NC Faces of Agriculture Farmer Speaks at Food Dialogues

At the recent United States Farmers and Ranchers Alliance Food Dialogues event in Raleigh, USFRA Faces of Agriculture Bo Stone of Cabarrus County, NC spoke with Southern Farm Network’s Bob Midles about the event, and the commonalities he’s found at Food Dialogue events across the country:

“As farmers, we do a great job of preaching to the choir, we love to talk to other farmers about what we are doing but we don’t get out of our comfort zone and talk to consumers about what we are doing. With that model in place, we have many who are removed from the farm who don’t know what goes into the production of food every day. The Food Dialogue events and the USFRA have made a concerted to have the conversations with the end users of our products. So we can tell why it is that we have tools that we have and why they are safe to use.

I had the opportunity to attend an event in Manhattan last fall and was on the panel in Chicago. One common thing that I noticed in these events is that people want to know how their food is grown and that it’s the safest it can be. There are a lot of questions about the technology and terminology surrounding the production of food.

I am in both sides of agriculture because of the diversification, but the commonality is we want to ensure that all of our products are the highest quality in the most sustainable manner.

I would like to say to other farmers first that there will be other people that make decisions that affect your livelihood every day. Its much better to be one of those making the decisions because no one knows better what goes on the farm than what you do, so basically I would tell farmers to get active, be involved!”

For more on the Food Dialogues click here.