91大黄鸭 will soon host farmers and other food providers from around the country on how the food industry can reduce its climate impact.
The first Canadian Summit on Climate Action in Food Systems was announced this week by Sustainable Grain, a Canadian company that works to modernize food production.
The summit will bring guest speakers to crowds of farmers and other actors in the food world. One of the main talking points will be regenerative farming 鈥� a fast-growing movement that focuses on strengthening the health of the soil.
Brenda Tjaden, founder and CEO of Sustainable Grains, explained that climate action in this context is less about reducing the emissions humans put into the atmosphere and more about letting soil do the work.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not talking so much about the emissions side of climate change or climate action here, we鈥檙e talking about the power of healthy soil to pull atmospheric carbon into the ground and have it do great things down there.鈥�
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Soil that鈥檚 free of fertilizers and over-tilling can do wonders for the environment, says Tjaden, who has spent the last three years researching regenerative farming.
鈥淲hen you mobilize that soil life to grow the plant and to fill the grain in the plant, you鈥檙e not just adding more nutrition into the grain - that鈥檚 the essence of flavour,鈥� she said.
The conference will feature a talk from a celebrity chef, a locally renowned chef Jeremy Luypen, Gillian Preston, author of forward-looking agriculture book The New Farm, and Emma Weston, CEO and co-founder of AgriDigital, one of Australia鈥檚 top emerging agriculture-tech companies.
Born from a passion about , organizers Brenda & Tamara decided that 91大黄鸭 was the perfect destination to bring together food growers, producers, and consumers to work together to bring about change to our food system.
鈥� Sustainable Grain (@SustainGrain)
Tamara McLellan, the co-chair of the conference, echoed Tjaden鈥檚 hopes that the world can return to old agricultural practices that have been left behind in the era of pesticides and large-scale farms.
鈥淲e as a system have moved away from that in such a huge way and it鈥檚 not sustainable,鈥� said McLellan.
She expects that roughly one-third of the conference will be made up of farmers, and the rest will comprise other branches of the food industry that could stand to make improvements.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to cost farmers any more money,鈥� she added. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not interested in wagging our fingers at them.鈥�
The summit will kick off with an opening reception at Summerhill Pyramid Winery followed by two days at Delta Grand Okanagan this coming October. More information is available at .
