Ag advocate Michele Payne Knoper recently posed this question on Twitter (http://twitter.com/mpaynknoper) and it’s a good one: How can farmers help consumers learn more about how food is produced today?
Any suggestions? (Because what we're doing now ain't cuttin' it!)
A trip to the farm to see the food plants and animals growing and being cared for is the answer, however it is not that simple. Most real working farmers have daily chores that take all day to finish and just don't have the time to give tours, real working farms are not set up for guests and can be dangerous places, and real farm animals are not all model citizens and they too can be dangerous. There just isn't enough insurance to cover groups visiting "real" farms in person from all accidents.
On the other side of the fence are the consumers, some would like to visit a farm, but most have no desire, too far away or too dirty they would say.
So
how about video.
Oh yes, I'm sure you have heard about or seen some sort of documentary on PBS, usually halfway through someone comes in the room to change the channel because there was a game on or something, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about putting monitors right into the grocery stores next to their respective product.
A monitor and video of an egg farm, the farmer doing chores, the hens eating, laying eggs, eggs getting cleaned and packaged right next to the packaged eggs at the store.
Same for milk, butter, chicken, pork, beef, vegetables. A product specific video showing how that particular food item was raised and made into food.
The consumer would have a better chance of learning more about how their food was produced when a video of it has been place right next to it at the store.
It might also be a good idea to give these short, one subject videos out free for viewing at home.
Kathy
Obesity and hypertension are reaching epidemic levels. When I go to my Physician checkups he advises me to cut salt and cholesterol intake.
If you look at what happened to Detroit building gas guzzlers, perhaps we can realize we need to change our thought patterns.
Agribusiness needs to market more low-fat,low-salt products products such as skim milk,whole grain foods, and healthier meat products.
One of the largest food sources are pop and sweetened drinks which are sold in our schools and hooks our youth on junk food at a very early age.
We also need to educate youth and young parents on the long term health consiquences of eating junk and fast food on a daily basis.
We need to make eating healthy an important part of all our lives and focus on providing those type of products.
Correction-conseguences
Oops-consequences, that's better
Excellent question, Susan! I think we do it by always doing our best and showing our best to the public. We speak with our fields and buildings and everything we do. Our farm is always open to visitors, just had Daniel Davidson from DTN here from Nebraska. We have hosted visitors from all over the world. Since so many people get their information from the Internet I think these columns and websites and youtubes and FaceBook and Twitter and so on and so on are so very important! Working with the schools and on farm school trips help give the children memories they never forget and they should be very positive ones. I have dedicated my life to agriculture as you have and I always try to show my best side because it speaks volumes!
For those of you on Twitter, every Tuesday from 8-10 (Eastern) p.m., there is a 'chat' on this issue. It started only 4/07/09, so it's still just getting going, but I read that there were more than 100 who participated in some way last week.
To participate, be online or on your phone and look for tweets with this hashtag - #agchat. To see the tweets you can use any number of options such as Tweetdeck or basic Twitter search. Just search for that hashtag and you can even scroll back through this week's chat. YOu can also sign into TweetChat (http://tweetchat.com) and use the #agchat search and participate easily that way, too.
Even if you don't make it Tuesday nights, you can still use the Twitter search for #agchat and see what was talked about.
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