One-day event to bring together all parties in food and beverage sector
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
The South Huron Chamber of Commerce (SHCC) hopes farmers, processors and members of the beverage sector will attend a food summit scheduled for fall.
The event, titled “All the Right Ingredients for Food and Beverage Businesses,” will discuss local support initiatives for businesses in Huron County.
“We hope it will be an inspirational event,” Joan Brady a retired hog farmer and executive director with SHCC, told Farms.com. “We’re going to showcase Huron County success stories and stories from other parts of the province.”
One of the event’s main themes revolves around food distribution. Farmers can produce it, retailers can sell it and processors can do their part, but sometimes distribution can be a “barrier to expansion,” Brady said.
Helping farmers expand their business potential is also part of the agenda.
“We haven’t done a lot of recent work within Huron County around building farm and food businesses,” she said. “We’ve got great energy at the production level and we want to enhance those and get them to the next level.”
There will also be guest speakers, including Dr. Ryan Gibson, the Libro Professor in Economic Development from the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph.
Gibson’s presentation will focus on Huron County’s agricultural assets and the opportunities they present.
The final presentation of the one-day summit will feature different types of finance and crop innovations, Brady said.
The goal of the food summit is to develop a leadership team to participate in a Huron Food and Beverage Industry Round Table.
The discussions would focus on ways to collaborate, compile Huron County food and beverage sector data, and promote successful agri-food news from around Ontario.
Tickets can be purchased for $35 and include a full lunch.
More information on the event will be released in the coming weeks, but anyone interested can contact Karen Eatwell, the project’s coordinator.