The world will be watching and listening when a global conversation regarding food security and the future of farming takes place this month in the Town of Olds.
Olds College of Agriculture & Technology is stepping up to the plate, the dinner plate, to be the site for the first-ever Americas Agriculture and Food Security Forum.
Todd Ormann, Vice-President of External Relations & Research at Olds College, points out that he will be looking for those conversations around trade and how we are going to maintain trade. He asks how in this world of increased nationalism do we continue to keep open the supply chains that have basically fed us over the last few decades? Ormann says “we are going to be going, they do say by 2060 to about 11 billion people which is up from about 4.8 billion in 1985. That is a lot of people to feed and I do not think isolating food production all in one area is going to, basically, support that.”
The G7 Summit is set for June 15th to the 17th in Kananaskis, Alberta and this forum will mirror it on June 16th and 17th on the Olds College campus. Ormann says “honestly, there are very few post-secondaries that are as focused on agriculture as ourselves, especially here in Canada, and of course we are relatively close to the G7 (Summit) that is happening at the same time. The intent of this event is to focus in on agriculture here in the Americas and food security but also it is purposely coordinated to be at the same time the G7 is. The intent here is that you can have a focus on agriculture at the same time the G7 leaders are meeting in Kananaskis, right? While the G7 is going to have probably larger conversations around trade and some security issues, we want to make sure agriculture is still being seen and on the agenda so the thought was to bring ag leaders to Canada to have that conversation at the same time.”
When it comes to the timing of this first-ever event, Ormann feels that is something that needs to happen right now. He says “I think it is exceptionally important. I mean there has been a global order that has been created, you know, since World War II. That global order has meant that, you know, we are really good at canola, cereals and beef but not so much in pineapples, right?. So various countries and various regions produce what they are good at and then honestly global trade has been really important for then helping drive and feed the world but we are seeing significant tariff barriers being brought up, issues that are not conducive to global trade and ag is a global business.”
Ormann points out that there could be about 36 different countries represented at the conference with 250 people here physically and roughly about another thousand joining in online. He says “the group that is putting this on IICA is a group called the Inter-American Institute for the Cooperation on Agriculture. It was actually formed in 1942 by the Vice President (Henry A.) Wallace at the time and its intent was to make sure to drive peace and to support the world through agriculture development. If people aren’t hungry they are probably not looking to go to war. So to that end it consists of 34 member states in North, South, and Central America as well as the Caribbean. In fact the headquarters for IICA is in Costa Rice because that is the central place. So we should see members from about 34 different member states. There may be a couple of others also coming from Europe.”
Dr. Jean-Charles Le Vallee is the Country Representative for IICA in Canada. Ormann says “the key piece of this is it is the first-ever. So I mean they do meetings, they do a lot of one-on-one back and forth but this is the first-ever forum and it is actually bringing people together physically, right?. So I’m really also curious about what kind of conversations happen outside of the event itself. You will have a lot of people here from a lot of countries, so there is going to be lots of opportunities to basically create some of those things, opportunities that you can’t just over the phone.”
Ormann discusses his role at the forum. He says “I’m a guest at the conference and then at the end of the conference my role is to kind of sum up with Dr. Jean-Charles Le Vallee what has been said and have a conversation about what some of the key learnings are. So I get to listen to what everyone else is saying and then come back with my own thoughts on what I hear. So that is my role in this conference.”
As for the Olds College being thrust onto the international stage for the important global conversation, Ormann says “I think this is a good opportunity, you know, really for the college. This is a good opportunity for Olds. I think it will be able to highlight western Canadian agriculture very well. I think it does put the college and the Town on that international perspective which is always a good thing, but I think it also shows you just the unique asset that we really have here in this community that has the ability to attract a global audience.”
The forum’s website is americasagforum.org.
