The CEO of the Red River Exhibition says the agricultural components of the annual event are designed to show the urban audience the real story of agriculture.
The 2016 Red River Exhibition kicks off today at Red River Exhibition Park in Winnipeg and runs until June 26.
Garth Rogerson, the CEO of the Red River Ex says, while the event has always revolved around agriculture, its audience is primarily urban so there is an effort being made to engage people in learning about agriculture.
We start with very young children. Under 10 years old, we have an area which is called the Prairie Town Adventures and we have the Prairie Town Farm. The concept of this area is a mini town site. It’s got a construction zone and other things going on.
In Prairie Town Farm the kids become little farm hands and they get an apron and feed and they have to go through the various stations and feed the animals and collect the products that the animal would produce. They go through all of these different stations, the pork barn, the beef barn, the dairy barn and they conduct activities, chores on the farm and then they go to the farmers market where they sell their produce and they get a Prairie Town dollar and then they can go and purchase goods.
The idea of that is to engage very young children who have no understanding that animals actually produce things that we eat so we want to teach them that very very basic lesson. Then, once you go from there, we also have Touch the Farm, which is a project in partnership with the various commodity groups. We have a very large exhibit that we did in the beef industry called Cattle Tales. We opened that a couple of years ago.
Last year we opened Pork Tales which is quite a large 35 hundred square foot exhibit on the pork industry. We’re very excited about that, a very interesting, very interactive exhibit. This year we’re opening Moo to You which is a brand new exhibit on the dairy industry. ~ Garth Rogerson, Red River Exhibition
Rogerson says these are very important ways to engage the public. He expects anywhere from 60 to 80 thousand people to pass through Touch the Farm over the 10 days the exhibition runs.
