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Farmers Forced to Adapt to Changing Consumer Demands, Government Regulations, Technology
Dr. John Patience - Iowa State University

Farmscape for March 15, 2018

A Professor of Animal Science with Iowa State University says farmers are being forced to adapt quickly to changing consumer demands, changing government regulations and changing economics.
"Innovative diet formulation arising from legislation, regulation, market preferences and changing economics" will be the focus of the CFM de Lange lecture presented as part of the 2018 London Swine Conference set for March 27th and 28th.
Dr. John Patience, a Professor of Animal Science with Iowa State University, observes today's farmers must adapt to a changing consumer market place, a changing legislative and regulatory world and changing technology.

Clip-Dr. John Patience-Iowa State University:
If I was to go back one generation, farmers pretty much were given the license to produce food the way that they felt it should best be produced.
Of course that is now changing because the consumer wants to have more influence on production practices.
It's a bit ironic because, when consumers were closer to the farm, they weren't on the farm themselves but they would have brothers and sisters or fathers or aunts and uncles that are farming and they would be familiar with farming, there was very little criticism of farming practices.
But that world has changed now and a much smaller proportion of consumers are familiar with farming practices and that is one of the things I think that leads to questions being asked and, in some respects, demands being made.

Dr. Patience says much of the regulatory change relates to food safety and food safety is the number one concern for most consumers but that's not a bad thing because farmers have the same concern so there's no disconnect there.
He acknowledges the big unknown is changing technology and farmers, consumers and food distributors are evaluating and discussing what technologies are or are not acceptable.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.


       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork

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