Education is the key to public understanding ag

“Public re­la­tions and per­cep­tion of agri­cul­ture is so very, very im­por­tant to where we are go­ing with the in­dus­try and with eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment of our ru­ral ar­eas,” said Mike Koles, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Wis­con­sin Towns As­so­ci­a­tion. “A big part of per­cep­tion is ed­u­ca­tion.”...

...“Hav­ing a di­a­logue with some stake­holder groups that don’t un­der­stand agri­cul­ture and lo­cal gov­ern­ment, there was cer­tainly some mis­per­cep­tion of what we were try­ing to do,” Koles said. “Some thought we were go­ing to cre­ate en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ards and that there weren’t laws to pro­tect streams, etc. Of course there are. And, of course, no­body in lo­cal gov­ern­ment or agri­cul­ture would be in­ter­ested in do­ing some­thing that was neg­a­tive for that lo­cal gov­ern­ment or the en­vi­ron­ment or the in­dus­try.”...