Manitoba Pork Council is confident the University of Manitoba’s Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre will play a key role in reconnecting the urban public with what’s involved in producing the food we eat.
The Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, located at the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea Research Station, will open to the general public next month.
Andrew Dickson, the general manager of Manitoba Pork Council, one of several organizations that provided financial support for the development of the centre, says it will allow the general public an opportunity to see agriculture in action.
As people leave the land and move into urban settings their connection with the rural landscape and the rural economy and how we go about farming and the role of farming within food production is diminishing.
People have less and less knowledge about where their food comes from.
I think what’s really unfortunate is there’s a lack of understanding that there’s clear science behind all of this.
There’s a good understanding of how to manage animals, manage crops, manage their soils, manage the farm environment.
Things change, new seeds come, new crops come, new chemicals are used, less chemicals are used, new means of tillage to prepare the soil for growing crops or new ways of handling animals so that they don’t hurt themselves and they don’t hurt the people who look after them.
All this knowledge is slowly but surely disappearing from the general public’s sense of what farming is about and so this centre will help, is one of many tools to try and get the general public to have a better feel about all the steps that are taken to ensure that they have a safe and nutritious product in their home.
Dickson notes pork producers have faced considerable controversy over the past 15 years.
He suggests the industry needs to do a better job of explaining how animals are raised and this display will allow people to see for themselves.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
