Family Farming vs. Industrial Agriculture

With farmer’s market season winding down here in the Midwest, venturing back into the grocery store environment seems a bit alien. While a visit to the weekly market rates high in entertainment value, the best part is talking with the folks who grow or make the products they’re selling … and we’re eating. Family farming vs. industrial ag … which are you more comfortable with?

The just-released research findings of the 2011 Consumer Trust Survey from The Center for Food Integrity (CFI) would suggest Americans are growing ever more disenchanted about the state of our global food industry. CFI is a non-profit coalition of agribusiness companies and industry associations whose mission is "to build consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system."

Here is a paragraph from the study’s conclusion:

Consumers aren't sure today's agriculture still qualifies as farming. Why? Generational and geographic distance between farmers and consumers, technological advances in farming, and changes in farm size and structure. We see consumer alienation from agriculture and the food system expressed through concerns about nutrition, food safety, affordability, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and other issues.

The study went on to gauge consumer’s attitudes toward farming styles and deduced people believe family farmers share their values; "big ag" simply does not.

Recently, various industry groups have begun to unite (such as the new U.S. Farmer & Rancher Alliance) in an attempt to improve the image of industrial farming and production. So we’re starting to see some interesting marketing and PR programs (which may be called "farm-washing" by some) such as Monsanto’s Americasfarmers.com appear across multiple media channels.

Yet, the CFI’s own research points to the difficulty in changing public perceptions with the following sentence taken from their presentation: No single program or initiative will reverse the growing trend of consumer alienation from today's farms.

Can marketing solve these issues of consumer perception? Or are we likely to see bigger changes ahead in how our world produces food ... and what or how we choose to buy? What do you think?