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Program & SpeakersLearn more about our speakers...

 

 

Marla Carlson

Organic Connections

Marla Carlson has worked in the organic sector in Saskatchewan since 2006 and has been an organic consumer since the mid-1990’s. She is a passionate advocate for healthier, more just and sustainable food systems across the Canadian Prairies. Marla has taken on many leadership roles in the agricultural sector including being SaskOrganics first Executive Director. She has been an on the Organic Connections board since 2011 and has been its President since 2013. Before moving back to Saskatchewan, Marla lived in England and worked for Bristol City Council as its first Democratic & Statutory Services Manager.
Marla is currently working with the Prairie Organic Development Fund managing the Scaling Up Organics: Education, Leadership and Benchmarking for Resilience Project and the Prairie Food System Vision Network a Rockefeller Foundation Food Systems Top Visionary Prize winner, a thirty-year project with a vision to decolonize the food system on the Canadian Prairies. She is also serving as a Director on the boards of The Vilicus InstituteIFOAM Organics North America and Responsible Organic Customer Association (RoCA).

Dr. Dave Sauchyn

Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative at the University of Regina

Dave Sauchyn is Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Regina and Director of the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative. His research interests are variability in prairie hydroclimate over the past millennium and adaption to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change. Dave has given more than 500 invited talks on aspects of climate variability and change. He can trace his prairie roots back to the 1910s when his grandparents arrived from eastern Canada and from Ukraine.




Tia Loftsgard

Canada Organic Trade Association

Tia Loftsgard is the Executive Director of the Canada Organic Trade Association. Tia has worked in organic and international agricultural trade for over 25 years. She got her start in organic by founding the first ever Fairtrade, organic chocolate company, Camino, and has held senior roles with Fairtrade International, the Fairtrade certification organization. Tia is currently an IFOAM International Ambassador, the Chair of the Organic Technical Advisory Committee for International Equivalencies, a voting member of the Organic Standards Technical Committee, a member of the Government Roundtable for Consumer Demand and Market Demand and the lead on organic data with the Government of Canada.

Allison Squires

Allison is an owner and operator of Upland Organics, a mixed livestock (cattle) and organic grain farm located near Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan, with her husband and three children.  She is the president of the Canadian Organic Growers, a member of the Standards Interpretation Committee and is a member of the Technical Committee for the 2025 standards review. 

Jenn Sharp and Amin Nasr

Join Jenn Sharp and Amin Nasr from Dopamine Wellness for a 15-minute session designed to counteract the effects of sitting through an invigorating series of movements and stretches. You'll be guided to connect to your breath while mindfully moving in ways that will positively impact the entire body.

Lyndon J Linklater

Indigenous Relations Advisor, Remai Modern

Traditional Knowledge Keeper

Nehiyaw/Anishinabe

Featured

Liz Carlisle

Liz Carlisle, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester, which led to a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state. She has written three books about regenerative farming and agroecology: Lentil Underground (2015), Grain by Grain (2019, with co-author Bob Quinn), and most recently, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming (2022). She is also a frequent contributor to both academic journals and popular media outlets, focusing on food and farm policy, incentivizing soil health practices, and supporting new entry farmers. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography, from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology, from Harvard University. Prior to her career as a writer and academic, she spent several years touring rural America as a country singer.

Featured

Dr. Meghan Vankosky

Dr. Meghan Vankosky is a field crop entomologist at the Saskatoon Research and Development Centre. Her research program focuses on studying the biology and population ecology of insect pests and their natural enemies in order to inform pest management programs. She is the Chair of the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network, a group of entomologists on the prairies that coordinates and conducts annual surveys of key insect pests of cereals, oilseeds, and pulses and provides weekly updates and annual risk and distribution maps to farmers, agronomists, researchers and other agricultural stakeholders. She is also interested in invasive species and biological control.

Featured

Cynthia Beck

Cynthia Beck, M.Sc., is a Registered Psychologist (provisional) providing mental health services and psychological assessment in rural Saskatchewan. She proudly volunteers as a director for Canadian Western Agribition and for the SaskAgMatters Mental Health Network Inc. Cynthia is an active advocate for mental health in agriculture. She provides tailored presentations and develops/delivers agriculture specific mental health programming. Cynthia has gratefully collaborated with industry partners to promote agricultural mental health at provincial, national, and international levels. Her family operates Beck Farms, a multi-generational mixed cattle and grain farm near Milestone, SK.

