Two Texas A&M students have been awarded the opportunity to participate in this week’s conference of the International Livestock Congress in Houston.
The congress, a partnership of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and the International Stockmen’s Educational Foundation, will take place Wednesday and Thursday under the central theme of “Balancing Livestock and Water Use for Sustainable Nutrition.” Two A&M students, Rebecca Kirkpatrick and Tyler Roberts, have been selected to participate in the conference.
Michael Fields, chairman of the congress planning committee,  received his Ph.D. at Texas A&M and is currently a professor of animal sciences at the University of Florida. Fields said the conference deals with the most important issues facing the livestock industry.
“They address some important and timely topics for the livestock industry in each one of those congresses,” Fields said. “A very important component of that congress is to invite young students from all over the world to participate. These will be our future livestock leaders. It’s very competitive. We had over 120 applicants or so.”
According to Fields, other A&M faculty will be present at the conference as well.
“To open up the congress we have right there from Texas A&M, [Professor] Rabi Mohtar,” Fields said. “He’s going to give the keynote address. Jason Strong is going to wrap the program up and give us an overview at the end, he’s a professor at Texas A&M in the Animal Science department.”
Fields said this year’s congress will demonstrate how the balance of livestock and water can feed into a sustainable nutrition for people around the world.
“If you think about it … in 14 years, 1 billion more people will be on this earth,” Fields said. “That will result in an enormous demand on water resources worldwide. Because we’ve got to feed those people, and to produce food you need water.”