Over 50 young farmers meet Wednesday in Winnipeg for day two of a conference to encourage younger generations in agriculture.

This will be the sixth year for the conference, although for the first time ever, it's also running in conjunction with the Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) annual general meeting.

"There used to be a bear pit session at the KAP AGM, as well as having a young farmers conference separate," says Ellen McPherson, a farm enterprise management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture. "We've shared resources and time and money putting them together -- and hoping we can get more farmers out to one event, rather than having them spread their time away from the farm on two different conferences."

McPherson says the goal of the conference is to help young producers to transition into management roles on the farm.

"Farms are really expanding and getting more complicated over time," she says. "We need to find a way that they understand how to take over those roles from their parents and get integrated into the farm as things become more challenging and difficult."

Elm Creek-area farmer Colin Penner, a participant and guest speaker at the conference, says "young" for this group means mostly under the age of 40 -- for anyone still developing farming skills.

"We've got a tremendous resource with young people," he says, "we're all fresh, we've all got energy, and we've all got unique ideas. I think getting people involved now is going to bring kind of a breath of fresh air to other commodity groups."

While the conference wraps up Wednesday, the KAP AGM runs until Thursday, featuring Dr. Alan Levinovitz who will talk about his book, The Gluten Lie.