University News for September 20, 2011

Officials with the University of Manitoba expect the new Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre to attract up to 30,000 visitors per year.

The University of Manitoba's Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, was officially opened this past Friday.

The 8,000-square-foot facility features hands on displays and activities designed to explain the science involved in food production.

Guy Robbins, the Centre's visitor services manager, says the hope is to ramp up to around 30,000 visitors a year over the next three to four years.

Clip-Guy Robbins-the University of Manitoba:
We are specifically targeting three areas.

That's the general public, education, especially the middle grades of school and then the industry, consumers, producers, those kind of people.

The way we do it is that we act as an outreach for the university researchers and for the faculty itself.

We're basically meeting people here, we're looking for people to have programs here, to have events here and we have all kinds of groups coming here, guided tours and then also the general public can come here Tuesdays to Saturdays 10:00 to 4:00.

Our key message is, "How does your food get from the farm to your plate?"

We're interested in that because we want to get the public connected to where their food is coming from, particularly the urban public because there's a lot of concern these days about food sustainability, food security, climate, those kinds of things so it's important for them to know what goes into their food and how they can support agriculture to make it better.

Robbins says, last week alone about 1,200 school kids came through the centre, the official opening attracted a great crowd and the intent is to build on that.

For more information on the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre visit FFDC.ca.

For UniversityNews.Org, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

*University News is a presentation of the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural & Food Sciences