Farmers give away bread on Agriculture Day
Producers reach out to consumers who may not know how food is grown
Essex County farmers surprised shoppers with a free loaf of bread Tuesday to celebrate Canada’s Agriculture Day.
“That’s amazing,” Windsor shopper Claudia Bonanni said of the bread giveaway at the Real Canadian Superstore on Walker Road Tuesday morning. “I love learning about our food.” Bonanni is a good example of the consumers farmers want to connect with on Agriculture Day. She has no links to farming other than shopping at farmers’ markets sometimes, she said. “Many are two to three generations removed from the farm,” said Julien Papineau, a Lakeshore grain farmer who is a past-president of the Essex County Federation of Agriculture. “We’re trying to put faces to farming.” Papineau was handing out 200 loaves of bread Tuesday morning in Windsor while other farmers were in Belle River and Essex doing the same thing.
He hopes the free bread, pamphlets on the “real dirt on farming” and his conversations will give consumers a better appreciation for farmers and the food they produce. Many shoppers were surprised by the offer and thanked Papineau. “We’ve come a long way, but I believe there’s still a lot of stereotyping to be removed as far as the straw hat and the big overalls and pitch fork mentality of farmers,” Papineau said.
He wants to tell consumers Canadian farmers are proud to be producing safe, abundant food. “Part of the messaging is that one in eight Canadian jobs are in agriculture or related to the food sector, so we’re just showing the significance of farming in Canada and Essex County,” he said. There are about 1,500 farmers in Essex County, he said. Because Essex County farmers are primarily grain growers who grow soybeans, corn and winter wheat, the federation picked bread to hand out. Technically, the winter wheat that’s in the fields now is used in pastries, cookies and crackers while western farmers grow more of the wheat used in bread. Canada’s Agriculture Day started in 2016 and Tuesday ’s celebration included a social media campaign and events across the country.
Farmers had already raised awareness of Food Freedom Day, which fell on Feb. 9. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture calculates that by early February, a Canadian household of average income has earned enough income to pay for their grocery bill for the entire year.