Visitors to the unofficial kickoff party for Food and Farm Awareness Week were greeted with warm skies and above-seasonal temperatures Sept. 18.
The Discover the Farm event at the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre took place one day before the week’s official launch and it lived up to its name.
“It was a phenomenal day, just packed from start to finish,” says Crystal Jorgenson, University of Manitoba Agriculture Department communication specialist. “There were lots of families and lots of people with questions wanting to learn more about animal and crop production.”
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Discover the Farm was modelled after a similar event called Open Farm Day, which was also held at the Farm and Food Discovery Centre. The last year for that event was 2019, before the pandemic, and was attended by about 900 people.
“We thought if we got to that level, we’d be super thrilled, but those expectations were blown out of the water. We ended up with 1,612 people, according to the person keeping track,” said Jorgenson.
Beautiful weather that capped an otherwise miserable and rainy weekend was at least partly responsible. The offer of free food for the first 500 people probably helped too. Early birds were served beef, chicken and pork, along with cookies, chocolate milk and ice cream.
Visitors could talk with Manitoba farmers, see pigs, dairy cows, broilers and laying hens, and explore prairie crops. Participants crushed canola to make oil, searched for the queen bee in a working honeybee hive and played Pig Poop Tic-Tac-Toe, Egg Trivia and the Wheel of Chicken.
Food and Farm Awareness Week began in 2015 and has run on the third Monday in September ever since. The for this year was “Engaging Manitobans in Our Agri-food Industry.”
Also attached to week was the launch of Agriculture in the Classroom Manitoba’s (AITC-M) Foundations of Manitoba Agriculture (FMA) virtual resource hub. Targeting students from grades K-12, FMA is a series of interactive courses and information sheets that invite teachers and students to explore 18 different crops grown and animals raised in Manitoba. The goal is to connect what they eat to the journey their food takes from farm to plate.
Agriculture in the Classroom has been around for 30 years and its mandate, to educate teachers and students about where their food comes from, remains intact. But its virtual resource hub is a new approach that grew largely out of necessity during the pandemic.
“Pre-COVID, almost everything that we did was in person … teachers brought their students out to an event that we were having somewhere,” says AITC-M Executive Director Sue Clayton. “The kids would come out, and they would actually experience things in person, hands-on with us and our volunteers.”
When COVID hit, the organization devised a plan to do everything virtually. The approach was popular with educators and proved an effective and affordable way to expand AITC reach.
“By going virtual, we’re able to reach so many more teachers and students,” says Clayton. “That’s when FMA really started to take shape.”
In 2021, AITC-M received a $50,000 grant through the Alexander Cherban Agriculture Industry Development Program to create the virtual hub, but it soon became apparent that more money was needed.
“As we got into it, we realized there was a lot more to it than we had first thought and we needed to raise more money to complete it,” says Clayton. “Peak of the Market really stepped up as the presenting sponsor.”
AITC-M also received contributions from commodity organizations and agricultural companies that do business in Manitoba.
“When every dollar has to be fundraised, this would have been very difficult without their support.”
Now Clayton says she’s looking forward to going live with the program. The FMA is a series of free interactive resources that help educate students about the different crops and animals raised in Manitoba. So far, AICM has created 18 different resources for teachers to access.
The program and the resources have a different focus depending on the target age group.
“Each resource includes an in-depth sheet with background information for the older students and to give teachers a little more in-depth information about that particular commodity,” says Clayton. “A summary sheet has more bite-sized information for younger students.”
There is also an interactive, e-learning web-based component with games and multimedia activities to incorporate fun while learning.
Other events associated with Food and Farm Awareness Week included a Manitoba Agriculture “selfie challenge” on Twitter, and naming Sept. 21 as “Local Veggie Day” to celebrate Manitoba farmers and locally grown vegetables.
