Episode: 18
Jenelle Hamblin
“Looking back on it with rose coloured glasses, there are times, especially now working in an office or a desk job, where I just want to go clean out a barn. Could I just go muck stalls, please?”
Listen to learn more about how Jenelle’s childhood on a cattle ranch shaped her career in the beef and swine worlds.
Listen here:
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Jenelle Hamblin, Toban Dyck, Jay Whetter, Speaker 1
Toban Dyck 00:00
Dyck. This is the extensionist conversations with great thinkers in agriculture. I’m Toban Dyck and I’m Jay wetter.
Jay Whetter 00:16
Hey, Toban. AJ, Pigs in Space.
Toban Dyck 00:22
What? About them? You said Pigs in Space? Yeah. No, you remember the Muppets? Pigs in Space? I do, actually, I don’t remember that part, but I do have a bit of a strong visual, Muppet visual.
Jay Whetter 00:34
At lunchtime today, we were actually talking about our favorite space movies. Well, we were talking about our favorite movies. Somehow we got onto space movies, and we always need to some sort of introduction to talk about. And I thought, Well, okay, how do we talk about space movies? And then lead into a conversation about pigs. And then the only thing I could think of was Pigs in Space just
Toban Dyck 00:57
a very kind of on the nose segue, just
Jay Whetter 01:02
utter the words you said. Jamie doesn’t like space movies. So, okay, yeah, so she doesn’t. I came up with a short list of ones that I liked, yeah, interstellar Yes,
Toban Dyck 01:12
which I agreed with you. I like that movie.
Jay Whetter 01:16
There’s an old one called contact by Jodie Foster, which, if I recall, is based on Carl Sagan book. And then I haven’t seen contact. Then there was gravity. I think that’s the Sandra Bullock one where George Clooney in there they get like he gets flung out into space and somehow saves her as a ghost, or inspires her, right? It’s not actually still alive. That’s right.
Toban Dyck 01:40
That was that would, that was a, like, a, that was a that was like an anxiety, that was an oh yeah, oh yeah, anxious move, which is why Jamie doesn’t like, she doesn’t like your she doesn’t like your wife. Jamie doesn’t like space, no no, because it’s just, it’s just so, like, vast and just Yeah,
Jay Whetter 01:56
and so much on a spacewalk, and you get untethered, then you’re, you’re floating out in space forever, right? I mean, it’s
Toban Dyck 02:04
kind of, it’s kind of like the ocean, right? What are your thoughts on the ocean, fast? So if you were deep thoughts about the ocean, how many I think there’s, like, there’s, think it’s quite big, like, if you were swimming on a beach, and I couldn’t see, sure, no, you were, so you were like, you were like, you’re swimming something, and you could see, you can see stuff. But then you look kind of out into the ocean, underwater, you know, you have your eyes open, and you see there’s, like, a little bit of a precipice, and you know that beyond that is just, yeah, empty space, like, with it, yeah, would that freak you out? Yeah, I don’t know. Probably yes, the abyss, yeah, yeah, definitely would be. The space is kind of like that, yeah, for me anyway. But interstellar was a good movie, yeah, yeah. And so was, so was gravity. I haven’t seen contact.
Jay Whetter 02:53
And then what was the one you mentioned? Arrival, arrival. Tell me about that one. Well, I can so
Toban Dyck 02:59
Amy Adams, yeah, she, they, they, it’s an interesting exploration, I believe, in memory serves in communication. So their whole they’re trying to communicate with these, these kind of, these spaceships that have landed
Jay Whetter 03:15
segway. Love it, yeah. Okay, so, okay,
Toban Dyck 03:19
so what’s happened communicated, but maybe, but maybe, sorry,
Jay Whetter 03:24
what’s that? What’s the, what’s the communications angle?
Toban Dyck 03:28
So there this thing is, is, I don’t remember it’s, it’s either giving a sound or it’s something kind of a unique, unique form of communication that they cannot, for the life of them, interpret and and the main character in the movie, which I believe is, is Adams, is figures something out at the end. And it wasn’t. It’s one of those. It’s a real kind of thought provoker, because at the end, it’s not like a It’s not like, it makes it all clear, and it’s not like, oh, that’s big eureka moment where, oh, they’ve decoded what this ship is trying to say, and this is what it’s been telling us for the last little while. It’s much more existential than that, and the movie does a good job of drawing out. Kind of I again, if memory serves, the language, the role language plays in our in our lives and existence and identity and and relationships and everything. I think it’s, it’s quite it’s quite cerebral for for, for what it is, or it’s genre. Well,
Jay Whetter 04:25
we’re going to talk about communications and pigs, but nothing actually about space pigs. So we got two out of the three of our introductory themes will be in the next conversation. Should we get on with it? Let’s do it right on.
Toban Dyck 04:48
Are you curious about what Jay and I get up to behind the scenes at the extensionist? The
Jay Whetter 04:52
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Toban Dyck 05:00
important updates. You’re never going to miss an episode again. Please sign
Jay Whetter 05:03
up at the extensionist.com Hi. This is the extensionist. I’m Jay and I’m Toban, and our guest today is Janelle Hamblin, who’s the Director comma swine health with Manitoba
Toban Dyck 05:20
little inside joke. Hey, Janelle, thanks
Jay Whetter 05:24
for coming down to the studio in prison, for having me. Yes, it’s a pleasure. We’re going to talk all about communications and swine health and Manitoba Pork, but we’re going to start off with a little Fisher branch. So tell us about growing up, up at Fisher branch?
Jenelle Hamblin 05:39
Sure, yes, born and raised on a small beef farm in North of Fisher branch, just a couple miles and my my dad’s family, my mom’s family, everybody is local to to Fisher and surrounding area. It was, it was a great place to be. A typical farm childhood, working on the farm and an off farm jobs as as I got older, but certainly lots of agricultural influence growing big, great, big garden that we all worked and grew, grew food and cattle and worked in the fields. It was, it was a great way to grow up. We had acres and acres of places to roam and play.
Jay Whetter 06:20
Did you grow cabbages in your garden?
Toban Dyck 06:24
Jay wants to talk about cabbage rolls
Speaker 1 06:26
podcast.
Toban Dyck 06:29
We should actually have, like, sampling I should have brought you.
Jenelle Hamblin 06:33
I’m sorry. There’s
Jay Whetter 06:37
nothing like the sound of chewing on cabbage. Yes. Really set off a podcast. Yeah,
Jenelle Hamblin 06:42
we’d be really good friends after the
Speaker 1 06:45
crucible garlic and the
Jenelle Hamblin 06:49
we actually tried to grow cabbage one year, but it it was not successful. Just the pest management was was an issue. So
Jay Whetter 06:57
I remember my mom grew cabbages once as well, and they’re full of cabbage worms. That’s a challenge with cabbages. Yeah. Anyway. Okay, so halap Chee, hello. Chi halopci, okay, cabbage rolls. What? Why is that your favorite food? You
Jenelle Hamblin 07:13
know, I think it really comes down to this, the strong role that our my Ukrainian heritage, has played in my upbringing, I have I’m half Ukrainian polish, and my grandparents, on my mom’s side, were very, are very deeply rooted in their heritage and their culture, and that was brought to my upbringing. So the food, the traditions, the music, the dancing I Ukrainian danced for 18 years. Wow. My kids Ukrainian dance now, awesome, and it just was such a big part of my upbringing that anybody asked me what favorite food was. It’s really anything my Nana will make, but if I had to pick it would be her cabbage. And
Jay Whetter 07:59
is there something about hers. Or is it like,
Toban Dyck 08:01
also, would you be terrified, like, of some sort of, you know, vengeance, if you would say a different food? Is there a fear of like, you
Jenelle Hamblin 08:10
have to say cabbage rolls from my Nana? Me, to answer your question, Jay, I mean, there really isn’t a better cabbage roll than mine. It’s we’ve we’ve tasted we’ve tried them, we’ve tasted against but I think that has to do with, if you ask one of my best friends, her Bob, is cabbage roll, the best cabbage Oh,
Jay Whetter 08:32
yeah. Okay, so this is, this is me. I’m not. I don’t have any Ukrainian or Polish background. So this is my, this is my quick recipe. Okay, beef. Rice, boil some cabbage leaves, roll them up, put them in a pan, and then put like, very like hunts tomato sauce on top. Okay, good. Well,
Toban Dyck 08:55
not as I’ll tell you that Jays maybe, yeah, maybe
Jenelle Hamblin 08:59
you gotta add some onions in there. So nice fried onions in with the rice. The rice, and Is it beef, or is it just right? We use bacon, bacon steak. So happy, yeah. So bacon onions fried. Mix that in with the rice, wrap it in your cabbage, and then a nice, nice bath of tomato soup. That
Jay Whetter 09:21
does sound really good. Okay, so it’s tomato soup. So it’s Campbell’s tomato soup. Or,
Jenelle Hamblin 09:25
well, you know what? If you ask banana, it’s got to be co op. Oh, right. Oh, don’t tell her that I use Campbell’s.
