Regenerative Agriculture and Sustainability: Creating a Business Model for Athiana Acres
Simran is the Managing Director at Athiana Acres, a 30-acre regenerative vegetable, fruit, herb and flower farm located in Vancouver, British Columbia, established in 2022. She oversees all aspects of the business with a particular focus on marketing, sales and strategy. She is passionate about leveraging technology to build more sustainable food systems and looks forward to leveraging her background in data within the agriculture space. Prior to this, Simran was a data analyst at TEALEAVES, a Vancouver-based tea company working to redefine luxury in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In addition, Simran was the Managing Director at Data Feminism Network and built the organization alongside Ali Dunn and Jade Greer while completing her Masters of Business Analytics at the University of British Columbia. She now serves as an advisor for the DPA Data Feminism Program. Simran holds a BSc in Food, Nutrition and Health from the University of British Columbia.
Prof. Kate White is Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. She is also Senior Associate Dean, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Sustainability at the UBC Sauder School.
Kate’s research focuses on how social contexts, identities, and emotions shape how consumers make ethical, prosocial, and sustainable choices.
Kate is the author of “The Elusive Green Consumer” in Harvard Business Review and she has published over 50 research articles. Kate was honored as one of the top 5 Marketing Researchers in the world by the American Marketing Association and has been inducted to the College of Arts and Sciences, Royal Society of Canada. She was awarded the Canada Clean 50 Award for thought leadership in sustainability and the American Marketing Association’s Award for Responsible Research in Marketing.
Kate currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Marketing Research and is on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Readings:
- White, K., Habib, R., and Hardisty D. (2019) “How to SHIFT Consumer Behaviors to be More Sustainable: A Literature Review and Guiding FrameworkLinks to an external site.,”
- Habib, R., White K., and Hoegg, J. (2021),” Everybody Thinks We Should but Nobody Does: How Descriptive and Injunctive Norms Motivate Organ Donor RegistrationLinks to an external site.,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, July, 621-630.
About the Speaker:
Ian is an economist and recent MFRE graduate, class of 2019. After completing the MFRE program he started his career as a specialist in KPMG Vancouver’s cross-functional Economic Services and Global Transfer Pricing service lines. Over the last 4 and half years Ian has worked with government and corporate clients spanning all industries and geographies across Canada.
As a transfer pricing practitioner, he performs economic analyses to price intercompany transactions, aids clients in strategizing and responding to tax authority audits, helps clients plan and manage their intercompany policies around evolving transfer pricing issues, and properly documents all these analyses. As a manager, Ian presents these findings with clients, and coaches’ junior staff, conducts technical research and presentations, and aids in the business development of the Vancouver transfer pricing practice.
In Economic Services, Ian leverages his academic MFRE knowledge to perform cost modeling, pricing analysis, market equilibrium analysis, economic impact analysis, and government policy evaluations. Work in this service line spans from qualitative theoretical research to complex statistical analysis
Stuart Person, CPA, CA
Senior Vice President, Agriculture, Director, Crop Services
Stuart is the Senior Vice President of MNP's Agricultural Services and National Leader of Crop Services, based in Edmonton.
With more than 25 years of experience in agriculture, specializing in the grain industry, Stuart grew up on a grain farm and continues to be actively involved in the industry as a producer. This experience allows Stuart to relate first-hand to what Canadian agriculture producers face in their operations — and gives him greater insights into how to help producers overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
Stuart works with many agriculture producers, associations, and other industry stakeholders on a daily basis, providing advice on the complex issues affecting the industry. With extensive experience as an MNP Agriculture Business Advisor, he helps clients from coast to coast.
As Senior Vice President, Stuart leads a national team of more than 700 Agriculture professionals who serve more than 21,000 clients. He sits on the Farm Management Canada – Gestion Agricole du Canada (FMC-GAC) board of directors, and is a member of the Canadian Association of Farm Advisors (CAFA).
Stuart earned a Bachelor of Commerce (BComm) with Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2000. He is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), qualifying as a Chartered Accountant (CA) in 2003.
https://www.mnp.ca/en/personnel/stuart-person
AJ Gill
National leader, Ag Risk Management Resources
AJ Gill is a Partner and MNP’s Director, Agriculture Risk Management Resources, supporting the firm’s agriculture advisors across Canada.
Based in Kelowna, AJ is a seasoned leader with a lifelong passion for helping farmers. He moved to Canada from India in 1988 and grew up in a farming family. His hands-on agricultural background has given him deep insights into farmers’ issues, challenges, and opportunities.
