The Agri-Food Innovation Expo is ready to return for its second year.
The first edition of the annual event was held last NovemberĀ at Westerner Park in Red Deer. It is collaboration between Westerner Park and the Lethbridge & District Exhibition. This year it is Lethbridge’s turn to host it from November 26th through the 28th at the Agri-Food Hub & Trade Centre.
David Fiddler, Executive Producer of the Agri-Food Innovation Expo, says year one in Red Deer was very successful. He says “We were very pleased. We hit our targets in terms of attendance. Feedback from the attendees was extremely positive, except they wanted more time to network. They felt our schedule was a little to jam packed and they didn’t get enough networking time. So that’s something we are taking into consideration as we are developing the new program. We have some wonderful speakers, we will have that again. We are changing the program a little bit this year, I think, based on the feedback we got from last year’s participants.”
Fiddler was asked what is the goal of the Agri-Food Innovation Expo? He says “A lot of opportunity in the sector. There is lots of opportunity for secondary processing, packaging, co-packing, new production methods, ways to generate more revenue off of existing farm basis, and different production methods. So we are working on providing information on those opportunities. We are also going to try to help entrepreneurs that have an idea or a product, either expand their market or develop a product and get it into the retail and into consumers hands.”
He points out that there are different food production and manufacturing opportunities available in Lethbridge with Canada’s food corridor situated right there. Fiddler says “With companies like McCain who has doubled their production, their french fry production there due to the large number of potatoes growing that are under contract to them. So you have got McCain, you’ve got Cavendish Farms, you’ve got Maple Leaf, you’ve got New Leaf the lettuce production plant there, so there’s a lot of very large food producers there. With the large amount of irrigated acres there’s a lot of opportunity. We are also adjacent then to, of course, the significant greenhouse production in Medicine Hat, Alberta too. So there certainly is a lot of food production there already and lots of opportunities in terms of producers and the acres to be dedicated to food production.”
This year’s themes for the Expo will be helping agri-food businesses build their toolkit for success and creating a space for the industry to build a community of collaboration.
He says to go to agrifoodexpo.ca and all the information you need is there and you can register for this November’s event in Lethbridge on their website.
