Canadian Agri-Food in a Value-Added World

Joe Dales has gained 40+ years of agriculture industry experience beginning his career in sales, marketing and management, working with leading companies such as Pfizer, First Line Seeds, Cyanamid Crop Protection and NK Syngenta Seeds.

In 1997, he co-founded with his wife Sandra, www.AgCareers.com, in 1998, he co-founded Farms.com, where he helped grow the business for 20 years. In 2019, he co-founded agtech venture capital firm, RHA Ventures Inc. and has made more than 35 investments and continues to support entrepreneurs with hands on, experienced business mentoring.  Joe works directly with leading agtech startups like: Haggerty AgRobotics, , StrongBo Agritech, Vetson.ai, Turnkey Genomics, Farm Health Guardian, Nexus Robotics, The AgRobotics Working Group and Innovation Farms Ontario.  Joe has been involved in successfully launching over 50 agri and food tech innovations.

Joe has gained extensive corporate governance board experience with several companies such as Canterra Seeds, Western Fair Association and CAAIN.

Sangeeta Lalli is the Public Policy Director at TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods. Sangeeta specializes in public affairs, advocacy campaigns, policy analysis and development in the agriculture and agri-food sectors. At TELUS Agriculture, she works with industry, government and academia to create more opportunities for deploying technology in the agriculture sector. Sangeeta leverages over a decade of private sector, government, and advocacy experience in her work.

Previously, Sangeeta was a Policy and Communications Advisor to the federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food, supporting the development of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership and Canada’s negotiations in CUSMA. She also served as the British Columbia Advisor to the Prime Minister of Canada where she provided insights to senior government leaders on issues of significance to British Columbians, and coordinated federal responses to emerging issues in the province.

During his more than 15 years at FCC, Craig has led the Economics and Portfolio Risk Management teams. He has been a keynote speaker on trends impacting the agriculture and food industry, led initiatives on forecasting the operating environment, and monitored portfolio health and financial health trends. Prior to joining FCC, Craig worked with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture. Craig has a master’s degree in agricultural economics from the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Michelle Edwards is Director of Agri-food Data Strategy at the University of Guelph and a Principal Investigator with the Climate-Smart Data Collaboration Centre (CS-DCC). With more than 20 years of experience in data management, strategy, and research support, she has led initiatives that advance data-driven research and collaboration across the agri-food sector.

Prior to her current role, Dr. Edwards served as Statistical Consultant and Advisor for the Ontario Agricultural College and as Academic Director of the University of Guelph Branch Research Data Centre. Before returning to Guelph, she was Director of Data Services at the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research at Cornell University.

As lead of Agri-food Data Canada, Dr. Edwards and her team support researchers in managing, sharing, and reusing research data to maximize its value and impact. She holds a PhD in Animal Biosciences from the University of Guelph and an MLIS from the University of Western Ontario

Tom Ogaranko leads transformational change with high performing teams focused on complex challenges. Over his 26-year career, he has founded, built and exited multiple technology companies in advanced technology industries. He has advised the Governments of Canada and France and several Canadian Provincial Governments on innovation policy and has been involved in structuring the three crown agencies involved in research, innovation and technology development. Tom has assembled and structured $1B of investment funds for stimulating and growing innovative capacity for public and private clients. Tom is a frequent advisor to the Government on policies to grow ICT, biotechnology, genomics and cleantech sectors. Tom has also actively advised some of the leading innovative companies in Canada’s pharmaceutical, energy, mining, telecommunications and technology sectors.

Tom is presently involved in the development of a test and demonstration centre in Edmonton for bio industrial innovations, advises the Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre in Vancouver on its Industrial Challenge Program advancing pre-commercial innovations to market faster and serves as the Chief Innovation Officer for TrustBIX, a Canadian Agrifood Traceability and Sustainability company, with operations in Canada, USA, Mexico and China.

Tom is a Practitioner for the Challenge Dialogue System® (CDS®) Network — http://www.challengedialoguesystem.net/. The CDS Network is a community of practitioners – a community of practice – that is trained, accredited and have the rights to use the CDS® methodology for their own professional work or offer it as a service to their own clients. The CDS Network is overseen by a Practice Council that provides guidance to the Network on foundational values and principles, learning, accreditation, and the evolution of CDS. The Network also develops and makes available marketing and practice support materials. The Practice Council includes Keith (Victoria), Tom Ogaranko (Edmonton) and Don Simpson (Toronto).

As Principal of DMci Strategies, a consultancy dedicated to advance the success of the agri-food sector, David McInnes initiated and led a novel coalition of over 150 private-public partners from 2020 to 2024 to create Canada’s first agri-food sustainability index: the National Index on Agri-Food Performance.

