For anyone tired of hearing bad news about agriculture, the place to be last week was the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Saskatoon.
That’s where 350 business people, bureaucrats and farmers gathered for a two-day conference called Re-Inventing Agriculture.
More than a dozen local, provincial, national and international speakers talked about what they’ve done to survive and prosper.
Al Scholz, executive director of Saskatchewan Agrivision, a co-sponsor of the conference, said the speeches and discussion provided a much-needed dose of encouragement for farmers and local communities trying to make a go of it in tough times.
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“What’s the benefit of emphasizing the negative?” he said in an interview after the conference.
“We already know what the problems are but rather than complain, what do we do? That was the focus of this conference.”
The agenda included two speakers from New Zealand, who talked about how farmers in that country have prospered since the total elimination of farm subsidies in the mid-1980s.
There were presentations from Saskatchewan farmers, academics, consultants, cattle ranchers, local entrepreneurs and business people about things they have done and what needs to be done to improve the province’s agricultural economy.
There was a common thread to the presentation, said Scholz.
“They were all talking about success stories. They talked about what worked and how we expand on that.”
Saskatchewan Agrivision is an industry-based organization with a mandate to establish goals for the expansion of value-added processing in the province.
It has set ambitious targets, such as boosting the farmgate value of agricultural production in the province to $12 billion in 2005 and $25 billion in 2010 from $6 billion in 2000 and increasing the value of agricultural processing to $10 billion in 2005 and $20 billion by 2010 from $2 billion in 2000.
