Call it farm show-and-tell or a really great way to make new farming friends, but Andrew Campbell is almost two months into his 52 Farms in 52 Weeks tour, and the project, so far, is going very well. Campbell, the @FreshAirFarmer, sat down with RealAgriculture’s resident hand-talker Lyndsey Smith to talk about the tour stops… Read more »
Tag: Andrew Campbell
52 Weeks, 52 Farms — Andrew Campbell’s Plan for 2017
London, Ontario-area dairy farmer and Real Ag contributor Andrew Campbell is at it again (or still!), launching another online ag awareness project for 2017. Following up on his work with #farm365, he’s planning to visit and shine a spotlight on 52 Canadian farms in 52 weeks. “I thought it’d be kind of neat to start touring other… Read more »
How Much Time Should it Take to Tell Your Story? 4Hers Weigh In
How much, or how little, should you drink? How much money should your kids get for allowance? How much should you set aside for holidays, for retirement? How much time should you spend on communications, and what should you do? You may have grappled with the some of the questions above. But most farmers have… Read more »
Celebrating a Year of #farm365
At 2:03am, January 1st, 2015, Andrew Campbell tweeted a photo of a newborn calf on his family’s dairy farm in southwestern Ontario, kicking off a year of highs and lows posting farm photos on social media every day with the #farm365 hashtag. The project’s goal was to shed more light on the daily happenings on a… Read more »
GMO Labeling Reaching a Crossroads
The conversation about labeling genetically engineered products is reaching a crossroads in the U.S. I wonder how much longer this can last. On one side, groups like Just Label It (funded by the Organic Voices Action Fund) are lining up their celebrity endorsements to try to sway unaware consumers. They are reaching into the legal… Read more »
An Open Letter to Three Candidates in My Riding
Editor’s note: Andrew Campbell, who farms in southern Ontario, served as the moderator for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s national ag leaders debate on Wednesday. A summary of the debate can be found on our live blog. An open letter to three federal election candidates in my riding: Mr. Bev Shipley (Conservative incumbent) Mr…. Read more »
People Crave Information about Farming — The Trials and Tribulations of #farm365
The great thing about social media — like Twitter and Facebook — is that it provides a megaphone for farmers, a group of people who have struggled for decades to be heard by consumers. The flipside is, of course, that technology doesn’t discriminate; a megaphone for farmers is a megaphone for everybody else, too. Which… Read more »
Farmers Speak Up — Perspectives on the #farm365 Activist Backlash
What started out as a commitment to agvocacy has quickly turned into a social media frenzy of a very nasty kind — animal rights activists have highjacked the #farm365 hashtag and are posting memes, pro-vegan slogans and calling out farmers as, well, murderers. Of course, there’s also a hefty dose of other farmers following Andrew… Read more »
Following Along on the #farm365 with Andrew Campbell
Are you ready to get farming? Alarm goes off at the same time each morning so we can start milking around 5. #farm365 pic.twitter.com/Do16yQuXgS — Andrew Campbell (@FreshAirFarmer) January 2, 2015 Curious about what happens on a dairy and grain farm each and every day? Farmer from southwestern Ontario and monthly columnist here at Real… Read more »
The Folly of Trying to Eliminate All Risk in a Risk-Averse World
By now, you’ve likely heard about or seen an ‘undercover’ video that shows terrible abuse of dairy cows on a farm in British Columbia. In the disturbing video, cows are kicked, caned or beaten up simply because they were weaker than the young workers. After that video release, dairy farmers across the country did something… Read more »
The Sliding Scale of Animals as Our Equals: Which Are Pets, Livestock or Neither?
A number of years ago, one of the first farm meetings I attended as a young radio reporter on the agriculture beat had a speaker talking on a subject that few farmers had considered. It was on what role activism would play in food production down the road, and how farmers could react. At the… Read more »
Ag Literacy Starts in the Home Room
It’s March and I can almost taste spring. Certainly the thermometer around here isn’t part of that – but the slightly longer days and that first day of spring marked on the calendar for later this month – has me longing for it. Dream with me of those warm spring nights in the field filling… Read more »
Can Restaurants Lead Ag Education? Truth in Marketing Would be a Start
When it comes to meat, poultry is continuing to see big demand across the country, largely because of our appetite for chicken. The Canadian Meat Council says that in 2010 the average Canadian ate almost 16 kilograms of poultry compared to 13 kg of beef and 12 kg of pork. Moving forward, poultry demand will… Read more »
Digging Deeper on Labels: What Does “Certified Humane” Really Mean?
Competition to get you to a grocery store is higher than ever before. With a fierce marketplace and incredibly diverse set of consumer demands, grocers are working hard to get you to their store and make you a loyal customer. Retailers’ most common weapon in the battle for loyalty seems to be providing murky information… Read more »
Remembering Why I Farm, Even in the Face of Negativity
Ahead of a presentation I was about to give to dairy farmers in British Columbia, one of the organizers warned me about the chance of a few protestors from the group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) protesting the event. It wasn’t expected to be very large, maybe a dozen people or so,… Read more »