An international agricultural forum that will mirror the G7 Leaders’ Summit will bring together people from around the world to promote united action about a future for farming that is being clouded by increasing challenges.
The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) – specialized agency of the Inter-American System for agriculture development, rural well-being and food security, headquartered in Costa Rica – will be holding its Americas Agriculture and Food Security Forum on June 16 to 17 at Olds College of Agriculture & Technology.
“There’s no way we would be able to feed the world like we do today if it wasn’t for global cooperation,” said Todd Ormann, Vice-President of External Relations & Research at Olds College.
“We’re moving into a period where we’re seeing very strong national viewpoints that are disrupting international trade in agriculture. My personal worry is we’re starting to see some consequences that are breaking down things we have taken for granted since the end of the Second World War.”
The Government of Canada will be hosting the annual G7 summit June 15 to 17 in the Rocky Mountains in Kananaskis, Alberta.
At the same time, the first-ever hemispheric Agriculture and Food Security Forum will be separately held at Olds College in central Alberta by the Canadian office of the IICA, which consists of 34 member states in North, South and Central America as well as the Caribbean.
The forum is being supported by the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), along with sponsorship by Canadian and international partners in the agri-food sector.
People from countries ranging from Canada to Argentina, but also Australia to Europe, will be attending the forum, said Dr. Jean-Charles Le Vallée, who is the Country Representative for IICA in Canada. They will include up to 250 invited delegates, along with an additional 1,000 guests who will be attending online.
Le Vallée acknowledged it is understandable that G7 leaders will be prioritizing issues like energy security, global peace, critical minerals and artificial intelligence.
However, holding the forum in Alberta at the same time as the summit is an opportunity to not only underline the importance of agriculture to the world as well as this hemisphere, but also to celebrate how farmers benefit humanity, he said.
“Agriculture is a miracle. We want to say, ‘Farmers are awesome,’ so we want to celebrate farmers, rurality and agriculture in that sense. It’s our thank you to them.”
The next 40 years will be the most important in the history of agriculture, said Le Vallée. Farmers must feed what by some estimates will be a world population of about 11 billion people by the 2060s, up from about 4.8 billion in 1985, during an era of increasing land degradation, water scarcity and decreasing food system resilience, he said.
“We’re seeing massive forest fires that are displacing Canadians, for example, so the world is heating up. Agricultural land is almost maxed out in many parts of the world, so we must sustainably intensify, which means we must be more responsible and smarter with the use of all our inputs at a time when labour is an issue everywhere.”
IICA is particularly concerned about the world’s smaller-scale farms, which help prevent famines as they are often the sole means of sustaining low-income families. It recently launched an initiative with Bayer to train 100 million small-scale farmers in the Americas, Africa and India about regenerative agriculture.
The theme of the Americas forum will be cultivating tomorrow’s agriculture today, which makes it a good fit with its location at one of the top 50 research colleges in Canada, said Le Vallée. Olds College includes the Smart Farm, which is a high-tech, living laboratory for crop, livestock and agricultural technology research spread over a total of over 3,000 acres.
Olds College also has a strong international presence that includes students from 36 countries. Visitors have ranged from a tour last year by 29 ambassadors from nations around the world – who learned about digital agriculture and technology – to representatives from Uzbekistan, who signed an agreement April 29 with Olds College to promote education in sustainable agriculture and environmental practices in their country.
The campus will also be visited July 14 by several U.S. State agriculture secretaries and directors who will be travelling from a meeting in Montana. “Olds College is Canada’s leading agricultural college,” said Le Vallée.
The Americas forum will bring together everyone from government officials and industry representatives to academics, development experts and students. Live translation services will be provided in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
There will be about 52 speakers ranging from Dr. Doaa Abdel-Motaal, Senior Counsellor for the World Trade Organization’s Agriculture and Commodities Division; and Mary Ellen Smith, Minister-Counsellor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s Office of Agricultural Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa; to Dr. Manuel Otero, IICA’s Director General based in Costa Rica; and Dr. Silvia Massruhá, President of EMBRAPA (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corp.) in Brazil.
Other speakers include Keith Currie, President of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture; Ryan Beierbach, Vice-President of the Canadian Cattle Association; Justine Hendricks, President and CEO of Farm Credit Canada; Dr. Nikita Eriksen-Hamel, Deputy Director of Food Systems Practice at Global Affairs Canada; Kallie Wood, President and CEO of the National Circle for Indigenous Agriculture and Food; Darrel Petras, CEO of the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network; Canadian Senators Rob Black and Mary Robinson; and Olds College President Dr. Debbie Thompson.
Robinson will be receiving a Soul of Rurality Award from IICA. Other events include tours of the Smart Farm, agri-tech showcases and a lunch built around Indigenous cuisine.
The forum will help forge and maintain international relationships that are vital to agricultural trade, as well as the development and export of technology needed to tackle the problems facing the world’s farmers, said Ormann, who will be one of the speakers. “There’s too much talk about putting up trade barriers these days, and not enough about reducing them.”
Visit the forum’s website at americasagforum.org/.
