South Canterbury irrigators are launching a new question and answer campaign on social media to get more city people up to speed with farming in New Zealand. Source: Stuff NZ
Waitaki Irrigators Collective (WIC) policy manager Elizabeth Soal said there seemed to be a widening gap between rural and urban communities and social media had the potential to help bridge the gap.
The initiative is called “Ask a Farmer” and invites members of the public, through Facebook and Twitter, to ask farmers questions about anything to do with farming.
Farmers will answer the questions with a short video, which will be posted on social media.
New Zealand’s population was becoming increasingly urbanised and that would mean that fewer young people got to experience life on a farm or have a good understanding of where their food originates.
WIC is made up of shareholders from six irrigation schemes and a society of individual irrigators that take water from Lake Waitaki, the lower Waitaki River, its tributaries of connected groundwater and uses that water to irrigate downstream of the Waitaki Dam. These schemes and individuals use irrigation water for production in the primary sector across 80,000 hectares in South Canterbury and North Otago.
