Episode Details

Welcome to The Food Professor podcast. We have a special guest live from Saskatchewan, Kristjan Hebert, President of Herbert Grain Ventures and the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2022 Prairies winner.

We talked to Kristjan to get his overall view of the state of Canadian agriculture today, including the grain market for 2023 and beyond, the impact of the Ukraine War on the market and planting and the challenges affecting the agriculture industry in Canada. We talk about encouraging young farmers to enter the industry, what the government can do to ensure a strong future for farming and farmers in Canada, and if we ask Kristjan if he were the Canadian Minister of Agriculture for one day, what three changes he would make.

In other news, we discuss the recent quarterly results of Loblaw's and the political theatre of grocers confirmed to appear in front of the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture in Ottawa on March 8.

Michael asks Sylvain what questions Parliamentarians should ask the grocers and has a few suggestions himself. Lastly, we discuss new Post bedtime cereal and upcoming research from the Dalhousie Agri-foods Analytics lab.

About Kristjan

Kristjan Hebert is the President and CEO of The Hebert Group and Managing Partner of Hebert Grain Ventures, a 30,000-acre grain and oilseed operation in southeast Saskatchewan, Canada. He is also the co-founder of Maverick Ag Consulting which provides custom-designed lending, accounting and insurance solutions to producers and Farmer Coach, a business management coaching program for farmers. Successful entrepreneur, and leader in the agricultural sector, Kristjan Hebert is passionate about advancing agriculture in Canada and globally.

About Us

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 supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.

He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.

Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa.

About Michael

Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.