Organizers of the 46th-annual Banff Pork Seminar are brushing up their game plan for next year, hot on the heels of hosting 658 delegates inside the Christmas-card setting of the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel during the second week in January.

While the weather outside was frightful at times – dropping at one point to -32C regardless of any wind chill – the camaraderie, debate, networking and learning opportunities inside the hallways and meeting rooms gave people from across the industry and around the world an opportunity to reconnect with familiar faces and make new connections with others.

Mark Chambers, chair of the BPS advisory committee, remarked during a quiet moment about how the annual seminar has grown and evolved since his first time there, in 1997.

This year’s event was wound around a theme of sustainability and innovation, bringing a broad spectrum of speakers to address issues facing the swine industry as it redefines its capacity to raise more protein from ever-shrinking resources.

Chambers, who has not missed a seminar over the past 20 years, said he saw many familiar faces returning to each new edition and has grown concerned that there may be a lack of new people coming into the industry, especially from the farms where the pigs are raised.

“Part of that is through consolidation,” said Chambers. Farms are now fewer and bigger, so where a larger number of farms would send two or three people to the seminar 20 years ago, the bigger farms are still sending two or three people with a net loss in the total number of production staff attending the seminar. Alberta alone has dropped to about 350 hog farms from about 1,500 during the last 20 years, said Chamber. He sees the BPS playing a role in helping bring more people into the industry.

“The concerning part is the lack of new faces. Our industry, on the production side, really struggles to attract new talent, so it’s very concerning or striking to me that we’ve really got to go out there and attract new talent, because that’s the next generation of people for our industry. “My big push is to get more farm people here and the only way to do that is to have topics that will be of interest (to them)” he said. Alberta producer Jurgen Preugschas, who has held a variety of leading roles on provincial and national organizations, said he has seen a change in the makeup of people who attend the seminar over the past 46 years.

“It used to be more producers were here,” said Preugschas, who was involved in the first Banff Pork Seminar and has missed only a couple of times during the ensuing years.

“Now, you’ve got the complete industry here. It’s turned over. The scientists from around the world that have come draw a lot of local scientists,” he said.

New in 2017 was a survey on breeding technology and a cell-phone app that gave delegates electronic access to the seminar’s relevant documents, including evaluation forms.

The evaluation forms are vital in the advisory committee’s efforts to continually improve the seminar and to ensure that it is meeting people’s expectations, said Chambers.

The advisory committee had started considering the app a couple of years ago, and then decided to implement it this year, he said. Those who used the app could read proceedings, check times and locations of meetings, complete evaluation forms and view other relevant details.

The breeding technology survey is part of a research project of the University of Alberta Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology. Doctoral candidate Albert Boaitey said that he and a group of graduate students, working under team leader Ellen Goddard, hope to determine how heavily producers rely on genetic technology and how much they are prepared to pay for access to genomics tools that would help them improve disease resistance.

Producers attending the seminar were offered $40 each to complete the highly-detailed survey, which the team hopes to put online later in the year. Results are to be analyzed in the fall with hope that a report can be made to the 2018 Banff Pork Seminar.

The cash was offered because of the time it takes to fill out the survey, said Boaitey.

“What we’ve done here is that we consulted other people with a broad set of questions. The main concern is the length of the survey. If we go online, people would sign up, go in for maybe 20 minutes, take a break and come back later,” he said. While the team would like to reach every producer in Canada, that will not be possible, said Boaitey. Inside the meeting rooms, plenary sessions provided a philosophical look at national and global issues facing swine production, while breakout sessions dealt more directly with technical issues inside the barns and along the production chain, from farm to fork.

The breakouts this year brought veterinarians, production managers and other key people in to address issues in seven areas, including sow housing, sow productivity, managing labour, checking the spread of disease, transportation, breeding technology and methods for reducing antibiotic use.

A session on breeding technology was highlighted with a presentation by the 2017 George Foxcroft Lectureship, Stephen Webel, Director of Reproduction Research and Development for Indiana-based JBS United.

Banff Pork Seminar is a joint production of the U of A, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and Alberta Pork, under the direction of an advisory committee and with sponsorship from several industry partners. The 2018 seminar is booked for Jan. 9-11 at the Banff Springs.

Learn more online at www.banffpork.ca or contact conference co-ordinator Ashley Steeple, 780-492-365. •

— By Brenda Kossowan