With nearly two decades of experience in the federal and B.C. governments, AJ was instrumental in the transfer of the federal government’s AgriStability program to the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture. He previously represented the Province of B.C. on the National Program Advisory Committee, providing advice to federal, provincial, and territorial governments on the delivery of the AgriStability and Agri Invest programs. His most recent role before joining MNP was General Manager, B.C. Ministry of Agriculture.
AJ is a strong believer in giving back to the community. He is a founding director of the Hope and Heal Foundation, established in his mother’s memory. AJ sits on the B.C. Cancer Foundation Advisory Committee and on the Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) Foundation board, and chairs the KGH Foundation’s Strategic Development Committee.
About the Speaker
Darren has over 25 years’ experience in business leadership, strategy and marketing, focused in the consumer packaged goods space. Currently, he Principal and Found of Mahaffy Strategic Services. Through his marketing leadership he has built brands at major health and beauty companies like Procter & Gamble and Gillette along with food businesses such as Tropicana, Campbells and Weston Foods. For the last 10 years he has leveraged his strategy and communication expertise to build smaller brands in the natural and organic food sectors in Vancouver with Nature’s Path Organic Foods and Silver Hills Bakery and Optimi Nutraceuticals . Darren’s expertise spans across business strategy, consumer communication, business development, market research, marketing performance measurement and people development
About the speaker
Bruce is an economist, but very much a practitioner. For the first 17 years of his career, he was an official with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in the Pacific region. He subsequently went into private practice, working very closely with industry as well as the government. He does extensive consulting work outside of Canada, as well as within, with examples being the US (both coasts), China, and Europe.
Bruce provides policy advice, strategic planning, and management services to clients such as commercial fishing associations, government agencies, and environmental organizations. He has been active in the field for 30 years, involved in the design, development, and implementation of cooperative and shared management and monitoring arrangements in fisheries throughout North America
About the speaker:
Mr. Quan is currently the Vice President of Finance for the Richberry Group of Companies. In his role, he is responsible for the overall financial and administrative management of all 6 independent farming operations within the group. He is part of the executive management team that oversees the management of over 1,200 acres of Ocean Spray cranberry bogs both in BC and Quebec. Under his leadership, the Richberry Group has implemented innovative financial strategies and policies resulting in increased profitability and improved overall financial health of the organization.
He has an established knowledge of the North American cranberry and greenhouse sector working previously for Farm Credit Canada; Canada’s largest agriculture lender. He oversaw a team of lending professionals across British Columbia managing a portfolio in excess of $1 billion. His other experience would include complex corporate finance and syndicate transactions to large corporate farming operations in the publicly traded space.
Being part of a management group that is one of the largest shareholders of Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc, he has great insight global consumer trends that are emerging in the food retail space. He has also served as a member of the Board of Directors as well as a strategic Board Observer for Zenabis Global Inc and Hexo Corp during the most challenging period for the industry.
Mr. Quan holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Agriculture Economics at the University of British Columbia.
Mr. Quan has over 20 years of experience providing effective financing structures with engaging mid-market companies. Described as a relationship builder with expertise performing financial modeling, assessing corporate financial risk, strategic leadership, and a strong understanding of the North American Banking industry
About the Speaker:
Dr. Dawit D. Guta, an Ethiopian national, has over 12 years of professional experience in research and teaching at higher education institutions in Ethiopia, Germany, and Canada. Before joining Addis Ababa University in early 2016, he held the position of senior researcher at the Center for Development Research, at the University of Bonn, Germany for one year. He graduated with BA and MSc degrees in Economics from Addis Ababa University and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Bonn. He is now an Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics at the College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, and a Postdoc researcher at the UBC Department of Forest Resource Management.
His main area of research interest is in natural and environmental economics applied to the field of energy demand model, renewable energy, water-energy and food nexus, valuation of environmental resources, forest, climate change, and rural livelihoods.
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The Effects Of Untying International Food Assistance: The Case Of Canada
Most donor countries historically linked international food assistance programs to their domestic agricultural support policies through tying policies that required donated food to be purchased in donor country markets. Tying policies have been shown to reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of food assistance along several dimensions, including cost, timeliness, and cultural appropriateness.
About the Speaker:
Ryan Cardwell, Professor, Department of Agribusiness & Agricultural Economics University of Manitoba and Managing Editor, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. His research investigates how the Canadian policy to untie food assistance affected Canadian shipments using an operation-level dataset from the World Food Programme to investigate how procurement sources and commodity compositions changed after untying, and an empirical model of Canadian food assistance shipments that is used to compare observed shipments to counterfactually-tied shipments.