The importance of my ag education as a food communicator

Nearly a decade ago, freshly graduated from my dietetic internship, I watched a wildly successful film about ‘the modern food system’ called Food Inc. and read a best seller called Eating Animals, followed by a number of other books and ‘shock-umentaries’ that fell into this category.

These were my first exposures to any agriculture related topic, as sadly, food systems and agriculture were not taught as part of the dietetic education curriculum at the time (thankfully, this is slowly changing).

I became an instant skeptic about all of the ‘big ag’ food I was ingesting. I have a poignant memory of a Thanksgiving around that time when my dad called to ask what size turkey he should buy and I declared stubbornly that I would in fact, not be eating a turkey unless I knew the farmer who had raised it and exactly how it was done. I’m pretty sure I’d never, ever met any farmer at this point in my life, let alone a turkey farmer, and I most certainly didn’t know what kind of ‘turkey raising’ I was looking for.

I became an advocate for ‘ethical eating’ and even wrote a press release for one of my professional associations about organic food, using the infamous ‘dirty dozen’ as an example of how to avoid pesticides.

I became everything that today, I educate and warn against. Even with a top notch science education and my RD designation which demanded evidence-based practice, I fell into the emotionally driven food fear rhetoric that was exploding in popularity.

That is, until I started meeting farmers, scientists, educators and people who were actually connected with agriculture. My journey of becoming more ag-savvy started with a yearly one-day Farm and Food Care tour with my home economist colleagues. My curiosity about agriculture, biotechnology and food systems flourished with these real-life farming connections, and I started to talk less about the supposed dangers of ‘big ag’ and more about the incredible strides being made in modern agriculture to feed, well, everyone.

Today, I proudly eat my humble pie. As a dietitian, home economist and food blogger I’ve become a trusted food communicator for regular consumers. Conferences like GrowCanada, farm tours and biotech facility tours (like the one hosted by CropLife Canada this spring) have helped me learn about agriculture, plant science and crop protection from the experts themselves. They have allowed me to translate ag education, debunk myths and educate the average consumer with accurate information. In other words, take the fear out of food.

Working with CropLife Canada on the development of recipes for the From Farm to Food cookbook was a proud moment for me, and a true culmination of my ag education journey. The opportunity to develop recipes for Canadians while sharing my knowledge about how our amazing growers and producers bring some of the best food in the world to our tables has been an incredibly fulfilling experience. After all, there’s nothing I love more than food, farmers and Canada!

Erin MacGregor, RD
www.howtoeat.ca