Is big or small farming the future? Tough question, but the conversation was had and Lori Renzi, Vice President of Brand Strategy & Development at Charlie Baggs Culinary Innovations (CBCI) was one of the lucky panelists who got the chance to express her opinion and expertise during USFRA’s Boston Food Dialogues.
CBCI is a consulting practice for the global food industry that assists with flavor and menu development, nutritional assessments, brand strategy and more. Lori works with the direction of all strategic and marketing activities, as well as the development and the re-launch of the CBCI brand.
“I am here today because I am a marketing person, I am not a chef. I represent more what the consumer is thinking, how they get their information, how they receive it and what they do with it. From a farm size perspective right now people are so cynical and skeptical of anything big so you can’t really blame them for thinking big farm is bad. There just needs to be a lot of information to clarify what we are talking about in that area. I don’t think anyone would think that a farmer as a large farm is a bad thing. I think what they think is there is a farm being run by big business, big corporations, big government. They are going to perceive that as bad, because of their experiences. It is up to us to bridge those entities and get the right information to them.”
Lori said that many things said today were very interesting to her. The complexity of this conversation is huge. She believes her take away from the event was that we all need to understand more about the thought process in the farming system. The consumer wants to understand how the food is grown, made and processed in simple terms.
Listen to the complete interview with Lori here: Interview with Lori Renzi