2020 Soybean Symposium: Now online and available to all!

Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council; Ed Usset,
U of MN Extension Grain Marketing economist, and Peter
Mishek, director at Mishek, Inc., spoke at the 2018 U of MN
Soybean Symposium. Photo: Peter Scharpe

This year’s Soybean Symposium is going online and you are invited to join us. We originally intended to hold the meeting in-person at the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on March 26, 2020. Now, you can join us from your home, office, truck, or tractor.

The meeting will be held through ZOOM where you will be able to hear and see presenters, as well as ask questions during the Q&A periods. Register today at http://z.umn.edu/soybeansymposium for agenda and login information.

How Resilient is our Global Food System?

Today’s global food production system hinges on the low-cost and efficient production, transport, and processing of cereal and protein grains. Global production and trade have evolved over the past 75 years to provide previously unimagined variety and quantity of food products at low cost to populations on every continent.

However, efficiencies often come at some cost. It's naive to think that today’s global food production system could be immune to internal and external disruptions. The question is whether current and future disruptions will result in an evolution or a revolution in our global food production systems.

The 2020 Soybean Symposium will lean on recent major global events as examples of internal and external events that may test the resiliency of global food production systems. We will consider the effects of several factors on the current global food system:

• Recent geopolitical disruptions (tariffs)
• Novel animal diseases such as Asian Swine Fever (ASF) and Avian Influenza
• Human disease outbreaks (COVID-19)
• Environmental and societal challenges (climate change, water and soil quality, water and carbon costs, ecosystem preservation, animal welfare, and local and organic food demand)

Join with an open mind and be prepared to discuss the (bright or bleak?) future of our industry. But, don’t be late. Our own Ed Usset will be kicking things off promptly at 9:30 a.m.

Register online

Register online at http://z.umn.edu/soybeansymposium. You'll receive an email with a link to the webinar prior to the event. There's no need to download any apps or programs to join. Simply click on "Launch from my browser" in the "Join the webinar" window.

If this time doesn’t work out for you, no problem! The webinar will be recorded and available at a later date.