Toban Dyck 09:33
This might be the only podcast
Jay Whetter 09:37
that’s her political statement on the Co Op, or the just that’s with the local source. That’s the local
Jenelle Hamblin 09:41
source. Yes, yeah, absolutely, small town, right?
Jay Whetter 09:45
Of course. Yes, Portugal, yeah, for sure. Okay, that’s perfect. That is good. So tomato soup, not tomato sauce, okay, well, that sounds great. And you, you, I am right. You boil the cabbage leaves before you wrap them up. You don’t use raw. Absolutely gotta
Jenelle Hamblin 10:00
blanch them, make them nice and soft. Yeah, so
Toban Dyck 10:03
you grew you grew up on a cattle farm or a beef farm. So I we had cattle here at this farm until I was around 18, and my parents sold all the cattle and the hogs. But growing up with cattle, I, at the time, vowed to never be involved with livestock because of the choring and just like, you know, adolescents, I hated it and all that kind of stuff. I mean, like, now I look back with rose colored glasses because I think I was, like, real hard work that a lot of other people my age didn’t do, like chopped pails that like wading through, like spring time now has just got those pastures. It’s got all messy and gross. And as those are good, those are good memories, but you went through it and you are still in livestock, so that must have been a great experience growing up. I
Jenelle Hamblin 10:48
share very similar experience to you. Toban in that looking back on it with rose colored glasses, there are times, especially now, working in, I’ll say, an office or a desk job, where I have found myself. I just want to go clean out a barn. Could I just go muck stalls? Please? Like, move my body, use my physical side of the work is something that I don’t know. If I ever thought in that moment when you’re doing it growing up, yeah, you would think, Oh my gosh,
Jay Whetter 11:18
yeah, I think you learned anything from your biosecurity?
Jenelle Hamblin 11:22
No calls the well, it was, there were some, we’ll get to that later, yeah, but no, it’s, it’s, uh, livestock has been a big part of my life, growing up in beef, and then moving over to swine, and then in my time with with Manitoba Agriculture, I learned about and dabbled in lots of different species, and it, it certainly is. It’s been a big part of my life. And I’ve, I’ve enjoyed it all. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it was that,
Toban Dyck 11:50
was that always the career path for you from a young age, did you? Did you think you’d find yourself in livestock? Honestly,
Jenelle Hamblin 11:56
no, I had a very strong passion for biological science. I’m a huge science nerd anything. My undergraduate degree is in microbiology, and I always found health extremely interesting, and what causes disease? How do we fight disease our body and in our bodies? And I remember being a kid and being completely fascinated and mesmerized by this. My mom was a nurse, so that could have been part of it. And then growing up on a farm, you’re working with animals, you’re treating animals. Animals get sick, understanding how and why, and making sure that animals properly cared for. That was always something that I enjoyed as well. So in university taking biological sciences. I was the one science kid who hung out with all the Yankees because
Toban Dyck 12:46
you understood them. I did. I
Jenelle Hamblin 12:48
really was one of them at heart and but I was also the only one that had all morning classes and then all afternoon labs. So I was really the sucker. They had their classes morning and they were done after lunch, right? I still have a full half day. But no, it was so that path actually took me down through my undergraduate degree, and I really enjoyed learning about the how, the why, the molecular, molecular biology, all of that world. And after graduation, you quickly realize, well, what am I going to do with this? I going to this was all very interesting, and I’m glad I have this base of knowledge. But now what? And that’s what actually led me back to agriculture. I had an opportunity put in my lap, actually, from my cousin, who was she was an Aggie. She was going on to do masters in animal science, and she said to me, there is a project that is looking at gut microbiology and ruminants. Would you be interested in this? Yeah, be fantastic understanding the rumen, and the rumen is its whole own environment of microbes. Yeah, I want to do that. So I came back and I did my masters in under Dr Karen Wittenberg and Dr Dennis Krause the faculty of Animal Science, University of Manitoba, and that’s what led me back into the agricultural world. I
Jay Whetter 14:22
just, I, when I think about gut health and all this, I think of this. I don’t know where I got this idea, but it’s like the body is like a as, like a donut, and then the whole of the donut is your whole digestive tract. And within this whole is a whole other, like, World of my like, non human life and predominantly non human.
Jenelle Hamblin 14:44
Oh, it’s all microbial, yeah, all microbial,
Toban Dyck 14:47
predominantly, as if there is some humans in there, mostly non human. Anyway, yeah, we’ll get into that science later.
Jay Whetter 14:58
Except. You’re the twin you ate.
Toban Dyck 15:02
It’s still doing stuff anyway, yeah,
Jay Whetter 15:09
yeah, so it’s but the whole world of microbiology, which you’re so fascinated with and still live with, I mean, yes, your career is, is largely related to microbes and fending them off and communicating how to fend them off. This is what an interesting
Jenelle Hamblin 15:24
world. That’s the twists and turns that my career path has taken to land me back in a space or a role that I’m using so much of my education is fantastic, and like I say, I’ve had some tangents along the way and but all of that experience as well has been made to use to land where I am. So it’s really a been a fun, fun journey so far.
Jay Whetter 15:49
So some of the things I want to talk about half hour, whatever it is, extension in an emergency, like, like a outbreak of animal disease, crisis
Toban Dyck 16:00
communication. Crisis Communication, yeah, enhancing
Jay Whetter 16:04
biosecurity, because there’s a lot we can like, the hog side of things, and barn based livestock in general, about biosecurity is huge for them. And as there are, there lessons for all of agriculture that might be interesting. And then the last thing, just, I like, how
Toban Dyck 16:21
you’re like, so form formal with this. Well, I just, well,
Jay Whetter 16:25
you’re right. I haven’t done this with any other so, by the way, this is a new thing. This is but I just because these are the three things that I really want to get to, and I’m so my head is thinking differently this time around. Yeah? Maybe it’s because Janelle is, like, here with us, and she’s very inspirational, yeah. And then the last thing I want to talk about is farmers talking to each other, which is something you said to me earlier, which I really want to latch on to and talk more about that. But anyway, so Toban, can I? Can I have a list? Yes, yeah,
Jenelle Hamblin 16:54
I get a list. You do
Toban Dyck 16:57
get a list as well. We’ll just talk about lists. Now. We’ll just
Speaker 1 17:02
go through why it’s important to have a list. That’s
Toban Dyck 17:04
right. I mean, so yeah, all of those things are interesting, but we don’t have, have we had anybody from livestock
Jay Whetter 17:12
on this podcast? Yeah, we had Tracy Herbert talking about, yes,
Toban Dyck 17:15
that’s right. So, but I think it’s very fascinating, because my world of extension and communications is mostly in the grain sector, right? So that it’s a whole different field of priorities and considerations with livestock and sensitivities. I think that’s interesting. So that perspective, like that 30,000 foot view of how it differs, or like, what you’re like, what’s on your radar, I think is interesting is kind of getting your head a little bit about that, but then also policy extension. Like we talk a lot about Research Extension, and it’s a very common way of talking about extension. It’s usually tied to research, right? I’ve always been the belief that there’s a policy extension element to what we do in agriculture as well. That’s essentially my job. So that’s interesting. So, like, how do you so similar to, kind of, in the vein that we’re all talking talking about extension, how do you do that with, with policy and some of those elements, I think would be very interesting. So,
Jay Whetter 18:11
so does, does the extension in an emergency? It’s like that I could see that’s like, really policy or like, like, where you’ve got to kind of have a step, a step by step approach, like, it’s got to be kind of a planned out approach, does it, um,
Jenelle Hamblin 18:27
in theory, that would be wonderful. But in a crisis, it’s, it’s really, you don’t know what the day is going to bring. You have an overarching event that I’ll use, an animal disease outbreak, for example, and you have some key messages that you are putting out. So if on biosecurity, if there’s a farm that’s has a disease around you and you are not currently you don’t have the disease, well, here are the things that we need you to do in order to prevent that disease coming on. If you are the farm with the disease, these are the things that we need you to do in order to prevent that disease from spreading, as well as managing the animals on that farm. So there are certain things that are pre planned and have in the can, no matter the disease, because a lot of it is transferable. When it comes to crisis or an emergent disease event, you don’t know what could be coming at you the next day. You don’t know I dealt with this. And Jay you and I had talked about this in pre interview. I worked, I did a 18 month stint responding to the 2011 like mountable flood. That was my first no pun intended, or maybe it really is intended, dive in to emergency management, and there were situations in that emergency and situations in animal disease outbreak management where trucks break down. Excuse me, you have loads of animals and trucks break down, or you’ve got a road that you thought you could pass and it is completely mucked up. And now. You’ve got to figure out where to take this load of animals, or you have in the flood situation, well, the water wasn’t supposed to rise that much. Well, nobody told the water that. So you find that your best laid plans will work sometimes, but you you have to have plan A through said in order to effectively respond, because something could change while you’re responding right, and that needs to pivot quick, quickly think on the fly and just try to make the best next decision, and if it’s not necessarily the right one, well, what’s the next one that so when you’re working in an emergency, it really is about time management, but also being flexible.
