“I just think that this is kind of an industry-wide thing where I think we could work harder at anticipating (problems),” said Cami Ryan, an advocate for awareness of the twin phenomena and their threat to the ag space.

It’s not realistic to expect the flow of false claims masquerading as fact to stop, Ryan said. However, gaining digital literacy, paired with a dose of critical thinking, can go a long way towards being able to identify them.

“I just think that this is kind of an industry-wide thing where I think we could work harder at anticipating (problems),” said Ryan, who holds a day job as social sciences lead for Bayer Global’s North America regulatory science division.

An associate professor with the University of Guelph’s agrees that false claims are a challenge the ag industry can’t afford to ignore.

“I think it’s very important, given that we have really moved to an advanced digitalized world,” said Ataharul Chowdhury of the school’s environmental design and rural development department.

Chowdhury has made misinformation and disinformation in agriculture the subject of his academic research.

“There’s so much information available, but what is right and applicable?” he said. “That’s very difficult to decide, given that so much information is there.”

Misinformed or disinformed?

Although often used interchangeably, misinformation and disinformation have separate definitions, with shades of grey in between, said Ryan. The fundamental difference is intent.

“Misinformation is information that is shared through neglect, through unconscious bias, not knowing that it’s incorrect or inaccurate,” she said.

Disinformation is intentionally deceptive messaging from which the source stands to benefit.

“Disinformation is a product with a market — that’s kind of how I look at it,” said Ryan.

“People are making money or getting value from disinformation,” she added. “That’s 100 per cent how it is.”

Mis- and disinformation are often intertwined in complex ways, said Ryan, who previously served as social and behavioural sciences lead at Bayer CropScience’s St. Louis, Missouri, location.

“Misinformation can be used as disinformation to intentionally misinform and sometimes — from a misinformation standpoint — someone might share disinformation without understanding or knowing that it’s inaccurate.”

Consumers themselves can play a large role in the misinformation industry — either in real life or over social media, she noted:

“At the end of the day, I think sometimes the misinformation piece becomes the consumer in the middle that doesn’t necessarily understand all these things, but is very drawn into the sensationalist stories that the disinformation campaign can share. And they can do that, right? They don’t have to back up their information.”

Disinformation is often embedded in ideology, be it political or cultural, noted Chowdhury.

Undermining of science

There’s another complication indirectly feeding into how prone people are to take the bait on mis- and disinformation, the Ontario researcher argued.

People don’t have the same trust in sources like researchers, voices that in past decades might have been considered authority figures on a subject.

Part of that may be the sheer difficulty in determining what is real as artificial intelligence improves. Warnings of AI-generated, low-quality, but real-looking research papers have emerged from the scientific community in recent years.

Chowdhury, though, also connects the public’s degrading trust to growing corporate oversight of scientific research, which he says comes at the expense of publicly funded work.

Agriculture research has become increasingly privatized and aimed towards corporate goals, he said, moving away from government and farm industry-driven efforts.

“So as a researcher, you get funding from a company and the company definitely has a vested interest. It is not rocket science to understand (the issue), whatever the ethics you follow,” he said.

All of this has led to a world where expertise is often mistrusted while unaccountable media influencers are increasingly looked to for answers, Ryan argued.

‘Attention economy’

Ryan also pointed to “the attention economy” — the competition and monetitization of attracting eyes, of views, of claiming consumer time.

“Agriculture becomes very easy to problematize, so the disinformation vendors or actors can derive value,” she said.

“They don’t care about public health; they don’t care about the environment; they don’t care about anything other than keeping that machinery of disinformation going. So they will feed that machinery with whatever is easy to access and easy to problematize.”

Reliable sources and technology

Although Ryan believes farmers are less likely to fall victim — They’re generally pragmatic, she notes. They have to be to keep their business decisions practical but adaptable — they also exist in the same world, and the same digital spaces, as everyone else exposed to mis- and disinformation.

They’re consumers of everything from food to expensive farm machinery, and therefore, targets.

