The visitor services manager with the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre says the new facility will help meet a growing demand from the public for more information about the production of the food they eat.
The Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, located at the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea Research Station, home to the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, is now conducting guided tours by appointment and will open to the public in July.
The facility offers exhibits and activities dedicated to the story of the science and technology of getting food from the field to the public’s plate.
Guy Robbins, the centre’s visitor services manager, observes there’s a lot of interest in food and food security, so it’s important to get good information to people on what’s going on with regards to the latest technology and science of food.
Our focus is really to make it a fun, interactive place.
For instance, there are four windows into a conventional hog barn, there are games, computer games that they can play, there’s lots of hands-on activities, there’s a modern tractor cab, there’s the chemistry of food where they can smell food and guess what the food is, they can grind their own flour, and there’s all sorts of those interactive things.
The idea is to get them interested in it, but also to get all types of information from all kinds of sources available to them.
The university is ideally placed, not only because it has its own science and technology research going on, but it’s all the time talking to the other people who are producing food and developing food.
And also we’re very much reaching out to the public, educating them, so we want to present this information, and then let the public make up their own mind about how that food is produced, and let them have some input into that system.
Robbins says people need a way to find out more about what’s going on in farming and the centre hopes to provide good information that will enable them to make up their own minds about food security and what needs to be done.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