Jay Whetter 20:47
How do you I can imagine, with something as important as a as an animal disease, especially if it’s something that’s highly virulent, yes, and this could move quickly, yes, like, how do you get through to everybody? Like, what are the tools you use in emergency
Toban Dyck 21:06
broadcast, beacon or something? Yeah, you’re not wrong.
Jay Whetter 21:11
Is that right, or is it by phone calls? I
Jenelle Hamblin 21:14
don’t know. The biggest piece that we found an effective tool with producers is that large scale. We call them town halls. Okay, so they’re looking for information. They want current information, what’s happening, what should I be doing? And in order to do that effectively, in especially initially, when everybody needs the same info. Because if I’m talking to Toban farmer and J farmer. Depending on what’s happening on your farm, you might need slightly different information, but to get the global picture out, because everybody’s asking the same questions at first, where is it, who’s impacted? What should I be doing? How can I how can I protect my farm? We start off with with a town hall. So it’s usually done either back in the day before all the Zoom platforms and teams platforms. It was massive conference call. There was also lots of in person meetings before the ease of virtual connection. Now it is a webinar, a team webinar or a zoom webinar, and it’s information out to create the build the response, understand what response is needed, and then get those, those pertinent messages out to our producers. And then again, once we have the global message about the situation out, we can then work with the individual producers that are impacted in the area of disease to provide them with more specific guidance.
Toban Dyck 22:47
What’s so, I guess with livestock, or I should, I shouldn’t say, I guess I should ask the question, there isn’t the audience is also like, they’re waiting for the information too, right? So it’s not like with with with gray, and I could only imagine that so many producers just aren’t used to dealing with their commodity groups in that way, like those kinds of emergencies. So if you’d call a town hall, I’d be like, Yeah, okay, well maybe I’ll go. But you know, but there probably is this appetite among among livestock producers to rely on you for that information. So there’s a
Jenelle Hamblin 23:21
that’s been my experience. And I come from livestock. I married a grain farmer, but my knowledge of the grain industry is not the best. So I will give you guys that right now. My experience working with our producers, with or under the provincial pork organization umbrella, is that, yeah, they’re. They’re asking us for information. They’re reaching out. They are. They’re reading the emails. They’re expecting us to be that source of information, and telling them what’s going on. What should I be doing
Jay Whetter 23:57
in in these events? Yeah, how many hog producers are there in Manitoba farms,
Jenelle Hamblin 24:02
or producers, I guess farms. There’s just over 600 hog farms.
Jay Whetter 24:06
So Janelle, I want to talk to you about extension in an emergency. So what’s the process that Manitoba port goes through when you have, say ped or, I’m not to say that, you pick an example, yeah, we don’t want to be an outbreak. And then you really, you need to get to all of the farms with a message, yeah,
Toban Dyck 24:26
yeah. And I think we were talking just you have like, an emergency beacon, or, you know, you have like, Amber Alerts your phone, or, yeah, all
Jenelle Hamblin 24:36
the above, really, it’s, it’s, we found that the best way to reach producers. We have 600 farms in Manitoba, so to get that information out, you need to use different tools. And we’ve developed and we’ve learned that over the number of different emergencies that we’ve had to deal with, particularly for me, around animal disease response. So email is. Is, is a great tool. We can share a lot of information with a lot of people quickly. Problem is, is, is everybody reading it? That one is, is tough. That is tough, especially when they’ve got a fire, maybe, maybe a fire, sure, that proverbial or, right? Yeah, that they’re dealing with. So we’ve used tools from like, I say, email to WhatsApp blasts to especially at the start of an emergency, bringing everybody together in a town hall setting, and getting the lay of the land or the general outline of the disaster of the day that we’re working on or responding to, and this is always in conjunction. Every response that we work on in animal disease is conjunction with Manitoba agriculture’s chief veterinary office, and we work collaboratively, not only in the response, but in the communications and what we’re putting out to producers, because the recommendations are in alignment with the regulations of animal care and animal diseases act, we very much wanting to make sure that everything we’re doing follows is in line with with what we should be doing. So town halls are excellent in that we can reach a lot of people and we can record them, so if folks need to access them later. They’re available to producers in back in 2016 17, we did in person town halls as well, like producers where they were, and that was, that was also another tool producers are. We haven’t done that in a while, the ease of the virtual platform has made it very accessible to reach people on where they need to be, if they need to be in their truck and listen to this if they’re so it’s and especially with disease, bringing a whole bunch of people together, folks questioned whether or not we should be doing that, right? So, right. That’s another layer the and then, of course, we still get, I still get phone calls like producers will give me a call and just they want to, they want to know, have a direct conversation with me. And lastly, we try to be very diligent with keeping our information up to date. We have a producer portal that carries current Disease Information that producers the secure online platform. There’s confidential, confidentiality, that’s a tough one agreement that producers sign to access. And then there’s information that they can find online, again, on the username and password that is in a one on Stop Shop, right,
Jay Whetter 27:42
right, all right. You gave us a nice list of practices or tactics for communication, and I just wanted to talk a bit about the in person Town Hall versus the webinar Town Hall. And me, personally, I think as an attendee, I would get more out of the in person. I know it’s not always practical, because travel time and like you said, with if, with if it’s a disease issue that we’re talking about, are we actually? Are we actually spreading the disease around by getting together? That aside, do you think there’s more value in an in person versus a webinar? Who I
Toban Dyck 28:18
want to comment to, but you go for
Jenelle Hamblin 28:20
Okay, I think so. I think the opportunity to to come together, to network, to have some Q and A in person is a different environment than online. Online, it’s it’s information out and the Q and A, depending on how it’s managed. Of course, you can either submit questions written or raise your hand and verbally ask a question. But in person, you can do that after a presenter says their piece, or you can pull them aside after the fact and ask them a one on one question that you might not want other people to hear for whatever reason. So they’re not only the presenter, but the peers in the room. You can share information in a webinar. You don’t quite have that same level of interaction of peer to peer, right? Depending on how that webinar is set up, which there would be more value in the peer sharing, for sure, and the ability to contact or connect with with the presenters in person. But to your point, depending on the time of year, farmers are lots of hog farmers are grain farmers, and we’ve had outbreaks of disease in the spring right in the middle of seeding time. Well, getting folks together in seating is not always the easiest so or harvest. We’ve had outbreaks in the fall. It there’s pros and cons, like the pros of of the town hall, when it’s virtual, is you can get information out quickly in a way that is accessible, no matter where you are, what you’re doing. We can record it. We can. Share it later. People can, can ingest that information on their schedule. Value to that, but the value to the in person, again, is, is that information sharing and that those connections, making those, well, the peer to peer connections and sharing of information amongst each other and strategies that can be used also having access to, I’ll say the experts in the response, your veterinarians are there, your CBO staff, Chief Veterinary office, staff are there. We are there with MPC, and you can ask us direct questions.
