ABIC 2017: The Solution Starts Here!

This September, the bioscience world will be on our doorstep with one mission: feeding nine billion people on our current agricultural footprint – through innovation and collaboration.

‘Solutions Start Here’, the 2017 ABIC conference, takes place September 25th to 28th in Winnipeg at the RBC Convention Centre. This 3-day collaborative conference includes plenary sessions, fireside chats, student presentations and an interactive trade show experience that culminates with tours across select locations in Southern Manitoba. Private and public bioscience, industry and policy leaders from around the world are coming together to share our strongest and most promising work, test our barriers, and apply our collective talents and diverse perspectives to create some truly unique solutions.

Policy in action
The stage is set for big picture thinking, with information and insights from world renowned leaders in public policy and private industry, like keynote Catherine Bertini, who has made addressing critical food and nutritional issues among the world’s poorest a key part of her remarkable life’s work.

Named the 2003 World Food Prize Laureate for her leadership as executive director of the United Nation’s World Food Programme, Bertini’s efforts to streamline WFP’s operations, transparency and responsiveness was deemed a ‘logistics miracle’ that brought food to millions in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa, in Central America, and in the refugee camps and conflict zones of Kosovo and East Timor. The Times of London listed her as one of the world’s most powerful women. Bertini has served with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; held leadership roles at the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Health and Human Services; and has advised USAID as a presidential appointee (Presidents Bush and Obama) to the Board of International Food and Agricultural Development.

Collaboration instigation
Explore the landscape of innovation and collaboration, first hand. The Protein Highway (PH), an initiative across the Canadian Prairies and US Great Plains, is poised to lead the world in the production and processing of highly-nutritious plant proteins for humans and animals. In just two years, PH has laid a solid foundation by fostering collaboration across two countries, six states and three provinces and uniting industries, universities and governments. PH develops novel, value-added, products by connecting ideas with entrepreneurs, enabling companies for scale-up and showcasing regional plant-protein opportunities to investment partners.

Ideas into action
As CEO and founder of ibn360 Pte Ltd. in Singapore, Regina Moench-Pfanner works with public and private sector clients, co-creating solutions to sustainably improve nutrition. ibn360’s access to government, business, academia and civil society leaders enables clients to harness knowledge to build creative answers to complex business questions that deliver improved and affordable nutrition.

Moench-Pfanner has been at the forefront of nutrition for more than 30 years and has a wide range of experience, including public health, food and nutrition policy; healthcare and research; business and program management; strategic planning and capacity building. She has brokered many noteworthy partnerships across the globe to harness cross-sector partnerships for nutrition outcomes and has published widely on the economic and double burden of malnutrition, food quality and the role of micronutrients towards optimal nutrition. Regina is a steering committee member of the Asian Round Table of Food Innovation for Improved Nutrition and is on the advisory board of the Rice Bowl Index that looks at food security robustness in Asia.

Talk about communication 
The North American Agricultural Biotechnology Council (NABC) is hosting a dynamic, interactive panel on the need and roles of policy, communication and education in ensuring agricultural sustainability and nutritional security. Moderated by Steven Pueppke of Michigan State University College, the panel includes Mike Grusak, USDA-ARS, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston; Crystal McKay, CEO of Farm and Food Care Canada; and Cam Dahl, President of Cereals Canada. Together, they will address the W5 of engaging industry leaders, government regulators and the public in an economic, environmental and socially responsible future that includes food security.

Think outside of the Convention Centre
Not all solutions start in the City. Take an excursion into Manitoba’s food basket. See Kelburn Farm, Richardson International’s 700-acre research farm and crop development centre located just south of Winnipeg in the Red River Valley; or travel through time for a tour and dinner at the turn-of-the-last century 40 acre Mennonite Heritage Village. The conference ends with tours through state-of-the-art facilities that are addressing solutions, locally. Tours include the Composites Innovation Centre, the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals and the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre .

Everything starts somewhere. Take a journey into research, business and agriculture. Come together to collaborate, communicate and innovate. Explore paths leading to the world’s kitchen table.

‘Solutions Start Here’ is the conference you don’t want to miss.