Opinion
Submitted by Penny Eaton, stakeholder relations for Canadian Food Focus
Dorothy Long, managing director of Canadian Food Focus, says we need to remember that food is the part of agriculture that consumers care most about.
For a long time, the ag industry has been unable to meaningfully reach consumers because we concentrate too much about what we want to tell them instead of what they are interested to learn.”
The key, she says, is to focus on food. “Food is the most intimate way that consumers come to agriculture. On a daily basis, consumers are thinking, “What’s for dinner tonight? Why is food so expensive? Is my child getting enough iron?”
Long leads Canadian Food Focus, a national organization that answers consumer questions about food and farming. Canadian Food Focus’ approach is threefold: reaching individual consumers through their website and social media channels; collaborating with food influencers like dietitians and bloggers; and exploring avenues such as TV programming and artificial intelligence tools that offer new ways to engage consumers.
Most of Long’s current activity is focused on the website (canadianfoodfocus.org) and social media channels. A major appeal of the site is that it includes all types of foods and farming—from apples to water buffalo mozzarella—and from all regions of Canada. Consumers can find what they’re looking for without having to consult a multitude of sector-specific sites.
“Our strategy is to offer information in bite-sized pieces, often paired with recipes and food insights that consumers are searching for. We develop several types of content, including videos, reels, articles, infographics that follow Canadian ingredients from the plate back to the farm. While all of our content is science-based and factual, we ensure our messaging aligns with the personal and emotional connections people have with food,” Long says.
Canadian Food Focus targets their online advertising to urban audiences with little exposure to food production or farming, mainly female Canadian grocery purchasers aged 25 to 55, although they also have a strong following in the over-55 segment. “Our top cities are Canada’s largest urban centres, like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal…we are finally out of the echo chamber of agriculture,” Long says.
The other key strategy for Canadian Food Focus is to build a nationwide community of influencers, such as well-known dietitians, food bloggers, chefs, health professionals, science communicators and farmers. Despite fielding questions on a regular basis, many food professionals receive little or no training about food production. Canadian Food Focus offers farm tours, courses and webinars to provide information about how foods are grown in Canada. “We want to be a resource to help food influencers communicate confidently to their followers about farming and food.”
The game plan is working. Last year, Canadian Food Focus achieved over 10 million engagements—people actively engaging through comments, likes, video views, shares and so on. More than 33,000 now follow Canadian Food Focus and 8,000 receive a monthly newsletter with articles, videos and recipes featuring Canadian ingredients.
Canadian Food Focus, now a standalone national non-profit organization, initially grew out of a project by Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan and is in fact still administered by that group. Supporters include Lentils.org, Canada Beef, Cargill, CropLife and Federated Co-operatives as well some of the largest crop producers in Canada, like Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission and SaskOilseeds plus provincial groups such as Chicken Farmers of Saskatchewan, SaskMilk and Prairie Oat Growers Association. The federal AgriCompetitiveness Program has also provided support.
Over the past five years since Canadian Food Focus came online, supporters have invested $1.86 million in this initiative to engage consumers. The organization has doubled last year’s annual budget to just short of $800,000. That’s really not a lot when you consider PETA’s annual budget is US$75 million.
More still needs to be done, Long says. Anti-science and anti-agriculture misinformation is rampant and expected to continue to multiply. Trustworthy information is needed to combat this. And industry needs to work harder to align our messaging and divide up the work so that we’re making most effective use of limited dollars.
“We’ve taken a shoestring budget and a strong vision of how best to reach consumers and achieved over 10 million engagements (this year alone) from non-farming consumers in Canada’s largest urban centres,” Long points out. “Imagine what we could do if the entire industry came together to support this work.”