Jay Whetter 30:31
Well, you’re part of it community. Yes, you can see each other. Yes, hear them, yes. And what did you want to say? Well, I
Toban Dyck 30:39
just, I agree with all the points I catch myself when I start talking about things like this, because I too, gravitate towards in person versus virtual things in general. But I wonder, and it’s a question for the group is like, how much of that is a generational thing, where I am, I am used to that. That’s, what. And I’m, yeah, I’m used to that. That’s how I extract value from from people. Again, I know I have friends who I want to hang out with them in person, yeah? But they’re fine with it being like, we have zoom meetings once in a while. That’s fine. They don’t, they don’t get the extra value out of being in person, having a beer or whatever, with me, right? Maybe it’s me. No Toban,
Jenelle Hamblin 31:28
I think you’re right. I think you’re right. I think there is a generational part there. Because, thank you. I think we’re the same generation, a millennial, elder, male elder, millennial, that’s right. Yeah, we that was a big part of how we still shared information, even through our university days and into early or our young adult phase, that we didn’t have the same level of connectivity that the younger generations now do, and are very seasoned and using and I think we are all we all know our way around A Zoom meeting, sure, but I agree with you having an in person connection. There’s a great value to that. And the generation above us, that’s how they always did it, yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Toban Dyck 32:14
I think that thing, if anything, that speaks to the value of having kind of a myriad approach to communications, right? Because there is this understanding that so many people communicate in different ways and communicate meaningfully in different ways, like and the the true understanding like the an appreciation that someone else might extract way more value out of this thing that I don’t really value than I realize or know. So I should offer it to them, yeah, and that’s a difficult one. Oh, absolutely. It’s very personal. It is, it is. And sometimes, I think in communications, we often devalue certain mediums, like, yeah, we’ll give it to them, or we’ll put it out in this way. But it’s like, well, we don’t really want to. The real value is attending the meeting, right? That’s the real one. But we’ll offer it in these other ways, but I think, I don’t think that’s right. I think we should change that a little
Jenelle Hamblin 33:05
bit. And we’ve tried, like I say, to be innovative and create different communication tools and send them out and like I say, send out the same message, even in different ways, different the same message. That’s one week versus another week. Rewording it, changing it. Key message is still the same. But if you were to get the same email from me every week, yeah,
Toban Dyck 33:30
white noise, right, right.
Jay Whetter 33:31
Chat, GPT, to rewrite it in more effective ways, I have.
Jenelle Hamblin 33:35
I have not done that. I’m interested in on the record. You’re gonna say you haven’t done that. No, I haven’t actually, I am very much not super great with the chat GPT. That’s, can you age me now?
Jay Whetter 33:53
Well, I haven’t used it enough either, but I do think it’s an essential tool as we go forward, particularly for that like, just write this in a way that a 20 year old watching on tick tock can we’ll
Jenelle Hamblin 34:05
ingest it, yeah, yeah, for sure. And it’s a lot of the principles and a lot of the messaging that, and I’m struggling with that, actually right now, as we enter another high risk disease season, seeding lots of dust, movement, air, spring melt, talking about the principles of biosecurity, the message isn’t different year over year, like we think of new ways and to be innovative with how we practice biosecurity. And so there are some differences there, but the general message of biosecurity, enhancing your biosecurity, reviewing your biosecurity, that message isn’t different. So how can I reword it, or put a fancy bow on it, or to make, to make it resonate, or remind folks that, yeah, this and our producers are great. They know that it’s important, but it’s it’s about having it continuously be top of mind. Because it’s human nature, you see the same thing over and over and over again. Well, yeah, I know that, and there’s times where we need them to know that right now.
Jay Whetter 35:09
At all of you earlier, you said that your job is communicating policy, yes. Can you tell me what you mean?
Jenelle Hamblin 35:18
Sure. Well, and it’s funny, because it goes back to being where I think I’m supposed to be, and working in agriculture, and having a job in agriculture that that suits what I enjoy, that fuels my passion, that makes me excited to get up and go to work every day. If you asked a farmer who wants to be in the barns working with the animals to come and do my job, and they have told me this, like, thank you so much for doing what you do, because I could never do that, right? And it comes down to having the, not only the ability, because I think a lot of people have the ability to be effective communicators and to to get their message across and to be passionate about what they’re doing, but it’s about changing that messaging and adapting it to the audience that you are talking to. So when I’m talking to producers versus when I’m talking to government versus when I’m talking to the public, the message again, the key parts of the message are, it’s this, it’s ultimately the same you’ve got, but it’s going to be labeled differently, or maybe labeled as the wrong word, but I’ll be saying different things based on who I’m talking to, because the level of knowledge of agriculture to a farmer is going to be different than to somebody who I’m meeting with in downtown Winnipeg, for example, or a regulator who is In Ottawa, who has an agriculture degree, but might have a great knowledge of the poultry industry, but not so much the swine industry. So it’s it’s about for policy, specifically understanding if there’s a policy that I’m advocating for or I’m trying to modify to meet a swine mold. It’s about understanding, okay, what’s the why? How is this going to impact our farmers? What do I need to know from our farmers to in order to accurately speak and represent them? Back to government, specifically with policy, it’s usually with government, provincial or federal, and so that I can best represent our producers, so that that policy is created in a way that is going to help our producers, but also whether it be the public, or whether it be the environment, or whether it be food safety, depending on what The topic of of that policy is, or that regulation is. So it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s a language of itself, for sure.
Speaker 1 37:49
And so the I feel like your job with, with health and disease response, it is. It does it have to be largely policy driven, like these. These are our current rules. We need to follow these rules, because if we, if we go outside these rules, then, then things undesirable, things can happen like, do you feel like the on the on the health side of things? In particular, it is very much rules and policy driven.
Jenelle Hamblin 38:15
I would say it’s probably more program driven, which policy programming is. There’s a bit of ambiguous terms, really, when it comes to health policy, a lot of it would be around biosecurity and entering and exiting farms, or how you would interact in on a farm premises or or in during transportation, and there are regulations associated with all of those things that protect the health and welfare of the animals. So there is policy related pieces there, but a lot of it is also in this. This is the programming side of it is the how, how can we help support the producers, the transporters, the people working in the industry, to action the appropriate techniques or protocols to meet the policy? And it sounds very I hope that I’m articulating it well enough, because it is, it’s huge. It’s a big, a lot of moving parts, and depending on like for transportation. For example, you’ve got, you’ve got amount of time that those animals can be on the truck. You’ve got stocking densities, you’ve got temperature that those animals can safely be transported in. There’s lots of regulations and ways that are rules that have to be followed, but there’s also principles and protocols that help us to be more effective to achieve that. Wow,
Jay Whetter 39:52
right, so when I think about like complex pesticide application or a label, yeah, I mean. You misapply, you’re going to lose efficacy. The product isn’t going to work as well. If you apply late, well then maybe there could be some residue. But to me, the stakes are higher when you’re when you’re dealing with livestock, living animals, yep. And so following the rules is more work.
Jenelle Hamblin 40:19
And it can go south. It can go south really fast. And I think that’s the part, or the piece that I’ve worked in livestock my whole life, or been in livestock my whole life. And I can’t say enough about the people that care for and work with the animals, the level of diligence, and the people that they are are animal people, and they they really care, and they want to make sure that those animals, no matter the stage of life or the job that they’re doing, are properly cared for. And it’s maybe as corny as it sounds, it’s beautiful to see. It’s absolutely beautiful to see. And there are days going back to our earlier conversation where I just want to be in the barn. I just want to be in the barn and helping and working with the animals, because that’s a big part of who I am, too, and I don’t get to do that as much anymore at all. This is going to sound
Jay Whetter 41:15
like a tangent because, because I do want to come back to the farmers and what they’re doing. But do you think the in some ways, biosecurity has hurt the conversation with consumers, because the access is gone, right?
