Each year, the Agricultural Institute of Canada arranges for a leading agrologist to give a series of speeches to other agrologists across the country. The annual Klinck Lecture, as it is called, has become a means of focussing attention on important strategic and philosophical issues in agriculture.
This year’s speaker, retired Manitoba agrologist Reg Forbes, gave his colleagues a warning that should be of interest to all farmers.
Unless serious efforts are made to counter the misleading statements of extremist environmental and animal-rights groups, he said, agriculture will be hit with more costly and restrictive laws, regulations, and taxes.
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“Our profession, like other professions, is made up of persons who have mastered a body of fact. Our detractors play not on fact so much as emotion and the development of perceptions which are at odds with the facts.
“These detractors are well financed, they have large war chests and use the most up-to-date means of communications to get their messages across. … We as a profession are miles behind them and if we don’t take them on in an honest and forthright manner then we and society as a whole are going to be the losers.”
Forbes said some of the groups that are attacking agricultural practices even have computerized information banks to help their activists select questions and gain the attention of news media at public meetings.
The challenge for agrologists, Forbes said, is to develop effective ways to communicate with the public to counter misinformation:
“This is the information age and we had better join in or we become the dinosaurs of the era. We must transmit our ideas in a clear, concise manner using the most modern of electronic communications technology..”
If the Agricultural Institute takes up Forbes’s challenge, farmers can only benefit.
The scientific credentials and professional status of agrologists would add credibility to producers who are trying to defend their rights to such things as responsible pesticides use or humane animal agriculture operations.
On the information highway, misinformation can spread with the speed of light. Having the collective resources of Canada’s agrologists online would be a useful check on that misinformation, and a way to help educate the urban consumers and voters who will ultimately decide these issues.
But farmers must also continue to speak out on their own behalf, both directly and through their associations. The extremist environmentalist and animal-rights attacks on agricultural practices are simply too widespread to be countered by any one group.
