Episode Details

Our season three premier!  

Well we are back, live on the mic, Sylvain is back in Halifax teaching at Dalhousie University after being a visiting scholar in Florida 

We have a great season premier episode with our very special guest Tamara Rebanks - chair of the Homegrown Innovation Challenge Taskforce, director at Weston Family Foundation

Now before we jump in we wanted to dedicate this episode to our friend and colleague Xavier Poncin who sadly passed away this summer while we were on hiatus - a great supporter of food innovation in Canada.    We were chatting last week with the folks at SIAL, which will be in Toronto May 9th 2023 - again we’ll be the official podcast

Where on earth can we start…well lets start with the important stuff…after much discussion and encouragement…you watched Breaking Bad!  Now, say my name!  

Okay, you have a new book coming out La Révolution des protéines and your last book Poutine Nation was nominated for an award

Well its September, and the price of Dairy has gone up again, the result of a rare twice in a year ask for price increases…over the summer what did you learn about the data behind this latest round of price increases, and where are we at today

What are you thoughts around U.S. firms like Driscolls growing berries in Canada…running out of water in the US…why can’t we just do that?

Government policy and farmland…this has come up twice, once with a fertilizer policy and second this weekend in the Globe & Mail talking about an opportunity …

What research from the lab did we miss, and what is coming up?

Grocers don’t make too much money after all….

Tamara Rebanks - chair of the Homegrown Innovation Challenge Taskforce, director at Weston Family Foundation

About Tamara

Tamara is a skilled funder with over 25 years of experience working with charities. She has worked on both sides of not-for-profits in Canada, the US, and the UK, and understands the challenges of raising funds for worthy initiatives as well as the pleasure of developing strategic philanthropic goals and executing them.

She managed the corporate donations of George Weston Limited and Weston Foods for nearly twenty years and chaired the Weston Family Foundation, one of Canada’s largest private foundations. Tamara is the current chair of the Homegrown Innovation Challenge Taskforce, created and funded by the Weston Family Foundation and sits on the Advisory Board of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC, as well as the boards of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall and Park People.

About Us

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food