UTM will host the 2020 Mid-South Agricultural Trade Conference on March 5 in the Boling University Center.
The conference will focus on several commodities of agricultural trade relevant to our region, as well as discussions regarding new agreements made between the Trump administration and the Chinese government.
There are seven authorities on agricultural trade who are set to speak at the conference.
“It’s very important that we have discussions about agricultural trade with new agreements being made with China,” Dr. Todd Winters, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences said.
The conference is hosted by UTM, UT Extension, UT Institute of Agriculture and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.
There will be presentations and a panel discussion featuring commodity representatives scheduled for the conference.
Several agribusiness companies who do international business will be in attendance, such as Tyson Foods.
“It will be heavily focused on what’s going on with trade issues, and what we expect to see in the future. There will be some spillover with price data in domestic markets because of the effects of international trade,” Dr. Joey Mehlhorn, UTM conference coordinator said.
According to Mehlhorn, the conference “should be important for a broad audience, it’s not going to be geared toward such a technical presentation, so it should be of interest to everybody.”
Daniel Whitley, associate administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service, is one of the scheduled speakers. According to the USDA’s website, “The Foreign Agricultural Service or FAS expands and maintains access to foreign markets for U.S. agricultural products by removing trade barriers and enforcing U.S. rights under existing trade agreements.”
Also speaking is Whitney Flatt, an international trade consultant for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture who leads the Business Development Division’s trade-focused initiatives, which promotes a vast array of Tennessee’s international agricultural commodities.
The registration fee for the conference is waved to all university students, as well as the first 75 participants who pre-register for the event. The pre-registration fee for the general public will be $50 before Feb. 26, and will be increased to $75 after Feb. 26, which includes on-site registration.
To register for the event or find more information regarding the 2020 Mid-South Agricultural Trade Conference contact Dr. Mehlhorn at mehlhorn@utm.edu or by calling 731-881-7211.
