Farmscape for January 3, 2014

The chair of the Banff Pork Seminar Organizing Committee says this year's conference will focus on today's challenges and tomorrow's opportunities.
The 2014 edition of the Banff Pork Seminar is slated for January 21 to 23 at the Banff Centre.
Don Down, the chair of the Banff Pork Seminar organizing committee, notes the seminar has been running for 43 years and has the reputation of being one of the top pork industry seminars in North America.

Clip-Don Down-Banff Pork Seminar:
The theme that we've chosen for this year, and it was developed by our advisory committee, is called "Today's Challenges and Tomorrow's Opportunities."
We took a look at that and we came together with a few key speakers that will address that.
I think, when we take a look at the challenge side, we recognise there is a lot of social pressure around animal care that the industry is facing.
We've brought a couple of key speakers to tackle that in the Plenary on the Wednesday morning.
Dallas Hockman, he's the vice president of industry relations for the National Pork Producers in the U.S.
He will talk about "The Impact of Social Pressure in the Market Place" and also Dr. Nelson Kloosterman.
He's going to focus on "The Dignity of Raising Animals for Food."
When we switch to the opportunities side, the Thursday Plenary will be focussing on that.
We know that we're seeing significant consolidation in the pork industry and we've brought some key speakers in to take a look at what we see going forward.
First off Jose Cardenas will be speaking on "The Role of Technology as the Vital Ingredient for Producing Efficient, Affordable and Abundant Food" and Dr. Steve Meyer from Paragon Economics in the U.S. will speak about a very important issue called "Global Economics and How It Affects Canadian Production.

For more information on the Banff Pork Seminar or to register visit banffpork.ca.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council