There is probably no single playbook anyone can follow to avoid being fooled, says Chowdhury, but one multi-tiered strategy encompassing media and digital literacy can help. He calls it critical digital literacy.

“Media literacy is about how media works and how you have to access or understand the media,” he said.

“Digital literacy comes with use of different digital technologies … Especially these days, with the AI era, we have to understand what we see in the digital space and how we can critically think about that to understand what is applicable in real life.”

Consumers can also help reduce the spread of false or misleading information by self-regulating what they share or engage with, said Ryan, using herself in an object lesson:

“Cami goes on to Twitter (X) and sees something that (makes me say) ‘Wow — I need to weigh in on this.’ Do you really, Cami? Do you have to?

“These are things that I think are part of the process of building a relationship with an information ecosystem that we use all the time but we don’t really know and understand. And I think setting those boundaries becomes the most important (part) of critical thinking.”

Producers should seek farming advice from established experts, says Chowdhury.

Farmers often reach out to fellow farmers. He doesn’t discount that kind of peer-to-peer information sharing. Farmers are the ones putting academic concepts into practice in the real world, after all.

At the same time though, he cautioned that mis- and disinformation can piggyback through those peer networks, just as they do via peer networks on social media.

Professional advisors are there to provide that kind of expert advice, he said, but noted that the extension and advisory spaces in agriculture are shrinking and becoming privatized.

“In our research, we found that farmers and other professionals and stakeholders in agriculture still consider that there should be some public support for minimizing controversial issues or minimizing false news,” he said.

When making operational decisions such as a high-investment practice change, Chowdhury advises growers to turn to multiple scientific sources rather than base their strategies on a single academic paper.

Somewhat ironically — given the amount of false claims it’s capable of circulating — he also recommends artificial intelligence as a key tool in the fight against mis- and disinformation.

“There are so many AI tools which can also help detect misinformation, although AI could be also a source of misinformation,” he says.

Ryan, meanwhile believes AI is likely going to make the fight against false claims more complicated, although she also says the ag industry needs to embrace it for its own purposes.

“It’s a great tool we can use many different ways that can benefit us socially and economically,” she said.

“But I think these are the things that we really have to stay attuned to in our industry (by) at least paying attention to what’s going on out there and moving away from a place where we just sort of think it’s going to go away. It’s not going to go away. This is a part of our our world now. It’s a part of the information ecosystem and we have to learn to understand it and try to find ways to mitigate and manage it.”

The post Digital age farmers need truth sleuth mindset appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

One particular individual, an economist seemingly more interested in grabbing headlines and camera attention to boost fundraising and personal interests, made bold claims about “record and excessive profits” in the grocery sector for 2023.

The term “excessive profits” has become a favourite slogan for those seeking to foster animosity toward businesses.

However, it’s crucial to note that his argument relied on Statistics Canada data, which encompasses convenience stores and specialty stores in its dataset, not solely the major grocers. The sensationalized $6 billion figure quickly circulated in the news, causing considerable harm.

The facts indicate that gross margins, a valuable metric for assessing whether a company overcharges for its goods, will remain at 3.4 per cent, consistent with the five-year average for Loblaw, Empire and Metro.

Regrettably, we shouldn’t expect an apology from this economist. He seems intent on misleading Canadians, insisting that profits should continue to rise due to inflation, all the while resorting to attention-grabbing headlines and fearmongering tactics. This was a reprehensible misuse of a platform to advance a political, anti-corporate agenda — utterly disappointing and disingenuous.

Loblaw also made some questionable claims during a visit to Ottawa concerning the potential impact of a grocer’s code of conduct. The company admitted on Dec. 23 that the Australian example cited by its CEO, Galen Weston, to justify the company’s refusal to sign the code of conduct, was inaccurate.

At that time, Weston expressed concerns to federal officials that the current code of conduct could potentially increase food prices by $1 billion, arguing that, in Australia, the third party responsible for enforcing the code favoured suppliers seeking higher prices, which would harm consumers. None of these claims held.

At least Loblaw eventually acknowledged its error, albeit on Dec. 23, when most of us were preoccupied with holiday preparations.

