Been at a meeting today!

[richard hammond]

I have been at a meeting today where , the points we discussed were-
How independent is your agronomic advise? (does your agronomist really care about your business)
How are we as an industry going to get Joe public onboard?
Who should be promoting the UK agric industry? NFU,CLA, or YOU!!(the farmer)
The people there were a mix of agronomists, supply, manufacturer, and the most importantly farmers.

what are your thoughts how we go forward??

 

[Hilly]

I have been at a meeting today where , the points we discussed were-
How independent is your agronomic advise? (does your agronomist really care about your business)
How are we as an industry going to get Joe public onboard?
Who should be promoting the UK agric industry? NFU,CLA, or YOU!!(the farmer)
The people there were a mix of agronomists, supply, manufacturer, and the most importantly farmers.

what are your thoughts how we go forward??

If we need meetings to work that lot out we have a loooooooooooooooong way to go forward.

 

[ollie989898]

I care about my crops too much, perhaps more so than the farmer in many cases. I enjoy seeing good results and seeing how they improve life for the farmer. One of my small perks of the job is the ability to go around in summer seeing what fields did or how they do the following year when we have established the next crop- grass or roots or whatever.

I am happy to talk to Joe public about what I am doing on my travels and often do get into impromptu conversations with dog walkers etc, but I don't think the public are all that interested when it arrives on the shop shelf and they have to pay for it.

 

[richard hammond]

If we need meetings to work that lot out we have a loooooooooooooooong way to go forward.

Got to start some where, or have you got the answer to our markets etc, if so give us a clue? Can you also tell me how we are going to keep actives etc!

 

[richard hammond]

I care about my crops too much, perhaps more so than the farmer in many cases. I enjoy seeing good results and seeing how they improve life for the farmer. One of my small perks of the job is the ability to go around in summer seeing what fields did or how they do the following year when we have established the next crop- grass or roots or whatever.

I am happy to talk to Joe public about what I am doing on my travels and often do get into impromptu conversations with dog walkers etc, but I don't think the public are all that interested when it arrives on the shop shelf and they have to pay for it.

Why are they not interested, is it because they do not actually know what we do and how we do it,? and the cost of food will only go up if we have more restrictions put onto us..

 

[T Hectares]

I think engaging the public on farm is a great way to start.
Once non-farming people are on farm and have farming practices explaned in an honest manner they can be very pro farming, we all need food after all !!

For me, starting this exposure at school is important and should be encouraged.

 

[Dave645]

Jo public, are far more easily swayed by celebrities and tv shows, if you want to improve the farmings image or the publics perceptions you need media coverage.
Celebrity cooking programs celebrating good food grown in the uk has done more for the farmings image than the NFU or CLA ever have or will.
Jimmies farm help in a round about way, it increased uk media coverage but it didn't paint a great image of intensive farming, but they did explain it to the public which helps. the problems the same old one the public want the image of small farms producing a bit of everything, like in the good life but want to pay intensive farming prices, without intensive farms we can never feed the growing world population, or produce food at a price the public want to pay.

The red tractor logo helps, good food labelling also helps.
A campaign to eat British only works if people can see what is actualy British on the label. For that you need supermarkets help. Or the governments help to force clear labelling on food origin, and how it's produced, if the bacon is produced in a system where sows are still held in farrowing crates then, that's why it's cheap....and labelling and public education are the only way to let people see why they may have to pay more for their food, or why ours is better. But to do this you need far more than a few adverts or educating children they help if your happy for it to take 10-15 years for the children to grow up and start buying food based on their knowledge and morales, but to effect buying habits and improve farming image, quickly you need to reach the adults. On mass.

