Dr. Frank Mitloehner  to kick of 13th Annual CFGA Conference

There’s still time to register for the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association’s (CFGA) 13th Annual Conference, which will take place Nov. 29 to Dec. 2. With the theme Cross Pollination: Co-Creating Ideas in the Forage Industry, this virtual, fully bilingual, event offers a program packed with educational sessions on a variety of themes including living labs, grazing management and exports.

Headline speaker: Dr. Frank Mitloehner

The CFGA is excited to announce that Dr. Frank Mitloehner will open the conference on Nov. 29 with his presentation, Ruminant Livestock, Grasslands and Climate Change - Fact, Fiction and All Things In-Between. This session will look at how animal agriculture often shoulders a large part of the blame when it comes to climate change, but that’s because greenhouse gases are not looked at correctly.

“While methane is a potent climate pollutant that we can and need to reduce, it warms our atmosphere differently than other gases because of its short lifespan,” says the description of the presentation. “By rethinking methane, we can see that animal agriculture can be on the path to climate neutrality with scalable solutions and give the global community tools to fight global climate change.”

Frank is a professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). He received a Master of Science degree in animal science and agricultural engineering from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and a doctoral degree in animal science from Texas Tech University. He was recruited by UC Davis in 2002 to fill its first-ever position focusing on the relationship between livestock and air quality.

He is also director of the CLEAR Center (Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research at UC Davis), which has two cores – research and communications – and brings clarity to the intersection of animal agriculture and the environment. As part of his position with UC Davis and Cooperative Extension, he collaborates with the animal agriculture sector to create better efficiencies and mitigate pollutants.

Frank is passionate about understanding and mitigating air emissions from livestock operations, as well as studying the implications of these emissions on the health of farm workers and neighboring communities. In addition, he is focusing on the food production challenge that will become a global issue as the world’s population grows to nearly 10 billion by 2050. 

For a full conference agenda, visit the CFGA conference website.