The World Ag Congress concluded in St. Louis at midday on Wednesday, but the discussion continued with about 50 of the congress participants who attended the Novus International sustainability roundtable.

Four speakers presented sustainability-related topics and the first was Charlie Arnot, CEO of the Center for Food Integrity (CFI) who talked about how building and maintaining public trust and confidence in contemporary U.S. food production is the only way to have a system that is truly sustainable. “We define sustainability as systems that are ethically grounded, scientifically verified and economically viable,” Charlie said. “If they aren’t all three, we don’t believe they are sustainable, nor will they be supported by consumers.”

Charlie says their consumer research has discovered that confidence, resulting from shared values and ethics, is most important to consumers who are unfortunately completely disconnected from food production, which diminishes their level of trust in the system. “What they tell us is, we trust farmers, but we’re not sure that what you are doing is farming because of the size and the scale and our use of technology,” he said. “That’s the challenge we have to overcome.”

To do that, CFI is launching a consumer-directed web-based campaign on a state basis, starting in Ohio. They will be offering a year’s worth of free groceries giveaway to encourage people to go on-line and learn more about real farmers and ranchers in their state. “We’ve got to do it by connecting people to people,” Charlie said. “People are telling us they don’t trust systems or companies, they trust people who share their values.”

You can listen to my interview with Charlie here: waf-09-arnot.mp3

Download the interview here: Charlie Arnot