Farmings environmental image.
Despite farming doing 10 years of environmental schemes, the actual results are very poor. The effect on farmings image with the public is negligible, all we have is happy environmentalists, dreaming up new ways to spend the farming budget for agricultural support on new rules and regulations that as far as I can tell have produced little to nothing.
The last report I heard bird populations are still falling and the environmentalists sit in the media blaming farming and painting farmers in a bad light, (we create green deserts). when it's far more likely they are being effected in their migrations and just diseases.
That's not to say some of the things they suggest are bad ideas. They are not.
But letting them take more and more of the farming budget, for no actual benefit to farming seems a very bad idea, we are far better moving money into systems that result in farmers being less reliant on government funding in the first place. For farmers in this country to produce a greater % of the food the uk population eat.
For people to see that our food is produced under some of the highest standards in the world. It may not earn us any extra money but it may sell us more of our produce which in turn means we make more money in the long run.
Later D

 

[Brisel]

@T Hectares is right. We need to start the PR machine early when young minds are still learning.

AIC, AICC and BASIS need to lean on all agronomists to participate in events like Open Farm Sunday and the various schools educational charities like FACE, Countryside Learning etc.

Lobby the government to include food education to be part of the national curriculum.

These two are not expensive in £ but do take a bit of time - the food production industry behind the processing level can't really afford to be doing national advertising. Leave that to the likes of the big retailers and household brands and their vast marketing budgets.

 

[Wheatonrotty]

Getting the public on farm and talking to farmers has to be the best way, whether it's through open farm Sunday or having visits from Schools, Cub groups etc. Unfortunately this will only educate a minority so while it's fairly easy to get groups from small towns and villages out, getting those from those from cities is harder. As others have said you then have to rely on the supermarkets nfu big brands to get the message across .
Every little helps though so if you have a chance to host a visit or help a neighbour it's important that you do. That 6 year old that you inspire could end up high up in a major corporation and remember their visit to a farm.

 

[homefarm]

Joe public on board for what exactly?

Does Joe public give a dam or even you and me for that matter.

Clothes and shoes for example.

Do we give a dam which sweat shop they come from or a thought to the conditions those people work in?

None of my buying decisions on or off farm are influenced by how or where it is made.

Most farmers appear to be the same judging by the cars tractors and even the clothes they wear so what exactly are we preaching.

 

[richard hammond]

Joe public on board for what exactly?

Does Joe public give a dam or even you and me for that matter.

Clothes and shoes for example.

Do we give a dam which sweat shop they come from or a thought to the conditions those people work in?

None of my buying decisions on or off farm are influenced by how or where it is made.

Most farmers appear to be the same judging by the cars tractors and even the clothes they wear so at exactly are we preaching.

I take it your not on board then!

 

[Wheatonrotty]

There are 60 million or so consumers in the UK and a large proportion of them will never be bothered where there food comes from as long as it's cheap. This still leaves millions who are interested. If we don't try to engage with Joe public the current situation of cheap food and rules being made up by people with little knowledge I'll only get worse. We may well have an uphill struggle but I think it's worth the effort.
It's also an education for us talking to people who have never been no a farm before as well as being very satisfying.
Hard though it is to get the message across , the more of us there are doing it the more it will work.

 

[Brisel]

Joe public on board for what exactly?

Does Joe public give a dam or even you and me for that matter.

Clothes and shoes for example.

Do we give a dam which sweat shop they come from or a thought to the conditions those people work in?

None of my buying decisions on or off farm are influenced by how or where it is made.

Most farmers appear to be the same judging by the cars tractors and even the clothes they wear so at exactly are we preaching.

So who is your customer? Are you happy to take whatever price you are offered or for a tiny bit of effort collectively we can make a difference.

 

[ollie989898]

Unfortunately farmers do not actually produce food these days. Today with the advent of big retailers and processed foodstuffs there is a huge gulf between the producer and the consumer. Once upon a time a housewife bought her food from various outlets- grocer, butcher, baker etc which basically supplied local product and what was available at that time of year.

Today the food chain is a hugely complex machine huge amounts of added value are put on even the most basic foodstuffs.

As such I dont believe the consumer is really interested in what occurs on farms. They will readily watch TV celebs cooking and read bilge from Monbiot and accept it all as fact.

Remember I had massive exposure to the public as I grew up. The number of people who openly believed pigs etc where just jammed full of antibiotics etc was scary. There is thus the perception that what happens on farms in basically unsavory, a perception readily exploited by the organic and vegan brigades- I dont believe the public really want to know.

