A Dialogue on Food Security
Farmers, perhaps more than anyone, understand the importance of food security and how to strengthen global food systems. These efforts to promote food security can often be best done in collaboration with public-private partnerships.
We talked to Canadian farmer Alanna Koch and Dr. Stuart Smyth of the University of Saskatchewan earlier this year about a variety of topics connected to innovation and agriculture, from trade to climate change to access to technologies. Much of the conversation centered around how public-private partnerships can help farmers be more sustainable while also supporting food security.
Alanna Koch is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Institute for Food Security, chairs the CN Agricultural Advisory Council, and serves on the boards of Protein Industries Canada and the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. Alanna was most recently the Deputy Minister to the Premier and Cabinet Secretary in Saskatchewan. Prior to that, she was the Saskatchewan Deputy Minister of Agriculture for nine years. As one of the longest-serving Agriculture Deputy Ministers in Saskatchewan and Canadian history, Alanna worked closely with farmers and industry and her priority was to build and maintain public trust in agriculture by focusing on science‐based decision making and communicating the benefits of modern tools and technology.
Dr. Stuart Smyth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and has been a dedicated researcher at the University of Saskatchewan for over a decade. In the fall of 2014, as a result of his research and focuses on sustainable agriculture, Dr. Smyth was granted the title of Industry-Funded, where he holds the Agri-Food Innovation Chair and the Agri-Food Innovation and Sustainability Enhancement Chair in 2019. With his Chair and Professorship, Dr. Smyth continues to focus on innovations and agriculture.
Check out this YouTube playlist to get new insights into how these public-private partnerships, combined with access to innovation, can help farmers make the world more food secure.
- In the first video of our Dialogue on Food Security series, Canadian farmer Alanna Koch and Canadian academic research Stuart Smyth cover a variety of topics relating to food security, ranging from the benefits of public-private partnerships to the need to have a trading system that doesn’t hinder innovation.
- In the second clip from our Dialogue on Food Security video series, Smyth goes into detail about how public-private partnerships can benefit food security across the globe through innovation.
- In part three of our Dialogue on Food Security, Koch and Smyth have an engaging back and forth on food insecurity and what farmers can do to help mitigate the issue.
- In the fourth installment of our Dialogue on Food Security, Koch reflects how she as a farmer and community leader can make a difference in fighting food insecurity internationally and Smyth highlights the importance of a global economy in promoting food security.
- In the fifth and final part of our Dialogue on Food Security, Smyth shares how public-private partnerships have helped further research that improves crop varieties around the world, which helps smallholder farmers.