Swine producers and crew attending seminars and information meetings throughout Canada have been hearing a wide range of messages about who their customers are and how those customers’ expectations have changed in recent decades.

While most pork produced in Alberta is earmarked for export, a significant portion stays at home for domestic production, which has remained rather static as reported by Kevin Grier and other economists.

Alberta Pork and its sister organizations recognize that the rules are changing at retail stores and restaurants. Theories of social licence affect the way consumers view agriculture and those views play a central role in how animals are raised, shipped and slaughtered. People have heard many times about the growing disconnect between farmers and consumers and the desire to resolve the issues it raises.

In a recent experiment, ATB Financial and the Alberta Cultural Tourism Association teamed up to bring a unique set of guests to the table to talk about their views on how food is raised and produced. Held in a special-event barn just east of Olds, Meet in the Middle served a banquet of locally-produced food and beverages to 150 young adults from two opposite sides of the spectrum: Farmers and urban entrepreneurs.

The idea was to start some discussion that would help young farmers and consumers understand each other and, hopefully, keep them talking long afterward, said chief organizer Terry Andryo, senior marketing manager for ATB’s business and agriculture division.

Working with ACTA and about 20 other supporters, the banquet would set 75 young adults from each group across the table from each other, rotating them between courses to freshen the conversation.

The Feb. 16 banquet was served at a time when a new generation had started taking over the lofty position held for decades by the baby boomers – that aging group of adults born in the decade after the Second World War.

For the first time since that group began making its mark, a new population of young adults has outnumbered them and is now pushing them off the marketing peak they had previously occupied.

Certainly, baby boomers are still an important demographic for marketers, says Jimm Holland, president of Street Smart Strategic Planning in Calgary and a partner in the project.

The reality for marketers now is that the millennials – people who reached adulthood since 2000 – now wield the level of influence once held by the baby boomers. They think differently than their predecessors and they have different demands from the people who want to sell products to them, says Holland.

The expectations of the millennial consumer will be different than those of the baby boomers. While it is still very early in this transition, businesses need to begin preparing and adapting now rather than thinking they can just hold on and maintain the status quo. There is a new normal coming down the pipe.”

Businesses that ignore that shift will do so at their peril, he said.

Among their expectations, millennials have fewer reservations about their own privacy and they expect a higher level of transparency from anyone with whom they are doing business, said Holland. They want to know where their food comes from and they want to know how it is produced.

A guest at the banquet, Calgary-based marketing specialist Michaela Brownlee said she wants to know that the people who grow her food adhere to the same high standards as she does when she buys and prepares it.

“I am lucky enough (sic) to be celiac, but I also have a various array of food allergies, so I am definitely interested in being sure that I find foods that are healthy. I prefer to go organic when I can, because I have a sensitivity to pesticides as well as anything that has any additives to it,” Brownlee said during a break between courses. She had been asked to attend the event by one of her clients, Calgary Co-op.

Brownlee said the Co-op asked her to attend because its management team needs a member who can develop a better idea of what’s going on with agriculture in Alberta.

Co-op leaders felt that would help improve the marketing team’s understanding of their business and fresh food initiatives, said Brownlee.

“I’ve definitely learned a lot more about how our food is made . . . and it’s been really informative, too, to go through and learn about the different things like barley and how much honey goes into mead.”

Brownlee said that, as well as chatting with farmers, it was nice to speak with people from breweries and other agri-food businesses.

“You don’t always get that connection, say, when you go to the grocery store. It’s almost like that farmers’ market feeling, when you actually get to go to the farmer who’s selling it and get to meet them and get to know their products a little bit better.”

Dina Sutherland, community investment manager for the UFA Co-operative Ltd., was among the team of people who created and organized the event.

She said afterward that the banquet allowed the millennials to lead the conversations themselves and appears to have sown some precious seeds that she and her partners hope will take root and grow.

“From the conversations that I heard last night, the networking and the relationships made are not going to end at the dinner table,” said Sutherland.

“I think that’s kind of neat, because that’s how that organic story about what agriculture is and what it does is going to grow,” she said.

“The people I met were all very young entrepreneurs, very innovative, very progressive thinking, and what a way to connect those young entrepreneurs as consumers with the agriculture world and see what comes out of it.” •

— By Brenda Kossowan