Jenelle Hamblin 41:37
I think that the fact that we are not able to have as much access to the farm as we, once or maybe once upon a time, did. There is a certain level of opportunity for the public to say, well, what are you doing behind closed doors? You don’t trust right? The transparency so the swine sector has done a lot of work to counter that, to say, well, there are lots of farms that have glass windows and viewing areas, and I shouldn’t say commercial farms, because they’re, well, some of them are commercial, but they’re meant to be spectator farms, so the public can go in and see this is what a functioning hog barn looks like. But to your point, Jay, I think that when we do have that conversation to say, I’m sorry, you can’t just come onto my farm. You can’t just walk in and see the animals, and this is why it does. It does maybe twig well, is that? Is that legit? Is that something that we’re really trying to protect against. And there’s, I mean, again, you’re dealing with with livestock, animal agriculture there, depending on who you’re talking to, you might have people who are going to say, well, you’re just hiding something. That’s certainly not what biosecurity is intended to do. Biosecurity is intended to keep the pigs healthy, like it’s it’s there to keep them safe. Tell me
Jay Whetter 43:05
about these viewing areas, viewing farms, like, what
Jenelle Hamblin 43:08
have you been to the farm and food Discovery Center? Yes, the Brewster, Campbell, yes, I have not. Oh, you should, you absolutely. But farm
Jay Whetter 43:16
writers is going there, okay, but I think I should go sooner, or I should go on my own because I’m dealing with another tour. Okay, but no, I haven’t done, done the livestock tour down there, but I’ve been in hog barns. But I haven’t I’ve been in hog barns and poultry barns, but obviously this is before they’ve done a fantastic job. So tell me, what? What a person who went down there so they would see
Jenelle Hamblin 43:37
the every, every section of the hog barn, they have installed viewing windows so you have gestation, you have farrowing, you have nursery, you have grow finish, and you can watch the animals through every stage. Real, yeah, real, real life animals that are that’s a commercial hog barn. Glenley is a commercially operating hog barn, and that’s it’s a smaller scale, of course, but you you would see what you would see in the hog barns that you visited, and it’s a wonderful way to showcase the different stages of of hog production. They’ve done it with poultry now as well. And the dairy barn at glenley has also have as a viewing area. They’ve done a fantastic job showcasing what Manitoba, Canadian agriculture in livestock sector, looks like.
Jay Whetter 44:23
How does a person go there? You can just go. I can just go. They’re
Jenelle Hamblin 44:27
closed on Mondays, yes, but so don’t go on a Monday. But otherwise, you can just go
Toban Dyck 44:33
nighttime. Nighttime is no go.
Jenelle Hamblin 44:38
Yeah, they’re wonderful. It’s, it’s a great, it’s
Jay Whetter 44:40
a great facility. And does Manitoba Park get involved in that? Yes, yes.
Jenelle Hamblin 44:44
Our, our public relations and communications team has been, Oh, they’ve been involved with the glenley facility, I think when they were doing the even when they were doing the remodel, the retrofit, to do the the windows, because I. To your point, Jay folks were asking, we want to see what’s happening inside of a hog barn. And I know Maple Leaf farms, or agri farms, has also put in a viewing area. There’s a number of new builds that are adding spaces. There’s a couple of our colonies, actually, that have a viewing area so that they can showcase what’s happening on the farm without having to go into the barn where the animals are, right, right? That’s fantastic. It is. It’s fantastic, yeah,
Toban Dyck 45:29
so livestock is interesting. In the grain sector, we hear a lot about public trust and all that kind of stuff. I know that means something very real to the livestock industry, right? You Jay touched on a little bit, but you do have a like there is a bit of an accountability to the public, or the public, you know, has created that accountability, whatever it is that is a very real sensitivity. Do you feel it in your work as well?
Jenelle Hamblin 45:58
Absolutely. Public Trust is essentially our license to farm, right? We need to ensure that there are consumers our understanding of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, why it’s important, not only to food production, but to our Manitoba economy, like the hog industry in Manitoba is we’re 2.3 billion GDP and 22,000 jobs. It is a huge industry in Manitoba. We have, I think we’re third in terms of agricultural commodities, first in livestock in Manitoba, in terms of contribution to GDP, provincial GDP. So, you know, we’re a major player in the province, and it doesn’t. The hog industry doesn’t stop at the farm. We have people who are employed in transportation and food processing. We have major processing plants in Brandon, in Winkler, in Nipah, in Winnipeg, and we’re feeding not only the province, but we’re feeding the country, we’re feeding the world. And it’s, it’s something to be really proud of, and I’m really proud of of working in that space, being a part of something that is much bigger than me, much bigger than the food that I put on my plate to my feed my family. But it’s, you could go to you go to Japan, you go to China, you go to the United States. And if you’re eating pork, there’s a very good chance that it has linkages to to Canada or Manitoba. It’s a great story, but we need the producer, or not, excuse me, the producers, the public, to also understand what that impact is, right? Because the there are people who don’t like us, but there’s people who don’t like everything. There’s no matter what you are, who you are, what you do, somebody’s gonna like you. Somebody’s not gonna like you. Teaching that to my young kids right now, it’s a hard lesson, but we’re doing our best to showcase the value that we bring, the good things that we do, and the farmers themselves as like I say, you won’t find people who care more about livestock farmers simply care about their animals. Yeah, and I’ve seen it across every livestock farmer that I’ve met. They just they love their animals
Jay Whetter 48:15
now. So our extensionist theme is, you know, doing extension, communications, research, ideas and sharing it with farmers, yes, but what we just talked about was, I don’t know whether the term is still extension to the public, yeah, and is that? Do you do any of that at all? Some,
Jenelle Hamblin 48:35
mostly, that’s done through our public relations team. They do a lot of community engagement and drafting of of public campaigns that that go out. I’m sure you’ve seen the bus backs, the Manitoba Park, bus packs and billboards. And we do a lot of community events across the province. When I speak, it’s mostly technical. My audiences like, if I’m out and about doing presentations or or giving it, doing extension, it’s really to producers, people working in this, in the sector, sector stakeholders, veterinarians, I’m very much more farm, direct in in where I extend my knowledge. I do volunteer, though, like there’s egg in the classroom. They have great events and where there’s all, they’re always looking for people to to be out there and advocating for what we do. Like that one. Well done. Thank you. So I take the opportunities that I can to and those are mostly students, like in those scenarios, it’s mostly students that I’m speaking with.
Jay Whetter 49:53
So you’ve got Ag in the Classroom, you’ve got advertisements, there’s bus sides or billboards or TV, radio. Yeah, and then you’ve got this Glen Lee example, where you can actually go and see So are there other tactics that you use with the well, I’ll get away from the public, but I just want to touch on this one more time. Are there tactics that you use to the public, and I know this isn’t your day to day, but I’ll do my best. I’ll do my best versus farmers. Like, are there tactics that work with the public that don’t work with farmers and vice versa, for
Jenelle Hamblin 50:23
sure. And you’ll see that actually, even when you open the Manitoba Pork website, you’ll open the website and you’re going to have two portals. You’ve got a producer portal and a consumer portal, and the information on those two portals are very different. On the consumer side, you’ve got community events and engagement, lots of recipes on the on obviously cooking pork dishes and the nutritional value of pork, that’s typically the the messaging. But on the public side as well, there’s critical information to be shared on animal care. Producers want, or excuse me, consumers want to know how the animals are being cared. There’s environmental information. They want to know, what is the impact of hog production, the environment and and that work, we’ve been we’ve been involved in that work at Manitoba Park, and we continue to evolve and grow as the tools for measuring environmental impact improve. So there are different tactics. There’s different messages in depending on what the consumer or the producer wants to know. Yeah. So yeah, there. There’s lots of different ways to to reach as we talked about with our producers, there’s lots of different ways to reach the consumers as well. How about
Toban Dyck 51:42
media? And we haven’t talked about media yet, and I imagine, in your role, you do intersect. I do, yeah, you get called on, like, that’s another thing that’s, you know, again, the grain sector, just, we don’t, we don’t have such kind of above the fold issues generally, right? I mean, they’ll talk to us about tariffs, or talk to us about, you know, things like that or but not these high profile cases that livestock seems to that come out of livestock. So how does that give any advice for crisis communications with with media? Yeah,
Jenelle Hamblin 52:17
no, I think the the biggest thing, and I can thank my current boss cam doll for this. One is having your speaking points. And depending on who you’re knowing, who your interview er is, and potentially what they could try to get you not to say so having those speaking points well written out, and knowing what your messages are and not being sucked into a conversation that could bait you into something that, because especially now, and we’ve taken some media training with Manitoba Pork, which has been fantastic. You can say a full sentence, and they can cut out one little sound bite, and they have you saying something that. So depending on who the media source is, yeah, I’m very fortunate. I have dealt with fantastic media people in Manitoba, and it’s been from farm media to to mainstream media. It’s I’ve had, I’ve had fantastic experiences. I’ve never, I’ve never been in that situation where there is a message or they’re looking for to bait me into saying something to get distort you exactly. I haven’t had that experience, but I know that it has happened, and it’s it wouldn’t be a fun place to be. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in that situation myself. But the best prevent that from happening is really preparing yourself, understanding who and what the topic is, and preparing your speaking notes in advance.