Leaving aside Loblaw’s failed attempt to obstruct the industry’s efforts to implement a more disciplined and fair code of conduct, Ottawa’s primary focus should be on fostering competition. Providing consumers with more choices and making the Canadian food market more attractive to external investors is essential.

The code of conduct should be a non-government, third-party-led mechanism enabling companies to resolve disputes related to contractual terms rather than pricing per se.

Currently, as grocers unilaterally raise listing and marketing fees imposed on suppliers, the manufacturers, in turn, increase prices to offset these higher fees set by grocers. This results in a cycle that ultimately impacts consumers, often without their awareness.

This is the only way food prices can become more stable over time. In countries like Ireland, Australia and the United Kingdom, where such a code exists, food price increases, adjusted for inflation between 2013 and 2023, have been negative, whereas Canada’s food price increase adjusted for inflation over a decade was 8.9 percent.

While a code of conduct may not entirely curb food inflation, it will help the industry coordinate vertically and address market turbulence, which is often triggered by factors like climate change and geopolitics, leading to price volatility and sticker shocks.

Ottawa should compel all parties, including those who oppose the code like Loblaw and Walmart, to adhere to the code of conduct. That should be the shared goal of all Canadians for 2024.

Sylvain Charlebois is professor of food policy and distribution at Dalhousie University, and senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab.

The post Loblaw’s gaffe and apology appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“I would suspect that a lot of people don’t understand,” said Roland Cailliau, a cow-calf producer from Valleyview. “They don’t read and they don’t understand that hormones are natural in people, animals, food, and plants. They just don’t know.”

Natural and synthetic hormones have been used in beef production for more than 50 years and the sector has devoted considerable effort to telling the public that they have been proven to be safe. Yet consumers still worry.

The survey was conducted in February by Lethbridge College students under the auspices of the school’s Citizen Society Research Lab. They asked nearly 1,300 residents of the city, which has a population of just 100,000, several questions about the sustainability of several agricultural practices. Only 37 per cent said hormone use in beef cattle was acceptable.

Consumer resistance is, in an indirect way, why Cailliau doesn’t use hormones.

“We raise our cattle without hormones and that allows the people who buy them to either use them or not use them,” said the producer, a past vice-chair of Alberta Beef Producers. “It actually increases our marketplace. If I put in hormones, the only people who will buy them are those who are willing to use (hormones).”

• Read more: Hormone-free beef pros and cons

But his choice is strictly because of marketing.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with the program of hormones in animals. It just gives us access to more purchasers,” said Cailliau, who hasn’t used hormone implants for about two decades.

Cam McLerie, a cow-calf producer from near Spruce View, has also looked at the economics of hormone use — and that’s why he uses them.

“We invest $1 and in that dollar, we can get anywhere from 10 to 25 pounds,” said McLerie, who farms with his wife and two children. “It comes down to dollars and cents. Where else can you invest a dollar and get $10 back? That’s why we do it. And the only thing we do is our steers. We keep all our replacement heifers and never implant the heifer.”

Consumers are misinformed about hormones and there is no safety concern, he said.

“Women who are on birth control are taking more hormones than they do if they eat a steak from an animal that has been on implants. There is other food that has more hormones in it, without adding anything. It’s misinformation.”

McLerie said he wishes more people would understand it, so that they would be more open to eating beef that uses hormones.

“If you don’t implant, it costs you more days on feed. You create more greenhouse gases by having cattle on feed longer. There’s an offset.”

Producers need to take the opportunity to talk to consumers, he said. His wife explained the use of hormones in beef to a friend, who made the switch.

As well, beef that is grown with implants can usually be sold for a cheaper price, McLerie added.

“In our industry, it’s getting tougher and tougher. It’s still a safe product, and it’s safe for human consumption. There’s no research to show it’s bad. It’s just driven by the consumer who says they don’t want it.”

Cailliau agrees that the beef sector needs to continue to talk to the public about hormone use and look for ways to get its message across to more people.

“To me, it’s a matter of education,” he said. “I think the protocols that are in place now are quite good.”