Featured

Martin H. Entz

Martin Entz PhD is professor in the University of Manitoba’s Plant Science department. He received his PhD in crop physiology from the University of Saskatchewan in 1988 and worked as a farm manager and research agronomist before embarking on his academic career. He and his research team have worked on organic agricultural systems for over 25 years.

Martin enjoys teaching crop production and agroecology. He has supervised 50 MSc and PhD students, published 145 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and leads agricultural projects in Central America, Zimbabwe and East Africa. Martin is the inaugural “Jarislowsky Chair in Natural Systems Agriculture for Climate Solutions” and hopes to use this opportunity to enrich the lives of students and colleagues in our faculty and beyond.

Lucy Sharratt

CBAN

Lucy Sharratt works in Halifax as the Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, also known as CBAN. CBAN brings together 15 groups to research, monitor and raise awareness about issues relating to genetic engineering in food and farming. CBAN members include farmer associations, environmental and social justice organizations, and regional coalitions of grassroots groups. Lucy previously worked as a campaigner and researcher on this issue at the Sierra Club of Canada and the Polaris Institute in Ottawa.

Heather Daoust

Heather Daoust comes from a long line of farmers and could not find herself leaving the farm after graduation. She completed a diploma in Business Admin from Lakeland College and ventured out to start a few of her own businesses including an Equine Chiropractic Therapy business, a thriving horse training program, Shift Organics - an Organic Farm Management system and Schmitt Organics- a farm to fork beef program. Heather wanted to branch off of the family organic farm in some way, so she got to work calving her own cows. After shipping her calves down the alley at the auction market, she felt like just a number in cattle production. There had to be a better way to market the prestigious beef her family had to offer. She got to work building a website and a finishing program with her dad. Now they grow and finish everything using organic resources from the family organic farm. Some will finish out on organic grains and others will go to grass in the spring of their yearling year to finish without grain. Overall, it is a gratifying business to direct-market to the people that are looking for the clean beef that comes from her family farm. Expansion is on the horizon and Heather encourages organic farmers to certify their calves as she promotes the organic beef industry.

Dr. Yamily Zavala

Chinook Applied Research Association (CARA)

Dr. Yamily Zavala, Soil Health Lab Manager and Soil Health and Crop Management Specialist at Chinook Applied Research Association (CARA)
Dr. Yamily Zavala led development of the CARA Soil Health Lab which opened in 2018. Under her management, the Soil Health Lab focuses on assessment of physical and biological soil health indicators and allows producers the opportunity for hands-on evaluation of their soils. She has been part of the CARA staff for 11 years and oversees applied researches on management alternative for soil health in addition to processing soils and managing the CARASHLab.
Prior to joining the CARA staff, Yamily worked with producers in several countries restoring soil fertility and improving cropping systems. Her international experience is supported by an education focused on agriculture and soils. She obtained an Agricultural Engineering degree at a university located in the Andes Mountains of Venezuela. She attended Missouri University achieving a Masters in Agronomy (with minor in Soil Science) and earned a PhD in Soil and Plant Nutrition from Cornell University.

James Tansey

James Tansey PhD has been the provincial insect/pest management specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture, Saskatchewan, since January 2018. This role allows him many opportunities to contribute to solutions to insect and vertebrate pest issues throughout Saskatchewan. Prior to this, he worked as a research scientist in the pharmaceutical industry in Idaho working on house dust mites, cockroaches, and orchard insect control. He did his Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida working on citrus pests. His doctoral research and first postdoc focused on field crops entomology at University of Alberta, working on some major insect pests of canola. He also has a Master’s degree in Environmental Biology and Ecology working on the biological control of weeds, and worked in regulatory affairs.

Alieka Beckett

Alieka Becket is the Saskatchewan Apprenticeship Program
Coordinator for Young Agrarians. Alieka has over 5 years experience in
work integrated learning, creating career opportunities for young
people through apprenticeship.

Nicole Boudreau

Nicole Boudreau has been the coordinator of the Organic Federation of Canada (OFC) since the organization was created in 2007. With a B.Sc. in biology (Université de Sherbrooke) and a B.A. in communications (McGill University), she enjoys popularizing the science of organic agriculture on all platforms. She is for the 3rd time the main manager of the 2025 Canadian Organic Standards Review, a 2-year exercise under which the content of the Canadian Organic Standards is revised, clarified and modernized. Nicole also manages the AGRI-Standards Interpretation Committee that clarifies under CFIA authority litigious questions between organic operators and certification bodies. Nicole is also involved in scientific research in organic agriculture as the manager of the Organic Science Clusters.

