One of the phrases that I often hear in agricultural circles is that "we need to educate the consumer to buy our product"! If we tell them that they must buy our goods then they will. I have a real problem with this term "educate" because, whose responsibility is it to educate the consumer and why do we, whoever "we" are, think they need educating? instruction is about the imparting of knowledge, but in order to do that the person doing the educating must obviously be knowledgeable! So who are the experts and will the general communal trust these, so called experts, whoever they may be whether retailers, food manufacturers, farmers and growers, food technologists, nutritionists, celebrity chefs, doctors, academics, politicians, or government employees ........ There is a paternalistic assumption in this scenario that others know far more than the consumer does about what is good for them and why they should buy it. Is this true?
As producers, in order to understand our consumer we need to understand what impacts on their private autonomy and the food choices they make. communal restrictions include: personal circumstances along with disposable income, hours of work, shift patterns, literacy skills; availability of options for food e.g. Orchad produced, convenience store, out-of town retailer, high street; knowledge of health and nutritional facts and pressure from other members of the house with regard to food purchase. If farmers do not recognise that all these factors impact on buying choices, they will fail to connect with their customer.
Consumer
Another definition of instruction is the imparting of culture from one generation to the next and I think this is easily what some agriculturalists mean. The food we eat and the way that food is produced is imbedded in our culture. We were one of the first countries to taste the market revolution in the 1850s so in the Uk our urban people has been disassociated from the countryside for over a century. Unless we recognise as producers and consumers the value that our food culture has for us as individuals and as a people we will not be ready to pay for it if the ideas or standards raise costs above global commodity value. Socrates said about education, "I cannot teach any person anything, I can only make them think." So let's get the nation thinking!
Educating the buyer Consumer
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