The 28th annual Mid-South Agricultural Finance Conference will be held Wednesday, Aug. 12, in Watkins Auditorium of the Boling University Center on the main campus of the University of Tennessee at Martin.
Registration for the conference will be held through Friday, July 31, at the conference’s website at www.utm.edu/agconference. The conference is hosted by the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences and the College of Business.
The conference was formed by the Horace and Sara Dunagan Chair of Excellence in Banking in the UT Martin College of Business and first held in 1999. It was originally a lending school directed toward lenders in the agricultural industry – including bankers and farm credit workers – and now includes agricultural producers, agricultural business and students.
John Clark is the interim director of the Dunagan Chair of Excellence in Banking, and he said the list of guest speakers is only part of the conference schedule.
“We’ll have some vendors and some farm equipment on display as you go into the university center,” he said. “We’ll have some participation with FFA officers from area high schools, some people from the Weakley County Co-Op and students from the UT Martin College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences.”
Dr. David Kohl, professor emeritus at the Virginia Tech University College of Agricultural and Applied Economics and an inductee of that university’s College of Agriculture Hall of Fame – will be the first speaker at the conference at 9 a.m. and will speak on “Excellence at the Margin.”
Kohl was the guest speaker at the first Mid-South conference in 1999 and has attended the conferences each year.
Eric Snodgrass, a science fellow and principal atmospheric scientist for Nutrien Ag Solutions known as “The Weather Guy,” will have a presentation at 10:30 a.m. about the weather.
Matt Bennett, the president and chief executive officer of AgMarket.net, will have a presentation at 12:45 p.m. at the conference.
There will be a producer panel at 1:45 p.m.
The conference draws hundreds of people to UT Martin through its noted speakers and topics of interest to the agriculture industry and those who provide financial backing to help it thrive.
For more information about the Mid-South Agricultural Finance Conference, visit www.utm.edu/agconference or call Traci Crawford, conference program director, at 731-881-7350.
More information about the UT Martin College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences can be found at www.utm.edu/caas.
More information about the UT Martin College of Business can be found at www.utm.edu/cbga.
More information about UT Martin can be found by visiting www.utm.edu or by calling 1-800-829-UTM1 (-8861).
PHOTO: Dr. David Kohl, shown at last year’s Mid-South Agricultural Finance Conference, will speak at this year’s conference Aug. 12. Kohl has attended each agricultural finance conference since the event began at UT Martin in 1999.