Dorthea Gregoire

Dorthea Gregoire has a passion for working on the agricultural landscape and a strong interest in Regenerative Agriculture. She’s spent the last decade helping farmers access funding and resources to implement Best Management Practices on their farms. Growing up in southeastern Manitoba, first in the fertile, though flood-prone, Red River Valley and then in the sandier area near Sandilands Provincial Park, Dorthea understands the value of working with the land and not against it. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree with Honours in Biology (minor in Geography) from Mount Allison University and a Doctorate in Entomology from the University of New Brunswick. She’s an avid gardener who loves cooking/baking, reading, biking, spending time outside and being with family.

Bill Schroeder

For 35 years, Bill Schroeder was a biologist and research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agroforestry Development Centre at Indian Head, Saskatchewan. 

Bill had a special interest in plant exploration and collecting new and unique tree seeds from around the world. He was among the first modern-day Canadian tree breeders to gain access to remote regions of Siberia and China for seed collection. His pioneering exploration opened the door to new woody plants from areas of the world largely inaccessible until that time. In addition Bill has devoted his working life to developing agroforestry systems for prairie agriculture to improve biodiversity and resilience of agroecosystems 

Since his retirement in 2016, Bill has not strayed far from his passion for trees and agroforestry. He started GreenTree Agroforestry Solutions, which provides agroforestry advice to farmers as well as locally sourced tree seed. Writing about trees is his other passion. In 2019 he published his first book The Trees of Indian Head followed by Trees Against the Wind – The Birth of Prairie Shelterbelts in 2023. 

When not looking at or writing about trees, Bill and his wife, Janice live in Regina and spend as much time as possible with their grandchildren.

Kevin Beach and Donna Bryck-Beach

Donna and Kevin began their journey in organic farming in 1989 when their farm was
certified organic for the first time. Their farm located in South West Saskatchewan offers
a combination of cultivated and native prairie. This combination allows for the
production of cereal grains, pulses and beef.
Donna and Kevin have worked hard to build relationships with their beef customers
ensuring the consumer knows where and how their beef is raised.
One of their goals is to keep their cattle content and healthy, in turn the cattle make a
vital contribution to the soil on the farm and provide delicious, nutritious food.

Dr. Priscilla Settee

Dr. Priscilla Settee is a member of Cumberland House Swampy Cree First Nations and a Professor of Indigenous Studies where she has taught courses on Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Social Economies and Indigenous Women. Settee is currently the Acting Vice Dean Indigenous for the College of Arts and Science. In the past she served as Adjunct Professor for the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba where she served graduate students on Indigenous Food Sovereignty. She has won recognition nationally and internationally for her work on Indigenous knowledge systems that spans several continents including North, Central and South America, Africa, India, Asia and the Pacific.  Settee was awarded a Global Citizen’s award by Saskatchewan Council for International Co-operation and was twice nominated for a teaching excellence award by her students. In 2012 Settee received the University of Saskatchewan’s Provost award for Teaching Excellence in Aboriginal Education. In 2013 she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee award for contributions to Canada.  She was awarded the Queens Platinum Jubilee Medal for Education in 2022-23.

Dr. Settee is the author of several books Pimatisiwin, Global Indigenous Knowledge Systems(2013) that looks at global Indigenous Knowledge Systems and The Strength of Women, Ahkameyimohk(2011) that examines the role of Indigenous women’s stories in establishing truth, reconciliation and social change.  Dr. Settee’s latest co-edited book is called Indigenous Food Systems Concepts, Cases and Conversation(2020). She has a new book contract for this year with Canadian Scholarly Press on the topic of Global Indigenous Food Systems and Planetary Health. Her other research includes gang exiting Indigenous youth, Indigenous social economies, trafficked women and children, climate change impact of Indigenous Knowledge systems. She is a founding member of the City Park community garden. Settee serves on the Seed Change Canada board, is a past David Suzuki Fellow (2019-20) and a Fellow with the US based NDN Collective(2021-22). Dr. Settee was a key figure for a Saskatchewan based research team that secured The Rockefeller Foundation Food Vision Finalist Prize called Kwayeskastasowin Wakohtawin .