On May 28, Brian will be keynote speaker at the Aquaculture Association of Canada’s annual conference, New Frontiers: Bridging Technology and Economic Growth, in Charlottetown, PEI. His talk will focus on the agriculture and food sector’s (including aquaculture) potential to be an economic powerhouse for Canada. A summary of his talk is copied below:
The agriculture and food sector (including aquaculture) is a potential economic powerhouse for Canada. More food will be consumed in the next fifty years than in the rest of human history. World food demand, population and incomes are all rising.
Yet the world’s ability to respond to that growing demand is uncertain. If the planet cannot rise to this challenge, major food shortages and humanitarian disasters loom.
Canada has everything it needs to fill a major share of this food supply gap. And yet Canada is not merely failing to take advantage of these propitious circumstances, our ability to supply world markets is declining and our productivity on the farm is falling far behind that of our peers. In aquaculture other countries have often proven themselves more able to take advantage of our ideas than we have.
Look no further than outmoded government policy based on dated views of the agriculture/aquaculture/food industry for the chief explanation of this signal failure of imagination and energy.
The government that gets this will preside over a rural renaissance, an expansion of well-paying jobs, a rise in productivity and a transformation of the industry from dependent to wealth generator.
