Spread agriculture's good message, urges dairy speaker - June 2016

Thursday, June 23, 2016

For anyone active and engaged in our industry, the winter months are full of annual general meetings and conferences that provide the perfect opportunity to get out there and connect with our peers, listen to issues facing farmers, hear from some dynamic speakers and celebrate our collective successes. Each time I leave one of these meetings, I am able to reflect on the things I've learned and am left, more often than not, feeling energized and confident about where we're headed as an industry.

Occasionally, however, I am left feeling slightly disheartened because it can feel that no matter how hard we're working to share our message and tell our story to the non-farming public, there are still voices that seem louder than ours trying to discredit, disparage and discourage us from doing what we love. We risk losing the battle on social media to anti-agriculture special-inter-est groups, anti-GMO lobby groups and vegan activists. These collectives have a clear, well-funded and aggressive mandate to end animal agriculture and threaten our ability to make advancements in food security and science.

On April 24, I had the opportunity to represent the Dairy Farmers of Canada as a keynote speaker at the BConnected digital influencers conference in Ottawa. It was a two-day conference for parent, lifestyle, food and travel bloggers. In my presentation, I encouraged the attendees to reach out to a farmer when writing about food and agriculture and illustrated that we're very easy to reach out to on social media. The 120 attendees were very surprised to learn that 97 per cent of Canadian farms are family owned and operated, and I successfully countered the mistaken belief that milk from Canadian dairy farms contains antibiotics and growth hormones. It was my largest personal win since becoming active on social media because I had their trust and I was transparent. To quote a wise friend of mine: if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

I encourage all of your readers to continue to reach out to our non-farming neighbours on social media, at the grocery store or at a dinner party. Commit to taking an hour out of your week to communicate with others. I promise it will be worth it and very personally fulfilling! Our future and the future of the next generation of Canadian farmers depend on it.

Amy Matheson
Embro, Ont.