The Lethbridge College survey, which also polled city residents about issues such as animal welfare and manure spreading, can be found at www.lethbridgecollege.ca (search for ‘environmentally sustainable agriculture’).

The post Even in Feedlot Alley, consumers don’t trust hormone use appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We’re proud of the food we serve our 27 million U.S. customers every day, yet we know people have unanswered questions,” said Kevin Newell, executive vice-president, chief brand and strategy officer. “So, we’re inviting everyone in the U.S. on a journey to learn more about our food. We look forward to the opportunity to have an open conversation and to show people first hand how we make our most iconic menu items.”

The next day Whole Foods announced its Responsibly Grown produce rating system. The system applies to fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers using a three-tiered rating system — “good,” “better,” and “best.” In part, the system “prohibits some of the most hazardous neurotoxins still allowed in agriculture.

“Prohibited pesticides include several organophosphate insecticides, which recent studies indicate can impair neurological development in children born to mothers exposed in diet or by working in agriculture and living in nearby communities,” the company stated.

To earn a “good” rating, farmers must implement 16 farming practices to protect air, soil, water, and human health in addition to not using Whole Foods Market prohibited pesticides. They also must provide transparency about the use of GMOs and not use irradiation or biosolids (organic material obtained from waste water treatment facilities).

The “better” rating adds criteria for water and energy conservation — advanced soil health; protecting rivers, lakes, and oceans; and farmworker health and safety. To achieve a “best” rating, a farmer must take actions to protect bees and butterflies and implement industry-leading pest management and environmental protection programs.

Whole Foods already has programs in place for four animal products. It works with the Global Animal Partnership, which has developed the 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards for beef, pork, chicken, and turkey. The steps are:

1. No crates, no cages, no crowding to provide animals with space to move around.
2. Enriched environment that encourages behaviour that is natural to the specific species.
3. Enhanced outdoor access (pigs, chickens, and turkeys might live in buildings but they all have access to outdoor areas).
4. Pasture centred (when living outdoors, chickens and turkeys get to forage, pigs get to wallow and cattle get to roam).
5. The prohibition of physical alterations.

Step 5+ requires that animals “must be born and live their entire lives on one farm.”

The detailed program requirements for the 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating standards can be found here. Customers can use this rating system to guide them as they choose among the meat offerings at Whole Foods Market.

Whole Foods also has an eco-rating scale as well as wild-caught seafood sustainability ratings.

While some of these requirements may strike some as a little over the top, Whole Foods obviously believes that transparency and these requirements allow the company to meet the expectations of a small, but increasingly significant-to-them market segment.

We’re not suggesting that all of agriculture is going to look like the Whole Foods Market suppliers in the next 10 years, but rather that all producers need to at least be aware of changing consumer preferences and expectations.

In the past we have seen the attentiveness of producers to consumers’ preference for leaner, more-tender pork and beef.

In the future consumers may be looking at issues that go beyond product quality — like personal, ethical and environmental issues — as they make their purchase. This may open up opportunities for some farmers to produce differentiated products while other farmers may need to make few or fairly modest changes in their operations.

The post A new era of watchful food consumers appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Despite substantial food price increases in recent years, these operations, which typically sell food at a higher price, have generated more than $700 million in revenues this year in Ontario alone, and plans to open more are in the works, with many markets now open year round.

Farmers’ markets in Quebec, B.C., the Prairies and the Maritimes are all seeing significant increases in sales. The future looks bright as their overall economic impact now exceeds $5 billion. Even with high price points, the so-called farmers’ market movement is making some inroads, including on university campuses, where many students have limited financial resources.

Such significant growth, however, also brings with it a set of challenges that needs to be addressed, if it is to be sustained.

The issue of food authenticity appears to be powering this growth. Ongoing recalls and the flood of food fraud-related stories seem to be compelling consumers to mitigate their risks when buying food — and who can blame them?

This doesn’t mean that there are fewer risks in buying products at farmers’ markets — but perception is king.

