Need to be Actively Engaged in Communicating With the Public Recognised

The Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan says there is growing recognition among those involved in agriculture of the need to be actively engaged in communicating with the public.
Formed in 2014 to engage with consumers and ensure those interested in how their food is produced have a truthful verifiable way to get that information, Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan has seen a doubling of its support over the past eight years.

Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan Executive Director Clinton Monchuk says in the past there was typically a connection between those in urban centers through a relative or friend to agriculture but those links no longer exist.

Quote-Clinton Monchuk-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:
There's only 1.6 percent of the population now that's actively engaged in primary production.

What that means is, when people have questions about the use of herbicides or antibiotics, they'll go onto social media or go onto a google search and not always that first response that comes up is correct.

That's why we want to make sure that we populate a lot of these ideas with actual information, truthful information from farmers and ranchers, from those who are the scientists that are developing some of these products.
What we're finding is, especially on Canadian Food Focus, when people use the resources we have, they come back.

If you look at the aggregate of what we're doing just on the Canadian Food Focus itself, we have engagements just shy of 10.1 million engagements in a year.
That means that not only are these people coming to the site and finding it valuable, they're coming back and they find this as a truthful valuable resource that they can use to understand more of their food.
Consumers have really always had questions.

The were just answered in different venues in the past.
Now we realise we need to be out there in the form of social media, we're a web site that's answering these questions and be a little bit more proactive.