YORKTON - With somewhat of an understated lead up this year, Open Farm Days were held recently.
The Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan-led initiatives is one of those totally brilliant, yet simple ideas, which helps build what is sadly a broadening gap between farm operators, and their ultimate consumers – those who consume what farmers grow.
When I was a youngster – admittedly a half century-plus ago, but still a relatively brief span in terms of history – few would have been those anywhere in Saskatchewan without a rather direct tie to farming.
A grandparent, an uncle, someone in the family you would at least visit on occasion would have been a farmer.
And on those visits you would have seen a rather broad cross section of farming. Through the 1960s and into the ‘70s farming was still largely mixed in nature.
On the visit you would perhaps help gather eggs, see a cow milked, feed some pigs, or take a truck ride out to the combine in the fall. A Sunday dinner at the farm and you were still connected rather directly to where food comes from.
Jump forward over the five decades and things have changed dramatically.
Farms have grown exponentially, and as big farmers have bought out smaller neighbours the number of farms have obviously declined, and so too the number of families with that tie which got them to a farm at least on occasion.
And even among the few with farm connections those connections are more singular in nature.
Rare are farms with a milk cow, or laying hens, or pigs to feed.
Farms are not just larger, but far more specialized.
So, while farms have sought consolidation and growth as a way to more profitable operations the connection to local consumers has been severed for many.
The disconnect is disconcerting in the sense the loss of understanding what it is like to operate a farm has meant it is far easier for disinformation to run rampant and in the process less trust in the producers of our food. That is not a good thing.
Open Farm Days is a two-day event where a number of Saskatchewan farmers ‘open’ their farms to visitors, offering tours and talks to educate a generation without that farm connection of old.
Two days out of a year is not a reconstruction of lost connections, nor will it reestablish any lost trust, but it is a step in the right direction.
And as a result a thank you needs to go out to those farmers inviting visitors to look inside their operations, but also one goes to those taking a summer afternoon to visit a farm and learn a little more about where their food comes from.
