The Growing the North conference at the ENTREC Centre over the past few days has been highly successful according to Grande Prairie and District Chamber of Commerce CEO Dan Pearcy.

"The conference is always well received by the community," he said. "Yesterday, we had topped out at 475 attendees at the conference, so we're quite thrilled about that and that people are enjoying and listening."

Some of the highlights for Pearcy at the conference were speeches provided by tech companies.

"I'm a techie so Mark Saltzman is definitely one of my favourite speakers. Also, the Stantec presentation - talking about communities and the development and moving of people and creating an environment within our community - were two of the big ones for me," he said.

Saltzman discussed staying competitive and productive with technology.

Perhaps one of the most interesting speakers at the conference was Peter Ladner, author of the Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities.

Ladner discussed how the way Western cultures grow food today has changed so much and with an ever increasing global population, the world's farmer will have to increase production by 70% in order to meet demand by 2050.

"The world's food system is in crisis," he said.

And while the average age of farmers has increased to about 55 years old, Ladner noted young people and city dwellers, especially women, are building urban farms and gardens.

He also mentioned with every degree increase in temperature, crop production globally falls by about 10%, although in northern Alberta it might increase because of a more favourable climate.

The author and former Vancouver city councillor noted that 40% of the food produced is thrown out either by the producer because it doesn't meet a certain standard for size or shape, by the distributor as product that hasn't been bought, or by the consumer as household waste.

In light of these findings and the growing awareness of consumers, Ladner said the way people consume, treat, and regard food has changed with a growing movement towards the 100-mile diet and urban community gardens.

"As people say, 'I want to get more control over the food that I eat. I want to learn more about the food that I eat. I want to have some knowledge of how my food comes to me.' The result is people are building these gardens," said Ladner, noting an increase of farmer's markets and direct to seller markets by farmers.

Businesses have responded to this growing consumer awareness by advertising and selling local product, which can in turn increase sales by 40%, according to a quote Ladner attributed to Galen Weston of Loblaws.

Ladner said about 88% of consumers buy local because they want to support local producers.

The movement has also prompted local governments to respond by providing incentives, such as tax breaks to developers and residents who grow urban gardens and farms, reclamation of brownfield sites, and other things.

"The most popular thing that governments do to make all this happen is to help the farmers markets get established, get rid some of the red tape in the farmer's markets...Also, allowing people to buy and sell produce with their neighbours without licences and inspectors, and allowing people to grow on rooftops," he said.

As for next year's conference, Pearcy said the chamber will begin planning in about a month and deciding on who the speakers will be and he encourages anyone with a suggestion to contact the chamber office.

smlinarevic@postmedia.com

Twitter: @DHTSvjetlana

The Peace Country Classic Agri Show rolled into Evergreen Park over the weekend for yet another successful year.

The event featured everything agriculture from machinery, to 4H events, horse programs and a bull sale. Show president Ross Mathers said, while they don't have any final numbers, he expects that the number of visitors was in the 18,000 range.

"We thought it was good," he said. "We had a few more people over into the horse building and stayed for a little longer and the bull sale was right full as usual."

Mathers said the average price for a bull went for around $6,500, which would put the sale on par with last year's average, 'which is strong' he added.

Mathers said in addition to several new vendors, there was also new activities for people to check out.

"We had two or three more events. We had a kids farm auction, you might say, where they donated food to the food bank and ATB (Financial) in turn gave them funny money for the dollar's worth so for every five dollars worth of food, they got $500 worth of funny money and then we auctioned off some kids toys and toy tractors and there was a wagon and bicycles and it went really, really well," he said. "There were a few disappointed kids when they got to the limit of their money and their mom and dad had to tell them they were out but that's what this was all about, a little bit of an experience."

Mathers said a large horse program was also added for this year which started at 10 a.m. and went all three days until 5 p.m.

"It attracted a lot of people. There was all various disciplines of the horse industry there and we... increased our Craft Corner. We had quite a few exhibitors in the Craft Corner and they feel they all did really well," he said.

Popular in farming this year were air seeding and zero till options.

"We had a few more vendors selling haying equipment like how to protect your bales, wrapping them and things like that - bale handlers, they were quite popular. Solar watering seems to be very interesting, a lot of people are really in to that kind of stuff, like heating their water by solar (energy)," he said. "Lots of different grain products, fertilizer products, things like that."

The local 4H groups also had a good time.

"They had a good turn out. They had I think about 18 heifers and steers and about 25 sheep. It went really well," said Mathers. "Everybody had a lot of fun. They had a little 4H judging show of horses. Glenn Stewart, one of our horse demo guys, he supplied four nice horses and critiqued their judging on the horsemanship so it went really well. And the petting zoo was a real hit."

The Agri Show is one of the larger fundraisers for Evergreen Park and the show president said he expects the show raised between $50,000 to $60,000.

"I'd like to thank Evergreen Park and our committee. We worked hard and it went really well," he said.

JTurner@postmedia.com

Twitter: @DHTJocelyn