet said the centre may include something like a ride on a combine using virtual reality computer technology.
He said farmers and business people in the group saw the need to get the uninitiated to see and touch agriculture so they can understand where food comes from.
“There’s lots of museums, but there’s very few show places for all the exciting things and all the dynamic changes that are taking place in this industry,” said Van Koughnet.
The group is spending a $51,000 grant from the federal government’s department of western diversification for the study to make sure it develops what tourists want.
The group will also be looking for money from the agriculture sector to help build the centre.
