It’s probably an honest mistake, but there’s some irony in having the Prime Minister of Canada — the home of canola — send out a tweet celebrating good news about canola with what appears to be a photo of mustard.
95 percent of Canadians — including the person in the PMO who looks after Justin Trudeau’s Twitter account — probably see yellow flowers and assume it’s canola. A quick Google image search shows the picture tweeted by Justin Trudeau on Thursday can be found on multiple stock photo websites, wrongly labeled as ‘hard-working farmer in canola’.
But what about the 43,000-some Canadians who grow the crop? Trudeau was announcing good news for them, but does an error like this takes some of the shine off his message?
On one hand, it’s just a tweet, probably posted by a staffer, and there’s no real damage done. You can’t expect everyone to be able to tell the difference between canola and mustard.
On the other hand, you might say it’s little details like this that make Trudeau appear insincere and shallow — a sign of how disconnected the leader of the country is with agriculture (and ironically, at a time when he’s sharing good news for Canadian canola…)
If nothing else, it’s worth a chuckle. What do you think? Does it matter?
Update: The tweet was removed over the weekend. Here’s a screenshot taken on Friday afternoon:
Related: Down-To-The-Wire Agreement Ensures Canola Exports to China Into 2020
While it probably seems trivial to him, this is the kind of thing that leads to uniformed consumers. Informing people has become a priority of the agriculture community as they question more and more where their food comes from and how it is produced. So when the head of our country fighting for access for the crop can’t even identify it…that is a problem and reflects poorly on the country as a whole, especially producers. How can we expect the general public to understand agriculture when the prime minister can’t? As farmers (and the rural vote) we will probably just shake our heads and laugh it off, but at some point this attitude isn’t going to cut it anymore as we lose more and more of our political clout.
As to your question of “does it matter”. Based on the massive influx of comments regarding this post, what do you think?
And we can tell the difference between mustard and canola on these tiny distorted pictures? Is it brassica juncea? Please advise
Why would anybody be surprised by this? Neither Justin or his Government care a wit for the folks outside the 5 big cities and certainly not farmers, oil patch workers, or blue collar people in general.
Easy to laugh off, yes, and I laughed when I saw it. But lazy on the part of Trudeau or his staffer, which is unfortunately all too common — fact-checking seems to be a thing of the past
I would expect Trudeau’s expertise in farm crops matches equally to his expertise in politics. Or leadership. Or economics. Or international affairs. Or national defence. Or…er, you get the picture.
I bet he’d get a cannabis plant correct.
here’s what a canola plant flower looks like – so the photo with Trudeau’s tweet could be accurate
http://www.uscanola.com/what-is-canola/
The flowers are very similar but the leaves are quite different on a mustard plant.