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Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium celebrates 40th anniversary

Aug 29, 2017
By Kaitlynn Anderson
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

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Two-day event features a wide panel of experts

By Kaitlynn Anderson

Staff reporter

Farms.com

For the past 40 years, Saskatchewan Pork has hosted an annual Pork Industry Symposium.

This year’s event will run from Nov. 14 to 15 and will be held at the Saskatoon Inn and Conference Centre.

Some of the topics to be discussed include:

Adapting to electronic sow feeding systems with Curtiss Littlejohn from CanArm AgSystems
Zoonotic diseases with Dr. Susan Detmer from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine
Mastering time management on the farm with Chuck Schwartau of the University of Minnesota
Increasing profitability of the livestock sector through feed processing with Dr. Rex Newkirk from the Canadian Feed Research Centre

“The price to attend the two-day conference is $195, which includes a banquet ticket,” Patty Riley, Financial Administrator at Saskatchewan Pork, said in an email to Farms.com. “We typically have around 250 delegates attending each year.”

For a full agenda of the symposium, click here.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.