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Oct. 19th, 2008 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blue_lotus13Yesterday I drove out to Red Deer to attend a Lead the Farm conference, which was a one day session for young farmers between the ages of 18-30. The average age of a Canadian farmer is about 54, so there's a real shortage of opportunities for young people to network and meet each other. This group was a preliminary conference to the Rock the Farm conference, which is a three day conference for young farmers. At that conference, participants will learn about financing their business and farm succession. The organization which leads the conference, Future Agriculture Business Builders, was started about 4 years ago to give younger farmers a chance to learn and connect with like-minded individuals. One participant came from Saskatchewan. He had joined the Future Agriculture Business Builders facebook group and decided to come to the conference to meet other young farmers.
I haven't been to Red Deer in years and was surprised at the number of restaurants on the main drag. The restaurants didn't specialize in one type of food either; there was a Pho restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant and a Mexican restaurant, which seemed unusual for a city of about 75,000.
The day was a lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of interesting young agricultural professionals. Some of them weren't working directly on the farm, but were involved with agricultural businesses, like AdFarm, a marketing companies which deals specifically with agricultural businesses. There were a couple of guys from up near Grande Prairie, and I had a good time chatting with them. Most of the people in attendance were educated, and had travelled. At one point, the speaker asked how many people had been to Australia and about half of the 30 people in attendance were able to say that they'd been there.
The conference featured a speaker by the name of Dave Howlett. Howlett gives lectures on networking, building a reputation, and knocking down barriers in business. He was a very charismatic and informative speaker, and I stayed for the entire afternoon, as I was enjoying myself and was learning a lot of useful information.
As I said to some of the women in attendance, it was very nice to attend a farm event with people my own age. :)
I haven't been to Red Deer in years and was surprised at the number of restaurants on the main drag. The restaurants didn't specialize in one type of food either; there was a Pho restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant and a Mexican restaurant, which seemed unusual for a city of about 75,000.
The day was a lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of interesting young agricultural professionals. Some of them weren't working directly on the farm, but were involved with agricultural businesses, like AdFarm, a marketing companies which deals specifically with agricultural businesses. There were a couple of guys from up near Grande Prairie, and I had a good time chatting with them. Most of the people in attendance were educated, and had travelled. At one point, the speaker asked how many people had been to Australia and about half of the 30 people in attendance were able to say that they'd been there.
The conference featured a speaker by the name of Dave Howlett. Howlett gives lectures on networking, building a reputation, and knocking down barriers in business. He was a very charismatic and informative speaker, and I stayed for the entire afternoon, as I was enjoying myself and was learning a lot of useful information.
As I said to some of the women in attendance, it was very nice to attend a farm event with people my own age. :)