• From the Alberta Farmer Express: Out of step with the people who matter most

Transparency, or the lack thereof, is leveraging a wider climate of corporate distrust. As a result, many major food processors and distributors are frantically trying to appease troubled consumers by offering something new through acquisitions or product development. Price and convenience still have currency in grocery stores, but other decision drivers, such as environmental stewardship and the localization of foods, are emerging as key potential game changers for the food industry. As the network of farmers’ markets becomes increasingly organized and co-ordinated, millions of dollars across the country are spent to successfully attract dissatisfied and/or inquisitive consumers who are looking for something inimitably dissimilar to what they are accustomed to.

It has been argued for many years now that short-circuit distribution models in agriculture greatly reduce the Canadian rural-urban divide. As such, it allows for farmers’ markets to be “naturally” linked to produce, fruits, and a range of fresh farm products that consumers seek out, even if they are normally less affordable.

• Producers urged to tap into local food demand with ‘Explore Local’

Such markets tap into the lesser-known world of farming for urbanites. In essence, farmers’ markets are not just about generating economic growth for local economies; they are also, most importantly, about education. Getting consumers in close proximity to primary production increases the collective knowledge of food systems. As such, and hopefully, it may become less feasible for the political establishment and lobby groups to use distorted evidence to influence public opinion, and ultimately, agricultural policies. Beyond economics, farmers’ markets are essentially powerful engines of democracy.

• Local food movement continues to soar

But with success comes a variety of challenges. As the movement grows, the authentic nature of farmers’ markets needs to be preserved. We are already seeing the presence of kiosks selling products that are a questionable fit with the traditional fare of these markets. Both variety and limitations in terms of choices are also affecting the overall quality of offerings.

Obviously, greater regulation is undesirable — instead, improved managerial skills, discipline and leadership from those occupying administrative roles can make a significant difference. Business-minded folks at the helm can safeguard the future of farmers’ markets through innovation and allowing consumers to enjoy the full experience. As with many sectors, growth means greater competition, and the overall value of visiting a market should extend beyond the food itself. Such events as outdoor cooking lessons with reputable chefs for young and old, for example, would make the visit that much more valuable.

Ultimately, consumers are yearning for an agrarian connection they don’t necessarily find anywhere else, and are willing to pay more for it.

This is good news for farmers’ markets.

Enough consumers have arrived at the conclusion that what is offered by traditional food retail stores is no longer enough, or desired. As a result, farmers’ markets are increasingly filling that void.

The post Consumers are dissatisfied — and that’s why farmers’ markets are booming appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Sick animals are not productive animals,” said Dr. Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein. “Incidences of sickness and lost performance are really heavily linked to welfare.”

Stressors like castration, transportation, weaning, and handling have been linked to things like slower rate of gain, greater chance of illness, and increased risk of lameness. And when those things are done with little thought to animal welfare, the bottom line suffers alongside the animals.

“Animals become sick more often, they take longer to finish, and their growth is hindered, so you’re spending more money on drugs, and you have increased costs because you have people who have to go pull those animals at a more frequent basis,” said Schwartzkopf-Genswein.

• More from the Alberta Farmer Express: Stress tool could have big impact

While the beef industry doesn’t yet have hard numbers as to how much welfare issues cost the industry, producers will need to continue placing a greater emphasis on animal welfare, or risk seeing their market share drop among consumers who demand it.

“People are more aware of welfare than they ever have been before,” she said.

“The general public doesn’t view, for example, castration or dehorning without any pain control as acceptable.”

• New pig welfare code shows ‘extremists’ wrong

But determining the optimal combinations of drugs or techniques for potentially painful procedures has been a challenge, said Schwartzkopf-Genswein.

“A lot of the work we’re doing now is trying to determine optimal drug combinations, like an analgesic with an anesthetic, and the timing of administration.”

She sees potential for a painkiller called meloxicam, which is effective for several days, rather than a few hours.

“Producers are asking for that,” she said of the drug. “People are becoming more aware of what some of the issues are.”

Safe transport of animals is another key consumer concern — one shared by the industry.

