Canada’s Agriculture Day Observance Offers Opportunity to Interact with Consumers

Jan 27, 2020

The Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan says Canada's Agriculture Day celebration offers an excellent opportunity for farmers to interact through social media with the non-farming public. Canada's Agriculture Day observance, February 11th, will feature various agricultural activities and discussions in communities across Canada.

Farmers are encouraged to join in by sharing their experiences through social media using the hash tag cdnagday.

Clinton Monchuk, the Executive Director of Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, says last year's observance ended up being one of the top discussed things on social media.

Clip-Clinton Monchuk-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:

When you have that opportunity to get the ear of those individuals who don't have the ability to go to a farm or a ranch, some of these people will ask questions. You're going to have an engaged audience that wants to know more about what you are doing. I think that's where events like this and other events we do with Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, the aim is really to engage consumers so they have a better understanding about food.

There's a lot of different issues that are out there but the main ones come back to "what are we doing on our farms?" Whether it's grain farms or livestock operations, consumers just don't know. Their experience is extremely limited.

A lot of them have never physically been to a farm so, when subjects like pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics, hormones come out, they just don't have the answers.

So that is one of the key things that we're trying to have people who are involved in agriculture do, is talk more about it. We need to be a little bit more transparent about what we are doing so consumers can have that confidence in the food system here in Canada and again we can feel more confident going forward to use the different tools that we do use on our farms and ranches to produce the food that they're consuming.

Source : Farmscape

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”