We all have a role to play in sharing Australia's agricultural story with the world, according to speakers at the inaugural Thriving Women conference at Hahndorf this week.
More than 20 key speakers held workshops about the leadership roles of women in the agriculture sector, challenges faced by the industry and how to share the Australian food production story whether you are a producer or not.
AgCommunicators co-founder Deanna Lush highlighted the vital need to build consumer trust in agriculture after her international Churchill Fellowship to the United States, United Kingdom and Canada explored the increased gap in communication, education and engagement methods to improve the understanding of agriculture in Australia.
Ms Lush said the world leader for building consumer trust, The Centre for Food Integrity in the United States, observed that the shift in size and scale of agriculture had contributed to a misconception that large-scale food production and the use of technology “is bad”.
“It meant that if you are a big food production company then you are looking after your own profit and not looking after the interest of the consumer,” she said.
“Every year Australian agriculture spends billions of dollars on doing the right thing, whether it is on research, animal welfare, sustainability or traceability. We have a great story to tell but no one knows about it because we are too scared.
“We need to talk about it and share our great stories because we have nothing to hide.”
The latest National Farmers’ Federation research revealed 57pc of Australians polled had not had any contact with a farm in the past year and 83pc described their relationship to farming as distant or non-existent, Ms Lush said.
“It really puts in perspective what we are dealing with. How do you engage people who are not aware that agriculture is even important?” she said.
One of Ms Lush’s five central points was that industry needed to understand how great the influence of a national approach to consumer trust building efforts was.
“It is a big issue, consumers want to know they can count on us to do what is right and many consumer questions are based on whether what we are doing is ethically grounded,” Ms Lush said.
AgCommunicators co-founder Belinda Cay also echoed the need for a national investment into agriculture’s message, particularly in education.
“Only 35pc of teachers use any form of agriculture or grains teaching in their classroom and only 8pc of primary school teachers taught agricultural-based topics in the classroom,” Ms Cay said.
So why is agriculture not being taught in schools? Ms Cay said about 80pc of the teachers responded with they “just did not think of it”.
“We now know agriculture is not front of mind and this needs to change through better messaging,” she said.
