Ione Smith

Courses: CED Approaches to Food

Ione is passionate about working to find solutions to challenging food system problems. She is a Professional Agrologist (PAg) with a background in community development, agricultural planning, and land resource science. Ione founded Upland Agricultural Consulting in 2010 and has built a career on developing innovative agriculture and food security plans for local governments, agricultural climate change adaptation and mitigation research for government and non-government agencies, and business plans for individual farmers. She has worked with Indigenous communities, governments of all levels, and non-governmental organizations to craft actionable recommendations and implement key business strategies to improve and develop opportunities for agriculture and food security. Ione is a Qualified BC Farm Business Advisor as conferred by the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP): a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.

In addition to her consulting work, Ione currently serves as a Commissioner with the Provincial Agricultural Land Commission. Other previous positions include volunteering as a steering committee member of the BC Food Systems Network and serving as a board member of Community Futures Sunshine Coast.

Ione received a MSc from the Institute for Resource Management, Environment, and Sustainability at UBC in 2004, where her thesis focused on the relationship between farming and water quality in the Fraser Valley. She received a BSc(Hons) in Environmental Sciences from the University of Guelph in 2001. Originally from Montreal, Ione has lived in BC for nearly 20 years. She currently resides on unceded shíshálh territory in Sechelt, BC.