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St. Benedict chicken farmer receives agriculture award

ST. BENEDICT — Tiffany Martinka has received the Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan 2020 Champion Award for her blog where she discusses life as a chicken farmer living in the Humboldt area.
Chicken
St. Benedict chicken farmer Tiffany Martinka received an award from the Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan for her blog, which has 2,594 followers. Submitted photo

ST. BENEDICT — Tiffany Martinka has received the Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan 2020 Champion Award for her blog where she discusses life as a chicken farmer living in the Humboldt area.

The annual award from Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan serves to recognize a recipient in the province who has engaged consumers about agriculture and worked to build public trust in Saskatchewan farming and food.

Martinka and her family own and operate a grain and broiler chicken farm near St. Benedict, inherited through her father-in-law.

“I’m quite active with engaging with consumers and the urban population through my Instagram called ‘Prairie Pretty,’” Martinka said. “I actively share what I’m doing, when the chicks arrive and what it means to have a broiler barn.”

Martinka said it made her proud to feel her work was honoured.

“It’s an honour to be recognized for the work that goes into sharing and creating content. It’s not always easy to open up and share your life and open up and share your farm – it’s not always easy to do those things.”

She said her goal is to gain public trust, raise awareness and educate consumers about where their food comes from.

“Our population is becoming further and further removed from the farm,” she said.

“Everybody used to have grandparents or cousins that they would visit on the farm, and people don’t have that anymore. We’re getting further and further removed from the farm.”

Martinka owns two barns, with each holding about 50,000 chicks that arrive within 24 hours of being hatched.

There, she raises the chickens for 37 days to the weight of 2.25 kg, at which point they are shipped out to a processing plant in Wynyard and used for meat.

“I want to show farmers in a positive light and show the good news stories about agriculture,” Martinka said.

“We need to speak up with what we do and show we have high standards for animal care, on farm food safety [and] sustainability.”

Martinka is a participant in the Chicken Farmers of Canada’s Young Farmers Program and has worked on collaborations with the Chicken Farmers of Saskatchewan, Farm & Food Care Saskatchewan and Canadian Food Focus.