Robynne Anderson

Robynne Anderson is an authority on global agricultural and food policies. Her engagement reaches throughout the value chain, providing support on strategy and management to a broad range of clients ranging from scientists to governments, farmers to food processors. Robynne has engaged in processes at the UN General Assembly, Rio+20, the UN Committee on World Food Security, the UN negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals.

She broke new ground in bringing new issues to prominence in the international policy fora, such as the role of women in farming, Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure, the importance of post-harvest losses and food waste in food security. Robynne represents accredited organizations at the United Nations, bringing the voice of agriculture in multi-governmental processes. Her company serves as the Secretariat of the International Agri-Food Network (IAFN), she founded the Farming First coalition in 2007, and has co-ordinated the Farmers Major Group, and the Global Business Alliance 4 the Environment (GBA4E). She led the two-year long negotiations for obtaining the declaration by the UN General Assembly of the International Year of Pulses and then co-ordinated the activities for the year on behalf of the Global Pulse Confederation reaching 1 billion people on social media.

Robynne is the youngest person inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame, and is one of just 8 women in the Hall. She also received the 2018 Demeter Award for Woman in Agriculture.

Prior to founding Emerging ag, Robynne established Issues Ink, an agricultural publishing company specializing in 12 magazines and electronic titles on Canadian and American agriculture. She started her career in Canadian politics as legislative assistant to the then Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. In addition to her role at Emerging ag, Robynne is part of a family farm in Manitoba, Canada. She is also the founder and current chairman of the Manyinga school project, a non-profit organization that supports orphans to learn agricultural skills through schools.