Toban Dyck 53:50
So you’d offer that support for your producers as well. If they’re Yes, yeah, being interviewed Absolutely,
Jenelle Hamblin 53:54
Yep, yeah. That makes sense. We encourage them very much. And we have done media training with our producers as well. And if they are looking to do media, we definitely support them in whatever the interview may be awesome.
Jay Whetter 54:11
I want to pivot to on some on farm, sure practices, yeah. So you gave me this really. I like that. I feel like this might inspire people to think about a problem differently, problem solving. Yes, right? So we’re gonna, this is little problem solving. Case study.
Jenelle Hamblin 54:27
Farmers are the best at problem solving. I’ll just say that right now, exactly. So
Jay Whetter 54:31
let’s, let’s you set this up perfectly so you’re telling me about this a scenario where you know you want to keep up a new pathogen out of a barn? Sure, for obvious reasons, yes, this is the objective, yeah, and one way to do that is extensive filtration of the outside air. So you’re, you’re, you’re pouring fresh air into the farm, but before it goes in, it’s being filtered, which is expensive, yeah, I don’t know how much it is, but you told me it was expensive, yes, but so. But So walk me through this. This, this farm that adopted a new way to achieve the same objective, but in a much cheaper fashion,
Jenelle Hamblin 55:09
sure. So again, farmers are probably some of the most innovative people that I’ve, I’ve ever met. And mind you, I my social circles are also a whole bunch of farmers as well. Um, the the ingenuity and the thought process behind, how can I solve a problem? It never ceases to amaze me. So in, in, load out. So when you’re moving animals, animals in the in or in the hog sector, we’re moving animals all the time, and every time you open a door, whether it be a man door or a load out door, there is the possibility of something unwanted from the outside coming into the inside, and especially a load out door, like got a big door there that you could positive pressure, suck in a whole bunch of dust and whatever else is on there. So now I can’t speak to where this started, but it’s certainly taking up, picking up steam and being adopted throughout Western Canada is what’s called staged load out. So instead of having a direct one door, direct line of entry into the barn, you have different doors or sections that you can you can close off, and then you can change your ventilation system in order to allow for that air exchange to be minimized. So we have in a staged load out. You can bring the pigs in from the barn into the load out area enough to fill a truck, close all the doors to the barn, and then you can flip the ventilation switches. I’m not an engineer. I don’t know how that all works, but I’ve seen them, and I’ve seen how they do it. And they can create the the pressure movement so that when that load out door opens, instead of the air being sucked in. Everything goes out, and of course, there’s sanitation that’s done after the fact. The pigs are loaded, the load out, room is cleaned, and then you’re ready for your next load. But it really just does create or reduce the risk of bringing something into the barn. And we’ve seen it happen. We’ve seen where areas spread pathogens can move on dust particles. It’s it’s crazy. You don’t need very much of a pathogen to cause a lot of problems, right?
Jay Whetter 57:28
And then so the other and the other one you talked about was, I guess, on those load out days, you can pressurize the barn so that when the door opens, air flowing out, yes, not in, Yep, absolutely. When I think about like the virology lab in Winnipeg, I think they use that, but maybe they do it the opposite way, right? So nothing. There’s no flow of air out. When they open the stage floor for door, right? It’s, yeah, it’s low to make sense, yeah. So things are only coming in,
Jenelle Hamblin 57:58
yeah, because they want to keep everything contained, right? And actually, that’s probably if you’re fighting a disease, if you say you’re a barn that has disease, you may want to rethink about that too, right? Like, do you want if you have all this disease in the barn, do you want to blow that all out and put it on the yard? So there’s different ways to think about it, whether or not you’re trying to keep disease out or keep disease in, biosecurity versus biocontainment? Yeah. So all these
Toban Dyck 58:23
innovations and all these these changes that are kind of foisted upon a livestock producer, you know, whether they’re foisted or not, there’s pressure to kind of keep up to date and to, yeah, like you said, so that they can meet the policies, right? Is there? Like, I just see that’s gotta be expensive. All this stuff has to just be so costly when you’re adding these things to a barn, or these elements and everything takes longer. And yeah, that’s gotta be, yeah,
Jenelle Hamblin 58:51
I’m not an economist, but I will agree with you wholeheartedly. There is, I mean, right now we’re in the midst of it with group sell housing transitions. Group cell housing is is part of the animal care Code of Canada, the all sow farms in Manitoba, and we’re on our way are to be transitioned into groups. How housing by 2029 and that’s an infrastructure change, right? When these barns were built in the 80s and 90s, that’s, that’s not how they were built. So it’s, you’re right. There is always something that producers are dealing with that they have to be innovative on and adult. It all costs money.
Toban Dyck 59:38
So do these policies sometimes come with that, so with some financial support, sometimes,
Jenelle Hamblin 59:45
but not always.
Jay Whetter 59:46
No, what does a group sow housing barn look like? There’s
Jenelle Hamblin 59:50
a lot of different ways that you can achieve group cell housing. So you can have open pens. You can have you can have a stall. That doesn’t have a door, I guess, or essentially so that the animal has free access. That’s, that’s pre access stalls, is they’re called, okay? And so there’s, there’s a number of different ways that you can affect the piglets. So just or farrowing is still happening inside your farrowing room, okay? And but you have a set amount of time that you can be in, Sal can be in, in farrowing, Aaron’s own crate.
Jay Whetter 1:00:26
So for I don’t know how many litters a year, Sal has, oh gosh, you’re
Jenelle Hamblin 1:00:31
two, 2.3 okay, well, come right off the top of my head, I feel like it did. My face go completely red?
Toban Dyck 1:00:44
Trivia? Yeah, pressure. Well, it’s
Jay Whetter 1:00:47
like, what are you in the like, this contest on the radio and, like, you just the answer, just come to you like that, yeah? But then, if you’re actually calling
Jenelle Hamblin 1:00:53
in the hot seat,
Speaker 1 1:00:57
what’s your mother’s middle name? No idea. So, so two and a half or 2.3 litters per year on average for sow. So she’s in a in a crate with, like, immediately after the birth to protect the piglets. Yeah, for maybe a couple of weeks. Yep. So for most of the year, these cells are hanging out together in these
Jenelle Hamblin 1:01:18
in a group setting, yep. Oh, that sounds nice, yeah. Well, what if you go to Glen Lee, you’ll get to see it.
