Grocery shoppers recently had the opportunity to ask farmers the questions they have always wanted to ask about where their food comes from.

And what better place to do it than a grocery store when food is top of mind.

The event named ‘Meet Your Farmer’ happened at the Cochrane, AB Save On Foods and featured local producers, who volunteered their time to come out and interact with consumers.

Agriculture For Life CEO Luree Williamson tells Rural Roots Canada this event created a lot of genuine conversations.

“It’s that personal conversation we have a lot of misconceptions in agriculture and one of those misconceptions is the big farm, you know the big beast of a farm where there’s no person behind it and so it really does put a face to agriculture and people have the opportunity to have those authentic conversations,” says Williamson.

Alberta Beef’s Beth Castle says they are excited to be a part of this event.

We get an opportunity to be in front of customers and those are the people who have the questions.  They’re going to ask us about beef cuts, about where they are going find this information from,” says Castle.

Assistant Store Manager Colette Kerr says the whole event was the talk of the store all – day.

“I’ve been cashin’ a little bit and customers coming through are talking about it already.   You know, I met the people from the milk area and they’re just excited about it and they are excited about it,” says Kerr.

Alberta Milk representative Danielle Lee says this opportunity has allowed them to answer a lot of questions the shoppers have.

We’ve had a few questions different people want to know about organics or different ways we produce our milk here in Alberta and Canada and we’re happy to say we produce very safe quality milk with no hormones or anti-biotics and people are happy to hear that,” says Lee.

Kerr says shoppers take a big interest in where their local produce comes from.

A lot of it is beef and produce questions you know where is this coming from.  They’re very interested especially in beef and produce about where it is being manufactured and stuff like that when they find out that everything that we can possibly bring in local that we do they’re stoked about it.  This is our local rack and it is shopped all of the time and they know that we have Alberta Beef and they think that is fantastic.”