Farmers feed cities.
It’s not exactly a news flash.
In fact, when these words formed the basis of an official campaign in Ontario, grains and oilseeds producers considered it a no brainer.
“For our farmers, it was hard for them to understand that urban people have to be told this,” says Lisa McLean, communications co-ordinator for the Ontario Soybean Growers. “But we had it at the (Toronto) Royal Winter Fair, and you could see urban people really considering the message.”
The three-little-word motto adorns striking yellow and black t-shirts, postcards, billboards along Ontario’s 400 series of highways and is also available in farm gate signs.
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The campaign started this summer as Ontario farmers began lobbying their provincial government to increase the agricultural budget.
As well, producers want a fully funded risk management program. Other provincial agriculture commodity groups agreed with the goals, and the Farmers Feed Cities movement was born as a placard motto in a March 2005 farm rally in Toronto.
Since then, a postcard campaign, with the Farmers Feed Cities motto on one side and a message on the back, has generated more than 25,000 farmers responses, which McLean says will be presented to the Ontario government in the new year.
A website at farmersfeedcities.com trumpets the message with noteworthy farm statistics. McLean says the group might consider taking its message nation-wide, but the movement is relatively new and focused on Ontario, so there hasn’t been any formal interest from farmers in the West.
The sunny looking yellow and black colours were no accident. McLean says visibility guided the choice, but since the campaign began, farmers have equated them with the colours of yield signs: “They say, ‘be careful with farming’.”
As you can see by the photo above, the t-shirts are available in the West to the few who are in the right place at the right time with a few dollars in their pockets.
The Ontario group is now using Farmers Feed Cities to bring agriculture into the federal election campaign.
Could a similar “yield sign” encouraging care for agriculture be orchestrated in the West? Probably, if it had a western farm group promoter.
“Agriculture has long recognized its faltering ability to market itself,” said Ontario Grain and Oilseed Safety Net Committee chair Peter Tuinema, in a September issue of The Grower.
“For decades we’ve watched people become further removed from food production. Bridging that disconnect is part of the purpose of the Farms Feed Cities campaign.”