“The No. 1 call to the minister of agriculture currently is transport. They view transport as a very stressful situation,” she said, adding that consumers often see cattle transported during extreme environmental conditions.

“The industry is pretty good at knowing at what point the cattle are negatively affected, but I think we can always do better.”

Loading only healthy animals for transport and handling them carefully during the loading and unloading process will reduce some of those concerns.

“If you’re handling them roughly, they can become lame just by slipping,” she said.

“Lameness is very painful, and those conditions need to be dealt with sooner than later.”

Ultimately, animal welfare comes down to common sense in most cases, said Schwartzkopf-Genswein.

“None of it is rocket science. None of it is difficult to do. It’s just saying, ‘This is how we manage the animals on our farm.’”

The post Better animal welfare is also better for your bottom line appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Warm days and cold nights bring out the chronic conditions that were lying latent in the body. These cattle may or may not respond to medication. Old damage in the lungs or intestines may dominate or there could be resistance to the antibiotic that you are using, especially if the animal has a history of being ill.

Record-keeping is very important when it comes to raising cattle, and all farms should have an auditable system that allows producers to make sound choices. There are times, for example, when we need to choose not to treat because of food safety protocols and times when we choose to treat and keep the animal to protect our investment. If a farm is selling product directly to consumers in a local market, having the absolute assurance there is a treatment and care history is very important to the client.

Regardless of how you sell cattle, the care and well-being of everyone on the farm is tied to the care and well-being of the cattle. Many veterinarians now have software programs to help you keep track. If your teenager is bored, ask them to write a program for you as most have enough skill to put the basics together. And even if it is the basics, that is a starting point.

We have always used our own system, which includes a full description and identification of the animal. In addition, we have a model of left, right, back and front of the animal, so we can show where the treatment occurred along with the date, product used (including the lot number), dose, route of administration, and the temperature and weight of the animal at the time. For each treatment, including routine vaccination and deworming, the administrator has to sign.

Once done on paper, the system was easily adapted to software, and was very valuable to us when BSE was declared. The full file also included a photo of the animal (now easily uploaded on your cellphone) along with all the history on breed, origin, transportation and location identification. Because we sold 400 to 600 bred heifers nationwide, these records were invaluable to us and to our client.

Why is this so important? The food chain always was protected with protocols such as proper administration and withdrawal times of antibiotics and growth promotants as well as heat suppressants. The location of a needle may seem oversimplified, but that information can be vital on the kill floor as a needle can cost a production line tens of thousands of dollars or a consumer severe stress or injury. The appropriate uses of an antibiotic is necessary at certain times, but residue should never end up on a plate. The body needs time to absorb and heal.

From the Canadian Cattlemen website: Seeking credibility

Consumer concerns

Today, we know that consumers are even more concerned about antibiotic use in foods than they are about the environment. What once was a battle over plastic versus your own grocery bag has evolved into genuine concern about eating food that may cause antibiotic resistance. Although this has not been proven, that does not mean the consumer will not continue to care. And the problem of antibiotic resistance in people is very real.

As for how folks feel when they shop, the latest American research found 88 per cent of consumers said they were aware there were issues about the use of antibiotics in food animals. They also said they believe the term antibiotic also means a growth promotant (such as an implant) and muscle enhancers (such as a beta-agonist) and 28 per cent did research at home on those products. This affected buying habits — 46 per cent said they now pay much more attention to the packaging and labelling of meat. In 17 per cent of the cases, the concern was so great that the consumer stopped buying and eating meat.

Hype travels fast and 19 per cent of consumers keep talking about the problem to anyone who will listen — even if they do not have the right information. The majority of the information they have is sourced from the national news followed by coffee shop talk, talk shows and
social media.

It is certainly time to get the right information out and assure those who purchase meat that farmers are responsible stewards who follow all the rules to protect the food chain. When 17 per cent of consumers change their minds about beef because of fear — we share a collective problem. The solution starts when each farm has an auditable process behind the product and the message to ensure both parties are protected.

One way to start is with the Verified Beef Program. Information can be found at www.verifiedbeef.org.

The post Good record-keeping when treating livestock is a must appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.