The annual Tiffin conference was held back on Jan. 19.
Students in attendance of the 18 annual Tiffin conference were able to gain knowledge that they may not be able to otherwise.
Pain mitigation, beef outlook, and the future of banking relationships between farmers and bankers were among what the students could learn about.
Morgan Klaibur of the Agriculture Science program at Lethbridge College believes that what they spoke upon at the conference is something she can use in the future.
“One of the topics that they talked about was pain mitigation in animals and you know what research they’re doing cuz this something that we potentially might have to be dealing with on the farms ourselves is administering drugs to mitigate pain,” said Klaibur.
Klaibur isn’t the only person who believes that what is taught at the conference invaluable.
Byrne Cook, the chair of agriculture here at Lethbridge college, says that what is said can often be beneficial for those in the programs.
“It benefits the students in the way that they have a bit of an idea on who is going to be speaking and they’re speaking on topics that we’ve probably already covered… the speakers are going to be more up to date.., so it kind of expands what we’ve already covered,” said Cook.
“We have scientists, researchers, industry leaders coming in to tell us what’s going on in the beef industry right now,” said Klaibur.
Speakers included David Hirch of ATB Financial, Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and Anne Wasko of Gateway Livestock Exchange.
Hirch spoke about the future of banking relationship, and how they might not be the same between farmers and bankers in the future.
“The future is going to be the movement of money. So thinking back to Kodak, Kodak, Blockbuster, Netflix, what was common in all those things? It was self-service,”said Hirch.
Pain management in cattle is also something that was of topic for this year’s conference.
“Consumer perception about animal welfare, it is a thing that can take an industry down in a second,” said Schwartzkopf-Genswein.
“It provides a lot more insight and above and beyond information that’s kind of hard to get in other places sometimes,” said Klaibur.
The Tiffin Conference takes place every January and possible through the Ronald Tiffin Agricultural Endowment Fund. The goal is to provide world-class learning opportunities to primary producers as well as agri-business and agriculture students.
