Banff Pork Seminar sharpens business edge

Farm Credit Canada is typical of many agribusiness service players who use this premier pork industry event to strengthen connections and knowledge base.

Leading-edge information from international speakers. More than 800 industry representatives from across North America and beyond. A unique opportunity to connect with top industry players, customers and fellow staff in a pristine, relaxed mountain setting.

These are just a few of the attractions that make the Banff Pork Seminar a "can't miss" event for major agribusiness service players such as Farm Credit Canada (FCC).

"The dates for the Banff Pork Seminar are one of the first things we circle on our calendar every year," says Lori Lane, FCC business development manager for central Alberta. "We typically bring 15 to 20 people from across Canada, including account managers, risk management specialists and senior managers. It really is the premier event that helps us to stay in tune with the pork sector, which is a significant part of our lending portfolio."

In 2004, the FCC hog portfolio was sitting at $866 million and, leading up to that year ithad enjoyed year over year growth rates as high as 21 percent. The years since have been increasingly more challenging for the sector – a trend expected to continue for 2007 – with a variety of issues resulting in tightening margins for pork producers. But whether times are good or tough for the hog industry, FCC has consistently delivered a large delegation to the Seminar, showing it is a long-term player the sector can rely on.

"When there are 15 or 20 people here from Farm Credit Canada year after year, that sends a message to the industry that we care about this industry, we're a part of it and we're driven toward its success," says Lane. "The Seminar is also very important to help us connect with the pork community and understand the situation producers face at an in-depth level. That allows us to strengthen our ties and keep up our knowledge base to help the industry meet changing goals and needs."

That approach has helped FCC become the largest lending partner for the pork industry, based on approximately 1,800 industry customers. Despite the slowdown in growth for the sector, the FCC hog portfolio crossed the $1 billion mark in 2006. It currently sits at $1.12 billion – just under 10 percent of FCC's total lending portfolio.

Connecting with top players, customers

Now well into its fourth decade, the Banff Pork Seminar remains a leading technology transfer meeting for the pork industry. Held in Banff, Alta., since 1972, the conference program today is coordinated by the Department of Agricultural, Food & Nutritional Sciences, University of Alberta, in cooperation with Alberta Pork, Alberta Agriculture and Food and other pork industry representatives.

The three-day 2007 Seminar, Jan. 16-19, attracted more than 800 pork producers, researchers, extension and education specialists, as well as agribusiness service and supply representatives.

Lane has attended the Seminar a number of times since her beginnings at FCC in 1985. Her career has shifted from account manager to risk management specialist, to a focused lending practice on commercial scale hog operations and value-added agribusiness, before starting her current role in business development in 2005. She was a featured at the 2007 Seminar, in a breakout session on "Who will take pig debt?" Lane also participated as a presenter in 2003 and 2004.

With over 20 years experience providing service to the hog industry, she values the Banff Pork Seminar first and foremost as an opportunity to reconnect with a broad cross-section of top players in the sector. "It's a very small industry, and we help each other," says Lane. "For example, a feed consultant can help their customer by introducing them to the lender who has the right fit for their needs. Everyone's in the same place, so the connections happen fast and everybody benefits."

For FCC, this environment is particularly valuable to account managers such as Lane's colleague, Harvey Bellanger, who are typically the front line liason with customers on day-to-day matters. Bellanger operates out of the central Alberta area, where FCC has a large portfolio of hog production and hog sector files ranging from specialized files to farrow-to-finish operations.

"By meeting around the Banff Pork Seminar, I get to socialize with customers and connect with them on a different level," says Bellanger. "That goes a long way to produce strong two-way business relationships."

Strengthening teamwork, knowledge base

FCC operates out of 100 offices across the country, so it is well represented in every hog-producing region in Canada. Sending a large delegation to the Seminar allows FCC staff from each of the key regions to share information and strengthen ties.

"As Farm Credit employees, we take advantage of the chance to connect with our team members from other parts of the country," says Bellanger. "That gives us a better feel for what each region is dealing with in terms of issues, challenges or opportunities. We develop ways to improve team process to help each other out and learn valuable approaches from the experiences of others, which we can then take and apply to our own situations."

The formal seminar agenda of featured speakers and breakout sessions also plays an invaluable role in helping FCC staff continue to build a knowledge base, says Lane. "Because this is such a leading-edge seminar with such broad perspective, it's really a tremendous place to come and keep on top of what's going on in the industry."

The 2007 seminar agenda tackled everything from global trends and feed competitiveness to disease challenges and innovations for in-the-barn management. In total, there were four major plenary addresses and 12 concurrent half-day breakout sessions.

"There's so much to learn," says Bellanger. "As an FCC delegation, we try to attend as much of the featured speaker presentations as we can and take a team approach to covering the concurrent breakout sessions. We divide up into smaller teams and fan out to cover the various breakouts, then come back as a group at the end of the day to share the knowledge with one another."

The quality and timeliness of information at the seminar is second to none, says Bellanger. "You can always find ways to access information, but it's very difficult to get it directly from top people and to know it's the latest information out there. Not just the factual information, but the quality of analysis and opinion you get is of a very high level. It's current information on current issues that can be worth a lot of money to anyone with a stake in the sector."

Full program and proceedings of the 2007 Banff Pork Seminar are available on the Seminar Web site, www.banffpork.ca.

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