The Canadian Beef Industry Conference is growing after a successful event last year.

The theme of this year’s Canadian Beef Industry Conference, which takes place August 15 to 17 in Calgary, is “Sharing Common Ground” and will focus on connectivity.

Chair Virgil Lowe tells Rural Roots Canada this will benefit producers in their everyday operations.

“Rather than focus on the entire national strategy, we are going to zero down on connectivity a little bit and talk about how to better connect with the public from an industry perspective as well as connecting with ourselves,” said Lowe.

This year’s conference is moving locations in Calgary, which will allow them to enhance the conference.

“We’re moving to the BMO Centre on Stampede Park, which will be good because it physically grows it, just makes it a little bigger and it also provides us with some opportunities to do some cool things like to actually have some live cattle.  We’re going to have a ranch rodeo as well for our entertainment on Wednesday night.”

Lowe says they will have two big name speakers at this year’s conference.

“One is Jon Montgomery, he is the host of The Amazing Race Canada, a former Olympian and a farm boy from Manitoba and we’re actually going to kick the conference off with Bruce Vincent who is a logger from Montana who speaks about social license and the importance of building social license at a primary production level.”

Early – bird registration is currently open until June 15 for the conference.

Lowe says on top of getting a discount on registration there is also another perk for registering early.

“We are doing a draw for all of the early bird participants, the Stampede and the International Ag Committee have teamed up to offer a Calgary Stampede VIP experience this year and the winner will get a couple of tickets to attend the Stampede on Wildcard Saturday at the rodeo, so an exciting day at the rodeo.”

For more information on the conference and to register click here.