He also founded the Centre for Agri-Food Benchmarking, a not-for-profit organization, to manage the coalition and evolve the Index. David is a Senior Fellow and Steering Committee member of the Centre.

David is now moving forward with a new multi-stakeholder collaboration of national and global agri-food organizations from North and South America, Europe and Africa. He started this work to help bring greater coherence to major sustainability standards and disclosure reporting schemes. Such schemes are formative to enable agri-food trade and market access, enhance food security and accelerate sustainability progress.

David is a board member of the National Circle on Indigenous Agriculture and Food (NCIAF) and with a provincial government agency, Agricultural Research and Innovation Ontario (ARIO). He is a steering member of the Agricultural Genomics in Action Centre and a State of Agriculture and the Environment initiative at the University of Guelph; he is also affiliated with McGill University’s Institute for Global Food Security.

Previously, David was President and CEO of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute and held executive positions with a Canadian life sciences company, a global supplier of medical isotopes used to prevent, diagnose and treat disease. He also worked in corporate and government affairs for the country’s banking sector and he started his career working for the federal government. David is a past Chair of WaterAid Canada and a Trustee of London-based WaterAid International, an NGO dedicated to clean water and improved sanitation in the global south.

He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (MSc.) and Dalhousie University (B.A.)

LINKEDIN PROFILE

Shelley’s early career saw her work in the public and nonprofit sectors before transitioning
to sustainability consulting, where she developed strategies and engagement programs for a wide range of businesses. She later joined the UN World Food Programme, building partnerships to support rural producers transitioning to regenerative systems.

Shelley then moved to Canada, where she worked with Indigenous communities on community
development plans and advised midstream oil companies on sustainability and ESG strategies. Missing the agri-food sector, she returned to agriculture, leading PepsiCo’s global regenerative agriculture initiatives and, more recently, managing a social innovation
lab in Alberta to accelerate the widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture.

Latterly, she has been working with the most prominent players in the agri-food
sector to develop and implement supply chain transitional programming, including insetting endeavours.

Jesse Hirsh is a futurist, researcher, public speaker, and farmer based in rural Eastern Ontario. His work explores how technology, politics, agriculture, and culture are reshaping authority, democracy, and public life. He is the founder of Metaviews Media Management and host of The Future Herd, a podcast examining leadership, collaboration, and innovation across Canada’s agri-food system.

His current work focuses on designing agents and agentic systems that help people and organizations conduct research, coordinate knowledge, and develop new ways of working. Jesse combines critical inquiry with a practical commitment to building alternatives, drawing on open-source culture, agroecology, and participatory research. From his farm, the Academy of the Impossible, he develops projects, conversations, and experiments that make complex ideas accessible and help people participate more confidently in shaping the future..

Evan Fraser is one of Canada’s most cited scientists working on food systems, climate change, and agricultural sustainability, with an h-index of 70 and more than 21,000 citations. His research advances a single core argument: the efficiency of modern food systems is central to their fragility. By optimising for productivity and cost, we have eliminated the redundancy, diversity, and slack. These are the buffers that allow food systems to absorb shocks. Understanding how those buffers work, and how to build them, is the thread connecting his research, policy work, and public writing.

As the President and CEO of Burnbrae Farms, Margaret is a 4th generation member of the Hudson family working in the business, which has been in the family since it was founded in 1891. Burnbrae Farms is recognized as a food industry leader with egg grading, processing, and farming operations in five provinces across Canada. In her role Margaret is responsible for leading strategy development and implementation, operations, innovation and brand portfolio growth and succession for the business and family ownership.

Margaret has overseen a number of initiatives contributing to environmental and community stewardship including diverting more than 90% of their waste from landfill in their grading and processing operations, the commissioning of both a solar powered layer hen farm and solar field on two of their layer hen farms, as well as supporting a wide array of charitable initiatives including breakfast programs, food banks, disaster relief charities, environmental causes, and student education around agriculture.

One of Margaret’s passions has been to educate non-farming Canadians about farming. She served on the Royal Winter Fair Board for 6 years and has been a leader in promoting transparency as a means of building trust. Margaret represents Burnbrae Farms on the GS1, FHC and Grocery Foundation boards and has been honoured with a number of industry awards and recognition including the Golden Pencil (2020), Grocery Business Hall of Fame inductee (2021) and Canadian Grand Prix Lifetime Achievement (2022). Margaret holds a B.Sc. and an MBA from the University of Toronto and lives in Toronto with her two children, Evelyn and James Rogan, and enjoys travelling, her farm and cottage, and spending time with her family.