Digesting the need for better food-chain knowledge

Admittedly, I’ve been skeptical of past efforts by the agricultural sector to build consumers’ confidence and trust in the food system.

The industry has been grappling with consumer trust issues for generations, ever since author Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed DDT as a double-edged sword in the early 1960s.

Until recently, the focus was on “educating” consumers about the modern ways and why the critics are wrong. This was set against the backdrop of a growing disconnect between our increasingly urbanized society and the farmers growing the groceries.

To me, some of the early work in this area came off a little ham-fisted. The underlying message was that “The Consumer” was a homogeneous entity that should simply take what farmers wanted to produce the way the industry wanted to process it — and gobble it up because that’s what kept food prices “cheap.”

And that “The Consumer” should trust the food system because, well, just because.

It’s true that surveys often cite cost as the number one concern with our food system. It is also true that many buying food these days have a limited understanding of how it is produced and processed.

That knowledge gap leaves them vulnerable to a plethora of influencers that purposely foster fear and mistrust, sometimes founded in good intentions and other times operating as a front for a more dubious agenda.

The value chain, on the other hand, is understandably invested in defending the status quo. Change is costly. But do you trust someone who’s always defensive? After all, the status quo is costly too if it comes at the expense of our health and the environment.

For every video or press release that came out questioning production or processing practices, the industry would jump to the pump with counterarguments. These debates are polarizing, which feeds a media cycle that thrives on polarity. But they’re also counterproductive because consumers, not knowing who to believe, stop believing anyone.

Building trust and confidence in this environment is more nuanced than building bigger propaganda machines. “Educating” consumers must be about equipping them with the knowledge to make informed choices rather selling them on blind trust.

Industry efforts in this arena have become more accepting of the fact that consumers have varying needs and wants driven by a host of demographic, ethical and cultural considerations. The food market is increasingly fragmented and its influences more complex.

Toward that end, the sector and governments are investing through organizations such as the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity. It aims to better understand what concerns consumers, who they look to as trusted sources and how to engage in a way that feeds curiosity rather than entrenchment.

Curiosity is a key word in this process. It implies openness to learning on one side of the question and a commitment to transparency on the other.

Some of the data in the centre’s latest consumer research report is unsurprising, such as the finding that Canadian consumers are losing trust in imported U.S. foods while trust is surging in the Canadian food system.

Fifty-eight per cent of Canadians have a positive impression of Canada’s food system, a 13-point gain over last year’s low of 45 per cent.

However, other findings should prompt some discussion. For the first time, scientists have overtaken farmers as the most trusted and transparent voices in the food system, not by a wide margin, but it’s a significant shift all the same.

And even though these top two stakeholders still have the highest trust factors, they have the lowest visibility in the food system. Consumers are more apt to get information about food from online chat boxes, the media, grocers or brand marketing.

I’ve come to accept, albeit grudgingly, that building confidence and trust in the food value chain is important and necessary work.

Shaping our food choices around the latest fad or fear of this or that is no more conducive to a healthy food system than the heavily marketed suggestion that we must all routinely inject ourselves with a drug to achieve a healthy weight.

It’s up to all of us to do better.

Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com