Thank you.
Have you ever looked at your plate while eating supper and thought about where it is all coming from? Where does food come from?
My name is Becky Perry, and I live and work on a dairy operation outside Sussex with my husband, my children, and his parents. We are currently working 400 acres and milking 100 Holsteins.
It is my pleasure to be here today and speak with you on my point of view, as a young farmer, toward the agriculture industry.
So where does food come from? This has so many different answers. The sad part is that most people who have not been raised in a farm-based household do not know the answer and can't even make a guess. In today's society, people have no idea where their food is produced and are simply unaware of what agriculture provides for them.
With this lack of understanding comes a great deal of miscommunication and misjudgment of farmers and what we do. I believe with more public awareness we can make a big change in the industry. To have more public awareness, we need to engage more people in agriculture. A key way to engage agriculture into our youth is to strengthen the 4-H program. In New Brunswick we have one of the lowest-funded programs in Canada.
I was a member of 4-H for fourteen years and a volunteer leader for two. I'm currently taking some time off, as I have two young children at home. The 4-H program is very dear to my heart, and it has taught me a great deal over the years. Through the 4-H program I learned many of life's valuable lessons, including communications skills, the way to run and how to act at a business meeting, responsibility, and leadership.
The program also taught me a lot about agriculture. For most of my 4-H career, you could find me showing draft horses or beef cows. I was taught how to look after an animal, feeding techniques, and how to show and judge. These valuable lessons have been used as I have grown older and become more involved in farming.
The 4-H program also gave me great opportunities. I was one of the fortunate youths who had a chance to travel. I went to Calgary on a youth leadership course, Toronto to a national speaking competition, and Ottawa to a citizenship seminar. Seeing agriculture in other provinces and having the chance to network across Canada gives incredible memories and lots of ways to improve my own techniques.
It was also my pleasure to be an organizational leader in the club for a couple of years and volunteer my time back to the younger members. Being a leader completely changed my perspective on the program. I was no longer looking at things for myself, but how I could brighten the future for the little ones. Seeing the attitude of the young members change as they want to become more involved in agriculture puts a smile on your face. I saw kids who lived in town who built chicken coops in their backyards to sell eggs, older members who wanted to become more involved in agriculture for their career, and, most of all, I saw large groups of members sitting around a campfire and just saying thank you for making this program possible for us.
I want to make this possible for all children. The 4-H program can make a difference; however, it takes a lot of time and effort to make a program all it can be. In the New Brunswick anglophone 4-H, we only have one employee to see that the program is coordinated throughout the province. She does a great job, but she is only one woman. It would be great to have the resources and financial aid to help her expand the program.
I could stand here and talk about 4-H all day and all the good things it has to offer, but my main point is that I have experienced the program to its full potential and achieved so many notable awards and recognition from it, that I would recommend all youth to have the opportunity to be involved in it. I truly believe you would see a huge difference in the public awareness for agriculture, because 4-H and the agriculture industry go hand in hand.
The 4-H program provides a unique focus to not only rural and farm-based youth, but for urban as well. Involving youth in a program such as 4-H teaches them the skills and knowledge to help develop the future farmers of tomorrow, and as we all know, that number is decreasing day by day.
We are truly losing out in today's society by not educating our children and ourselves on issues such as food quality, food safety, agriculture science, careers in agriculture, the environment, and the value of agriculture to New Brunswick's economy. We have youth in our province who are so far removed from farming that they think our food comes from a store or that the ever-popular chocolate milk is from a brown cow. It is very important to reach our youth and educate them on the significance of agriculture.
By working with farmers, I believe we could develop an agriculture awareness initiative, where you could gather information and processes from a group of farmers and produce and distribute accurate and current materials that could be used at awareness exhibits and fairs, but most importantly in schools.
In my opinion, “ag food science” should be a mandatory course for young people when they go through the school system. Knowing where food comes from, how to store it, how to prepare it, and what to look for when buying it does not come naturally to anyone. How we eat is something that is passed along to us from generation to generation. If we don't teach ourselves and our youth about what we as farmers are doing, who is going to do it for us?
As farmers, we also need to start holding more open farm days and have the public come to see how farms operate. Not only children but adults can learn about the work done behind the scenes to produce the food on their tables. This seems easy, but the liability insurance issues and the actual cost to do this can sometimes deter us. I know that our farm really enjoys opening our doors to organizations, the community, and public groups to teach them about what we do. I haven't seen a disappointed face yet. The questions the average person asks are unbelievable. I really enjoy answering their questions and teaching them how to milk a cow. For most visitors, it's a highlight and a monumental moment in their lives that they can go away bragging about, because they just milked their first cow. For me, it's something I do every day. My little boy is 20 months old, and he already knows how to feed calves. I guess, again, that this is a great example of how you are raised.
Something we're starting to do on our farm this year is give tours for the schools in our area. We are hoping to do a few each year to try to educate the students and teachers about what we do and about what products are produced from what we make. Creating more public awareness will encourage more local buying and will therefore be a direct benefit to farmers. This will lower imports and help us become more self-sufficient as a country. The other benefit is that we will have a healthier lifestyle.
Having a population that is better informed about the agriculture industry would really make a big difference. But it's not just about developing stronger public awareness; we also need farmer awareness. It is important to keep farmers educated and up to date on current processes and technological developments. This is what creates efficiencies and more opportunities for us on the farm.
My husband and I recently took part in a seminar on best management practices with other young farmers in the Maritimes. This seminar was put on by the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum. The workshop was an excellent opportunity to focus outside the box of our own personal farm and look at agriculture as an industry, with us as a piece of the puzzle. Meeting different producers who produce different commodities gave us a chance to see the similarities and differences in what each young farmer faces in everyday reality. This workshop was a confidence booster for me in every way. It showed me so many good techniques for managing our business and for becoming involved as a young farmer to help the whole industry.
The potential of courses and resources available to farmers is endless. We want to learn. We want to be the best and to produce the best. But to do that, we need to continue our educations. An important part of the farming industry is networking with other farmers to get a better and more careful look at our operations. Talking to others puts our personal farm in a different perspective. It allows us to analyze different aspects. The networking process gives us ideas on how to create efficiencies.
Our farm recently joined a dairy management group in Sussex. Seven farms take part, and we share our financial information in a closed-meeting format. This is a way to see different areas where we can improve. We just started the group, but I really think, from belonging to this group, that we will see huge changes. Having financial support to keep management and networking groups available would be an asset for all farmers.
Overall, I'm very proud to be a farmer and to work in New Brunswick. We have a beautiful province, and if we all work together, we can make agriculture known. We can take this industry out to the public and show them what we are all about. We need to be the generation that steps out and shows what agriculture has to offer and how it is a huge part of everyone's daily life. Without the farmer, we have nothing. So let's work together to change the answer to the question: where does food come from?
Thank you.