Celebrating Canadian Agriculture Day.

When I was a high school guidance counsellor, I helped students find scholarships. One year, I said to the grade 12 class, "There are three agriculture scholarships available for anyone going into Agriculture." A young man replied, "This is the 30-1 class Ms.Chevraux. Try the 30-2 English class." (30-2 is not applicable for university) I bit my tongue, smiled, then calmly replied, "Agriculture is a Faculty at University, under the Bachelor of Science program so yes, one needs English 30-1." Later in the class, I showed the English students some pictures of a trip I had taken to Portugal with the Bayer company. I explained to the class that my husband had his Ag Degree from the U of A and works for Bayer, which has taken us on some amazing trips. The young man with the Eng.30-2 comment went red in the face. But he is not alone in thinking that farmers don't need to be educated and that all farming involves is driving a tractor to plant a big garden. That stereotype needs to be changed. Agriculture is the world's largest industry. Our urban populations need to learn about the importance of agriculture and be able to identify the myths and misinformation posted on social media and Netflix. Alberta's agriculture industry contributes 11.4 billion dollars to our GDP so that makes it an industry to learn about and to celebrate!

Canada receives 142 billion dollars from agricultural exports; 11.4 billion of this is from Alberta. Albertans grow 48% of the barley sold, 32% of the wheat, 29% of the canola, and 20% of the oats sold. Canadian Ag employs 2.3 million people and in Alberta 51,000 jobs depend on agriculture. These are pretty impressive numbers.

Today is Canadian Agriculture Day and I was lucky to be a part of a virtual presentation sponsored by ATB and UFA. We were treated to a wonderful breakfast of steak, eggs, & potatoes which were delivered to us in raw form but they included the cast iron frying pan and spatula to make it! There were seven very interesting presenters. Stuart Cullum, the President of Old's College, stated that currently there are 130,000 high-skilled jobs in agriculture that are unfilled. We need more students to enter into agriculture programs at post-secondary, and they can be students from urban centres. We need to dispel the myth of the farmer needing to know nothing but how to drive a tractor. We need urban students to take an interest in their food supply.

A shortage of skilled labour is not the challenge facing farmers. Food literacy, or should I say illiteracy, of urban consumers is another problem. Consumers need to learn where their food is grown, how it is grown, and how it is affected by climate and technology. According to the Global Food Security Index, Canada was ranked 12th out of 113 countries. That ranking considers the issues of food affordability, availability, quality and safety, and natural resources and resilience. In the category of "Quality & Safety" Canada scored 100/100, on "Nutritional standards: 100/100, and 100/100 on protein quality. Our food is safe!

It would be great to have conversations with people about why farmers do what they do! Let's hope that on Canada Agriculture Day there are these conversations between consumers and producers about the food we love!