Farmers need conservation groups to back their message.Ottawa—A new film about cattle grazing on the dwindling Prairie grasslands is a story-telling exercise that should inspire the whole agrifood sector into following suit by building relationships with nature groups, says Don Buckingham, President and CEO of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI).The film Guardians of the Grasslands had its Ottawa premier Oct. 30 in the stately chateau that houses the Museum of Nature and the event attracted an audience of aggies and people from nature and wildlife groups. One is planned for Toronto later this year or early in 2020. The film can be used by farm groups for public presentations.After the film, Buckingham moderated a panel that included two cow-calf producers--Sandra Vos of Brant County in Ontario and Kristine Tapley of Langruth, Man. who discussed their efforts to make their farms blend in with their natural surroundings.“Telling our stories is important for us because so many people in Canada don't know what we do,” Buckingham said. “We have a long way to go to making people understand us.”That the Canadian Cattlemen's Association teamed up with Ducks Unlimited (DU)and the Nature Conservancy of Canada to commission the film is an important step, he said.Buckingham said the participation of two wildlife groups in the movie added credibility to its message that cattle, and by implication, agriculture can be part of a solution to climate change, rather than a cause of it. That is a position that CAPI has been developing during the past year.Vos, a past provincial winner of the Canadian beef industry's Environmental Stewardship Award, said not only do farmers have to explain to consumers what they're doing to improve the environment, they also need to ensure the message sinks in with government agencies that tend to write regulations that don't make sense in the real world.“We need to achieve more awareness about what we do to help with conservation and environmental protection,” she said. “We need more reasonableness and thoughtfulness about what we do so we can undertake conservation measures.”Most farming in the Brantford area, like much of southwestern Ontario, is cash cropping, which makes her cattle operation an unusual site. “But we're working with nature to make it happen.”She employs rotational grazing to get the most from her land. “We have to protect our habitat.” That means finding ways to better explain sustainable beef production.Tapley, who is also a DU Regional Agrologist working on Prairie grassland conversation, said if conservation groups realize the soil health and biodiversity benefits that grazing cattle creates, “then they can help tell our story to the public and it won't be taken for granted.“There are good conservation deeds happening in agriculture,” she said. “How can we get conservationists to contribute to this message.”As an example of the image that the beef industry needs to challenge are the criticisms of cattle spending their lives crowded into feedlots, she said. “The diet of most cattle is 80 per cent forages. We have to put it into context by reaching out through the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef ad the Cattlemen's Association.”Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.