Lastly I dislike officialdom and bodies like the AICC intensely as I percieve it as nothing but a regulatory burden on the industry for no gain other than creating employment. BASIS etc do not pay my salary so Ill be buggered if I would do anything for them. The NFU represent the industry and are supposed to do the public relations bit, not me.

Also consider that a great deal of food is now imported and as such promoting UK product as being the only game in town is going to be hard- no one worries that the chicken hawked out of KFC is all from Brazil.

 

[ollie989898]

So who is your customer? Are you happy to take whatever price you are offered or for a tiny bit of effort collectively we can make a difference.

What value are you going to add to which product and where?

Why is the consumer going to pay any extra to attach a premium for feed wheat or say oilseed rape? They are global commodities.

Spuds and veg I can see the connection, but grain and even milk, I cant see it. Even with milling wheat, bread is considered a basic foodstuff, you make it expensive by adding different ingredients or making it by hand like artisan breads etc, in which case the premium belongs to the person who baked it rather than the farmer who grew the grain. Ditto with milk- you make milk expensive by using it to create cheese or yoghurt a time consuming process but one that farmers dont do on the farm of origin.

 

[Brisel]

Why bother with this thread? While you use the word "I" there is no hope. When you start using "we" then by all means come back. You complain in the forum that the pesticide industry is losing out to the actions of those who do not understand yet you have no interest in doing anything to change that. There is no magic answer - the NFU is one of the biggest organisations in agriculture representing farmers (and agronomists) yet there are pages and pages dedicated to slagging it off.

Yes, farmers produce commodities. The consumer doesn't care where they come from because they don't know where they come from. No one has told them why ours is better, made to higher standards. Where do we start in the quest to reconnect with the consumer? In schools. Open Farm Sunday is great but the kind of people who come to it are already at least half interested in where their food comes from.

What would you do?

 

[homefarm]

I take it your not on board then!

I will answer the other two questions

I am very happy our agronomist is independent and cares about our business.
The UK ag industry should be and is promoted by those making a profit out of farmers. Farmers cannot really make a difference.
Perhaps you can answer what on board means.

What you want to get Joe public on board with?

If it is buy British Food then my point is do we even have a case.
.

 

[homefarm]

So who is your customer? Are you happy to take whatever price you are offered or for a tiny bit of effort collectively we can make a difference.

I know my immediate customer the grain traders I sell to. I consider them my marketing department and trust them to get the best price for whatever I have produced good bad or indifferent.
Sometimes I produce great stuff and sometimes not so it needs to find the right market. That is their expertise not mine.

Collectively we can make a difference. How?

 

[Northdowns Martin]

I was asked by my children's primary school a couple of years back if I would host a farm visit for their year 6 (10-11yr olds) Of course I would but as time got nearer I started to worry about what I could talk about and show them, no cute cuddly animals or processing lines on my farm just arable fields and machinery. We have now had 3 years of visits around October time, there is plenty to show them and talk about and each group have been very engaging and interested. Taking a spade out into a field and turning up a spit of soil leads to no end of questions and topics to explain. 8 buckets of harvested grains results in a quiz to match the raw produce to the end product. I give them an ear of wheat so they can follow what a combine harvester does to get the straw, chaff and grain separated out. I hope they leave understanding and appreciating a little more about how and where a small proportion of their daily diet is produced.
I have a veg farmer friend who is farming on the edge of London, he had no end of problems with thefts, vandalism and intrusion. The police couldn't help so his solution was to engage with the perpetrators, explain what he was trying to do and how they were making it difficult, he offer them work and a chance to be involved which some took up. They now police the farm and protect it because have an interest and understanding about it.
Farming is our industry and we have to help market it, if we leave it up to the end suppliers, the general public won't know or care where their food originated from.

 

[turbo]

Our local agricultural society and the Nfu did a tractors into schools thing in February,it was a great success as it got the children talking about farming and more importantly they took things home about what farmers do and what we produce for their parents to see. The Nfu has lots of good things for schools but having big shiny tractors gets the children excited and the teathers get involved and I think it is a good thing to do (it was mainly primary schools that it was done in)