Toban Dyck 1:01:26
I still can’t believe you haven’t been
Jay Whetter 1:01:30
there. Bush smart, no, I do really want to see it, but it’s great. You know, when you’ve seen all that stuff, you think you’ve seen it, but no, I mean, things have changed in 20 years. Absolutely
Jenelle Hamblin 1:01:41
Okay,
Jay Whetter 1:01:45
farmer, farmers need to talk to each other. This is one of the things like, because, because this is a point that you really like to emphasize, and so I want to give you a chance to say that. So what’s the message? Sure, you
Jenelle Hamblin 1:01:57
know, I think it really comes down to level of information sharing in my job, specifically, the more that we can share and the more that we can learn from each other on the innovation of biosecurity practices. So is there something that you’re doing on your farm that is very easy and simple, that can be applied and adopted across all farms, that’s not very expensive, perhaps, but we want to know so we can share those practices. It’s not proprietary in terms of it’s going to protect everybody in the province, and if there’s less disease, that’s good for everybody. Like, that’s really what it comes down to, for for us in health, if we have a healthy Manitoba swine herd, it benefits everyone, and biosecurity doesn’t pick and choose pathogens. Like, if you’re practicing biosecurity, you’re going to protect yourself against things like ped or PERS influenza, mycoplasma, like, there’s a number of different diseases that hog producers are facing. Biosecurity doesn’t pick one versus the other. When you’re doing good biosecurity, you’re protecting yourself against a lot of different things. So if we can share information about what we’re doing on farm to help better prevent disease, that’s one thing. The other part that we have found that has been immensely valuable is in those crisis communications timelines, having those information sharing agreements and the willingness to share the trust, to share the health information, it has led to a far more effective and rapid response to disease, because we will know where it is. When did it show up? Where did you move those animals? What can we expect to see? And then we can communicate. Can communicate out to those that potentially could be impacted downstream or were upstream. Where did you get? Where do you think this came from? And is there something brewing that that folks don’t know about yet? So I think it could even be greater than just farmers talking to each other, it’s we have such a so many players in the sector that all play such an important role and communicating, especially when it comes to health, what challenges you might be facing, or what tools that you’re using that are effective, that just really helps to benefit everyone in the industry,
Toban Dyck 1:04:22
is there any reticence among your farmers or producers to be open with each other? Um,
Jenelle Hamblin 1:04:29
I think, you know, we’ve had it. We’ve had a really great as much as a good crisis brings everybody together. The the learnings that we’ve had from animal disease outbreaks, particularly ped has taught us that the more that we share, the more that we respond together, creates a bigger benefit. Overall, it does so I think the proof is kind of in the pudding. In that respect, we’ve had to learn that lesson, but us here in Manitoba, I’m very. Proud of of the work that we’ve done to to build the communication tools, to share the information, but also to build the trust. And I think that’s really what it comes down to, is I take that part of my job really seriously. If somebody shares something with me and they say, you know, this part of it is, I don’t necessarily want to go anywhere else, that’s fine. But in terms of, in terms of overall health and disease on farm, we’ve come a long way in in sharing what the risks are. Maybe you don’t want to come on my farm today. We’re in a lockdown right now. We have a disease suspect. We’re waiting for lab results. Okay? People are more comfortable saying those things now, as opposed to, I’d say, 10 years ago, yeah, really
Toban Dyck 1:05:46
interesting. Are
Jay Whetter 1:05:47
there? Are there best methods for farmers to talk to each other? And we were talking about it a not an emergency, necessarily, but like a crisis, like a crisis situation where you’ve got a disease outbreak on a farm and you want to prevent, and that makes total sense. We want that trust. We want we want to encourage farmers to share. In that case, what about just like practices in general, like, is there, there’s the coffee shop, there’s presentations at AG days or other farm events that you could talk to the media and do an article, I suppose, but like in your mind? Or, what are the what are the best ways for farmers to talk to each other in a crisis or not? Oh gosh,
Jenelle Hamblin 1:06:26
I’m going to be a little self serving here and say, join our district advisors committee. That’s a little tongue in cheek. I apologize we when I’ve been involved in these conversations, the energy in the room is is it’s infectious. You get producers around that are excited about a topic and and when we have the topics or we’re hosting the conversation, we tend to do it in a way where we’re looking for information about a specific thing, and the engagement is always really great. So that’s one side of it where Manitoba Pork is facilitating the discussions with producers. Outside of that, the I mean, we live in a in a very virtual age. I know there’s a lot of there’s a lot of text groups, there’s a lot of WhatsApp groups, and I think that’s a big way of of how producers are connecting, sharing, sharing innovations, probably not only in in livestock. It’s, it’s across all sectors, snapping pictures of what does this look like to you? What is this? It’s, it’s a great way to connect. But I am going to go back to our elder millennial comment before and that in person, and I don’t know how to build that those connections. I don’t know how what that could look like. And we have, we do have great participation at our in person meetings, with our district advisors, with our board of directors. That’s where I see the in person happening, but it’s also what I’m involved in. Like, if the producers are having peer meetings amongst themselves, I wouldn’t be invited. I mean, I think the last part Jay, that I would, I would maybe think about, and because it’s touched me a little bit, is, is mentorship and having that that connection to somebody, and I’ve recently started working with a mentor, and not always in person. It’s sometimes virtual, because just sheer convenience and time and geography, but having taken the time to connect with somebody that you can learn from, and it doesn’t have to be somebody older than you. It could be, can be whoever you want to learn from, right? And taking that time, meaningful time, to have those discussions. I want to know more about this, or I want to advance my understanding or my abilities in this area. So it’s, I’ve found that very valuable, but I’m also, again, I have a desk job, so I have blocks of time that I can schedule these things into, versus somebody who’s on the farm, who’s probably doing 15 different things at once, I
Toban Dyck 1:09:16
think we’re almost out of time, but, but I do want to, I think it’s interesting that we have this, we have this set kind of toolkit of communications activities or things that we employ events and these groups, and they’re all great, I’m not saying, but I do wonder, like there’s a sec and you may be able to track this, because, you know, kind of the hog farmers or the hog producers. But is there a segment that egg in general, has just been missing that’s just just waiting for a different tool that we that we haven’t, you know, given them to communicate like and then what? What is the sector missing if we’re not getting those voices, if they’re not, if we’re not hearing those people, anyway, that’s it. That’s a big topic. It
Jenelle Hamblin 1:09:58
is a big topic. But, I mean, I. Know we’re running out of time, but that would be fun to unpack, because we in pork have talked about, how can we be better communicators with our other livestock, commodities, right across the province, across the country? Because we face similar issues. We whether it be public trust or whether it be rising feed costs or market access, there’s so many things that we share and our voices are stronger together a but we also can learn from each other. Absolutely,
Toban Dyck 1:10:25
I
Jay Whetter 1:10:26
think social media, something’s happened to social media where it’s kind of gone this down, maybe, but that’s seems like the perfect place. Let’s talk about farming and solve problems. Let’s not talk about politics and all this other or stop being a jerk. Yeah. Okay. And also, did you get an answer for that
Toban Dyck 1:10:47
comment? I’m satisfied. Okay,
Jay Whetter 1:10:50
I just can’t, I can’t draw say this. District advisors, committee, you did a little plug there, yeah? But I think it sounds I don’t know anything about it. So what is it, and can other sectors learn from whatever model you’ve created?
Jenelle Hamblin 1:11:05
Sure. So within our governance structure, we have our board of directors who there’s 810, board of directors and three, yeah, 2.3 that one, I should know, underneath the board of directors, we have what we call district advisors. So back in the day, there was different districts that we would visit. Manto, Port council would visit annually there. And so now, instead of us going to them, they come to us, and we have, I off the top of my head, I don’t know. I think 20 district advisors from all over the province, and representation from high life maple leaf as well. So our integrated companies, progressive group, colony members, independent farmers that come together and we mine them for information. What is happening on the ground. What are the issues that you’re seeing? Give us feedback on the programming. Is that the programming, excuse me, that we’re offering, whether it be in health or quality assurance or public trust or environment or gr government relations, so they it’s an elected position. So every year there’s there’s elections, you’re just simply have to be at a at a fall producer meeting or annual meeting. You put your name forward, so
Speaker 1 1:12:26
you get elected to the advisory committee, yep. So you have, you save your board of directors with one director from each region, yep. And so within each region, you get elected into this advisory committee, correct that advises the director, perhaps, or advises Manitoba Pork, or they
Jenelle Hamblin 1:12:42
advise all of, all of the above, all of the above. Yep,
Jay Whetter 1:12:45
okay, I like that. Mm,
Toban Dyck 1:12:46
hmm. It seems, it seems similar to the, like, Keystone egg producers, like district model, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, yeah, it’s good.
Jenelle Hamblin 1:12:56
Oh, it’s, it’s fantastic. And having that access to the district advisors, we meet with them twice a year in person, and then twice a year out in the field. So we’ll have, we have four meetings with them a year, plus the annual general meeting to like, I say, get information, understand what’s happening, what the key issues are, and learn how we can approach them, get their feedback. So
Toban Dyck 1:13:21
you grew up on a beef farm? Yes, I did as well. I have very strong memories, a very strong kind of Tableau, ish images in my head of like, feeding cows, cows being very hungry, and then, like, swarming around me, and I got the chopped pails, and I’m just like, you know, I’m 16, I’m mad because I’m choring and I’m mad at the cows because they’re not respecting my personal space. Yes, but something is really strong memory of just really pushing the cows away and, like, you know, feeling a little scared, but also a little angry when the but these are, these are strong memories. So just you have something like that, I’m
Jenelle Hamblin 1:13:59
the exact same memories, except my reaction to it was the exact opposite. It was like wanting all of the cows scratching whoever I could and but you’re right, like the their personal space is like there’s none there, right beside you. And of course, there’s some that aren’t super keen to be beside you, but when there’s food around. Well, yeah, all bets are off. All bets are off. And when I drove up to the driveway today, and the open the car door and your dog was there, well, the dog was in the car, and that’s totally fine. Really, 200% fine.
Toban Dyck 1:14:33
Hazel, Hazel or Mary goes just right, where are we off? Yeah, it was
Jenelle Hamblin 1:14:38
wonderful. So that that for me, the access to direct, direct access to the animal is was always one of my favorite things, that the choring part sometimes Yeah, that yeah wasn’t always as pleasant, especially when it was minus a million outside for sure, yeah, because that’s the thing. Livestock farming, you’re there every day. Yeah, the animals need to be fed, and they need to be meaning to make sure that everything is how it should be. But on the day like today, gorgeous, sunny day, and you’re outside and the animals are coming to you, that was one of my favorite when they came running towards you. It was one of my favorites.
Jay Whetter 1:15:15
I like cows. We had cows, and I have fond memories of them, except when I was really young,
Toban Dyck 1:15:21
left you out of that conversation. We
Speaker 1 1:15:24
had cattle, yeah, we had Herefords and but I do remember as a kid, we used to have horned Herefords, and then we got pulled here first, like without But dad had to cut the horns off. And I just remember that being a bit of a traumatic scenario. I also remember, and this is, it’s, there’s not gonna be any swearing. Let’s swear. So we’re not gonna get an E rating on this. But we’re at a we’re in our house at the family event,
Jay Whetter 1:15:49
the herd of cattle and the bull was out there. And so we got some up close and personal observations of cattle sex. Oh, not an event. And so we had
Jenelle Hamblin 1:16:01
called reproduction. I
Speaker 1 1:16:06
could visualize my grandma. She said, Jay. She wanted me to pull
Jay Whetter 1:16:16
anyway. Janelle, what’s the one thing that we didn’t ask so as you’re driving out here today thinking, I really want to tell those guys this story. Or did you have speaking notes? There’s one bullet that you haven’t gone through. I’m not all speaking.
Jenelle Hamblin 1:16:27
I’m not gonna lie. I was thinking about what you guys would want to know about the pork industry and what I can and how I can best represent the pork industry. And I think we’ve covered a lot of really great topics today. And I think the big thing for me, for farmers, for producers who either work in the hog sector, who want to learn more about the hog sector, it does come back down to what you were talking about before. Jay is making those connections. And I’ve really felt that in the pork sector, I’ve coming from the beef world, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be shunned like, Oh, she’s not a pork person, right? But I never experienced that at all. I was brought in, brought under the wing poultry reference, and they taught me, because I didn’t know about pork production. I had a strong background in disease and in emergency management, I had a lot of experience in in both of those things, but not a lot in actual on farm pork production. And the first thing that I can’t one of my boards of directors said to me, like, well, I can teach you that. That’s no problem. I will teach you that, and you will be off to the races. And that moment I because I was feeling a little bit like of an imposter of, am I going to be able to best serve the producers of of Manitoba, the poor producers Manitoba. And in that moment, I I remember feeling like my confidence building, and I’ve only ever been met with that level of of excitement, compassion, innovation, producers, service providers, sector stakeholders, wanting to to teach and wanting to show me what they’re doing. And the pride that comes in raising livestock or farming in general, I think it’s just such a powerful and a wonderful space to be in. And I think if I was to leave with anything, and I don’t know how many students would listen to your podcast, but agriculture is just such a fantastic industry to to work in, to be a part of. It’s I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Yeah,
Toban Dyck 1:18:40
I agree? No, I just so happened to agree. Oh yeah, I was wondering
Speaker 1 1:18:44
if you’re gonna let me answer.
Toban Dyck 1:18:49
By the way, I’m a cattle guy too.
Jenelle Hamblin 1:18:53
Janelle was a pleasure. Thank you guys so much. Really enjoyed it. You Well,
Jay Whetter 1:19:06
that was really good. I enjoyed Janelle, yeah, talker, nice personality, yeah. I mean it was fun. Oh, well, I mean it was, if you could consider livestock crisis communications fun, she made it fun.
Toban Dyck 1:19:19
I mean, it’s fun. It’s fun, because it’s novel, at least for me, right? It’s just, you know, crisis the crop world, this doesn’t get crisis communications like livestock does,
Jay Whetter 1:19:32
right? You know, I mean, there will be trade issues sure come up, which is a crisis into itself. But there’s not that immediate, you know, we need to act now, because we’ve got an outbreak somewhere. Things are barns are getting shut down, yeah, it just seems to be the potential for an immediate crisis in livestock is much higher,
Toban Dyck 1:19:54
yeah. And then there’s just something different about livestock, right? So when you have, you know, you have some of. The big issues that have happened in livestock. And I don’t want to go in, you know, too much into it, but, like, you have things that are very public facing. So you could have, like, very easily, CBC or CTV knocking at your door and demanding an answer to that is something where you don’t get that in crops,
Jay Whetter 1:20:16
really, like, why did you leave your canola on the truck for two weeks? Right, right, right? Nobody cares about that when it’s grain, but obviously when it’s live animals, yeah, transportation itself, and that’s where a lot of people actually see your animals, right? Sure, sure, they’re in the truck as you’re passing by them on the Trans Canada Highway. Well, that, yeah, and that, that intersection is, is interesting, right? It’s very kind of, I think it’s very emotional, okay? To thinking, yeah, it’s someone who does communications and livestock has a very different job. So I really look forward to seeing this Glen Lee facility. And I kept, I’m looking forward to you seeing, okay, I’ll have to take some pictures Well, while I’m there, and selfies, like I went,
Toban Dyck 1:20:57
like, proof of life, kind of, kind of, like a date stamp, like today’s paper,
Speaker 1 1:21:06
okay, I will do that for sure.
Toban Dyck 1:21:08
Put your Yeah. Put your arm around a sow. They will not let you know that’s yeah. Do you get special access?
Jay Whetter 1:21:17
Can I just run in there? If
Toban Dyck 1:21:22
it’s set up the same way as I remember, you would be running through some sort of plexiglass or or glass pane and then dropping about a story, yeah, because it’s like a, it’s like a above, kind of observatory, like perspective. It’s great, though. I’m looking forward to you, yeah, still gonna continuing to mull over that you haven’t been over there, and what that means, I’m
Jay Whetter 1:21:45
gonna do that for sure. The other thing I liked was this, this is old fashioned. And again, this is maybe because you and Janelle and I were talking about, you know, this is what we grew up with. But I like those community meetings, the town hall, the sharing of ideas, kind of face to face in a big group, yeah,
Toban Dyck 1:22:03
yeah. I do too. And I think, I think that whole relationship between the relationship between the producers in livestock and the and the commissions that support them is interesting, is a bit unique to where, like they, they need them, they, you know, they, they, and you know they, they want them to be Yeah, yeah. It seems, seems, it seems like a good two way relationship, yeah.
Jay Whetter 1:22:34
And engagement, seems like it might be higher. Like, I know in a lot of the crops groups, there’s, there’s a lot of people who are members, but they don’t engage, yeah, whereas in livestock, maybe there’s much higher levels of engagement that could also me, be me, just not really knowing how it works, but the way Janelle described it, it seemed like that they’re getting, they’re getting good feed, good connection with the eight or the 600 hog producers or hog hog farms in Manitoba, strong requirement
Toban Dyck 1:23:01
for these producers to stay up to date with information to Hey, like, like, policy wise, how she was, how she was talking about and how reading regulations and programming changes like you really have to, do you really have to stay current, yeah, and that is, I often think, what, what can, what can the crop sector take from that, like there, there would be, there would be elements that, if it were to adopt them, would they’d see benefits. I think, let’s
Jay Whetter 1:23:34
wrap up. We are the extensionists. I’m Jay wetter, and I’m Toban Dyck, till next time you this has been a burr forest group production. We also want to thank the people you don’t see. We’re here.
Toban Dyck 1:23:54
We’re chatting away with our guests, but there’s tons of people who work behind the scenes to make this podcast happen. Ryan Sanchez, our director, Ashley Robinson is the coordinator, and Abby wall is our producer and editor. You.