Farmscape for February 28, 2018

The Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan says there's a growing recognition of the need for farmers and ranchers to engage more directly consumers to help them better understand agriculture.
The Canadian Agricultural, Partnership, which comes into effect April 1, has identified building the public's awareness of agriculture as a top priority.
Clinton Monchuk, the Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, says roughly 97 plus percent of the Canadian population has no direct connection to the farm.

Clip-Clinton Monchuk-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:
There's a recognition now nationally an it's been here in the province of Saskatchewan for a little while due to the efforts of some in government in the past five years or so.
You can see there's a very substantial effort that's being taken nationwide to make sure that we're going out and trying to engage the public with what farmers and ranchers are doing.
To have programs that would help organizations showcase what they're doing to show that we're responsible for the environment, animal welfare is a key priority to anyone who's involved animal agriculture.
A lot of these things that we're already doing, consumers just don't know that we're doing it.
To have that level of engagement to show consumers what we're doing just provides that higher level of confidence that we are doing the right things and consumers can rest assured that they have safe, quality nutritious food with the regulatory background to make sure what ever products they purchase are safe to consume.

Monchuk says the majority of consumers want to know more about their food and how it's produced but a very small percentage of the population feel they are informed and that they understand farming and ranching.
He says we need more farmers and ranchers going out and talking about what they're doing to make sure the public is informed about what's going on in agriculture.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork