Farmscape for April 13, 2018

The Communications and Special Events Manager with Farm and Food Care says, while farms have become bigger, the values of what it means to be part of a family farm have not changed.
Farm and Food Care was created to speak on behalf of the two percent of Canadians directly involved in food production with those who are not involved in farming but want to know more about where their food comes from.
Amy Matheson, the Communications and Special Events Manager with Farm and Food Care, says consumers are much less connected to farming than ever before.

Clip-Amy Matheson-Farm and Food Care:
As farmers and members of the agribusiness community we are absolutely out here being the two percent doing the right thing.
The right thing means taking care of our animals, keeping their priority and their care at top of mind always and also producing safe, healthy, quality and affordable food.
People want to see a face behind the farm.
It's not just a faceless nameless farmer or a factory, which is a term that we hate.
There is an actual person and a family, of which 98 percent of farm owners are, behind those barn doors.
What remains constant and consistent is those true family farm values.
That's not something that's changed.
It certainly remains the same.
I think the biggest thing that anyone would agree with is that what we've been able to do as an industry is to be able to expand but, essentially at the end of the day, we're doing more.
We are producing more food with less resources and keeping the environmental factor at top of mind always as well as the health and welfare of the animals.
Fundamentally the values of what it means to be on a family farm, that will never change but the population of actual farmers with their boots dirty every day is two percent.

Matheson says consumers want to know the food they are taking home to feed their families is produced in a manner that has integrity and ethics behind it.
She says the big challenge for farmers is that they have typically been much more focused on producing food rather than talking about producing food.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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