Project Objectives:
Facilitate growth and sustainability in Canada's agriculture & agri-food industry by providing opportunities for Canadian companies to develop a global understanding of the food business and the value chain concept.
Project Description:
This three-day international conference in Nisku, AB brought representatives from around the world to relate experiences from successful value-chain initiatives to an audience of Canadian business people. The conference aimed to discuss how this approach can facilitate growth and sustainability in the agri-food business.
Project Outcomes:
Early presenters spoke to the 300+ attendees about "the big picture" and how value chains are important tools to adopt if an organization wishes to reach a higher level.
The conference progressed to include a number of living examples of successful functioning value chains which showed how producers moved closer to satisfying consumer demand through production, processing and marketing. It also confirmed the fact that there are still a number of definitions to the term 'value chain'. (The common understanding is that they include alliances which closely manage two or more links of the chain.)
The second day began with a number of presentations from the Asian perspective of value chains. Other presentations included the perspectives of retailers, bankers and fair dispersion of value chain profits and losses.
Dr. David Hughes, from Imperial College in the UK opened the conference and then summed up all the presentations at the end.
Information from this conference was crucial for helping provide MRAC with the knowledge to further explore a value-chain initiative for Manitoba.
