Thanks to Hyland Seeds!

The Harvest Balloon Tour – which included a six-week cross-province tour during harvest time with the yellow “Farmers Feed Cities!” hot air balloon – has been completed.

The balloon was a unique partnership between Farmers Feed Cities! and Hyland Seeds.

“We owe a huge ‘thank-you’ to Hyland Seeds for initiating this project, and for taking our Farmers Feed Cities! message to rural and urban people across Ontario,” says Leo Guilbeault, Chair of Ontario Grains & Oilseeds. “This is a large scale project that grain and oilseed producer associations don’t have the resources to complete, but the impact in urban areas is significant.”

The balloon flew 54 times in 42 days over many rural fairs and major cities. Pictures of the balloon at various events are available at www.harvestballoon.com.

Farmers Feed Cities! Review

It’s been nearly two-and-a-half years since the Farmers Feed Cities! campaign began, and organizers and supporters are still seeing yellow.

That’s because the trademark yellow and black logo is more popular than ever, an ongoing badge of pride and honour for the thousands of farm families and supporters who have come to identify with the campaign over the years.

“People are seeking us out at the farm shows and other events because they need to restock on t-shirts, signs and stickers,” says Lisa McLean, Communications Manager for the campaign. “It’s incredible how popular the campaign has become, and the passion that people attach to it.”

The campaign got its roots as a rally cry for grain and oilseed farmers desperate to secure long-term funding for Ontario’s grain and oilseed industry. When Ontario Grains & Oilseeds first started asking for the farmer-designed Risk Management Program (RMP), farm organizations needed a way to gauge support for the program.

“We didn’t want to spend our staff, director and financial resources on a program that our members didn’t want, so we invented a postcard campaign using the Farmers Feed Cities! logo as a tangible way to count our supporters,” says Leo Guilbeault, Chair of Ontario Grains &
Oilseeds.

More than 30,000 postcards and thousands of t-shirts, signs, buttons and vehicle stickers later, the campaign – and its supporters – are still going strong.

Spring 2007 marked a shift in the campaign’s direction, when Minister of Agriculture Leona Dombrowsky announced a Risk Management Program for grain and oilseed farmers. By Fall, details of the program were released for a 3-year pilot program that very closely followed the
structure of the program originally proposed by Ontario Grains & Oilseeds.

“With RMP behind us, grain and oilseed directors realize the campaign is still going strong, and it has been a powerful tool to communicate the importance of agriculture to the general public,” says McLean. Recognizing an announcement for RMP was only months away, Ontario Grains & Oilseeds members began to step up the public outreach portion of the Farmers Feed Cities! campaign.

“Our key message going forward is that farm families are important to the way we work, play, eat and breathe,” says McLean. “It allows us to make good news connections between farm families and the economy, recreational trails and experiences, food safety and quality, and environmental stewardship.”

And those good news connections are great news for organizations and businesses keen on partnering with a high profile campaign that emphasizes the importance of farm families. In 2006, the campaign partnered for the first time with the World’s Longest Barbecue, an event that encourages Canadians from coast to coast to have a barbecue on Saturday of the Civic Holiday long weekend in August, serving only Canadian-produced food. “The world’s longest barbecue is a positive, nonthreatening way for us to reach out to the public with our farm-friendly messages,” says McLean.

As the campaign increased its focus on public outreach, corporate sponsors such as Pioneer and Syngenta signed on. Most recently, campaign organizers took the Farmers Feed Cities! message to the skies thanks to a partnership with Hyland Seeds involving a six-week cross-province tour with a Farmers Feed Cities! hot-air balloon.

“Ontario Grains & Oilseeds simply does not have the resources to conceive and fund projects of this magnitude,” says Guilbeault. “The hot-air balloon is an example of a partnership that was a truly unique and progressive venture.”

Guilbeault says the group is open to partnering with other like-minded organizations with similar messaging and goals. Decisions about future directions of the Farmers Feed Cities! campaign are decided by a committee of individuals from Ontario grain & oilseed organizations.

“We’ve developed a strong campaign that is well-known and well-liked by urban and rural people,” says Guilbeault. “Ontario Grains & Oilseeds recognizes the value of such a campaign, and as long as we have supporters and strong messaging, we’ll continue to run a professional campaign that our members can be proud of.”