Soil Organic Matter & Crop Production Risks with Stuart Chutter

Stuart Chutter is an agriculture junky with passion for risk management, soil health, regenerative agriculture and fitness. Building resilience - in food production, in business and in personal development - are the conversations he wants to have.  For Stuart, diversity is the key to building soil health and to building his community. Stuart is a 38 year old farmer on a first-generation farm near Killaly, Saskatchewan.  Inspired by his farm customers while working in agriculture banking, he began his farm career 12 years ago.  Currently the farm operates in forage production – for both grazing and forage seed.  Most on-farm production practices are driven by the five foundations of building healthy soil – keeping the soil covered, minimizing disturbance, planting diversity, keeping a living root long in the season and integrating livestock. Stuart also works as a Policy Analyst at Agriculture Financial Services Cooperation for the Business Risk Management suite of products and services for Alberta Agriculture.  AFSCs vision is to build a strong, growing and diversified agriculture and agri-food sector in Alberta, and soil health and farmer resilience are fundamental to that strength.In this episode, Stuart shares information about his role with Agriculture Financial Services Corporation, including his duties and goals in the position.  Recently, Agriculture Financial Services Corporation has started a conversation about the impact soil organic matter has on crop yields and how this could be used in the future to calculate crop insurance premiums.  We take some time to discuss how this connection was made and how the process to evaluate the relationship was started.  We discuss what this could mean for farmers, recognizing that at this time, it is a very preliminary conversation and that there is much work to be done before this moves from anything more than a topic of conversation.While this does not mean that there is movement towards reducing insurance premiums based on soil organic matter at this time, it is a very interesting idea and a valuable conversation to start.To contact Stuart with any questions, please email [email protected]. Stuart would like to send acknowledgements to Kim Cornish for her work on soil organic carbon that has made this conversation possible.Links to articles mentioned in this episode:Should soil organic matter be a factor in insurance premiums? - Alberta Farmer Express (albertafarmexpress.ca)https://www.albertafarmexpress.ca/crops/should-soil-organic-matter-be-a-factor-in-insurance-premiums/ What’s the relationship between soil organic matter and crop insurance? - Grainews https://www.grainews.ca/news/whats-the-relationship-between-soil-organic-matter-and-crop-insurance/The research programs and daily operations at MBFI would not be possible without the funding from the Province of Manitoba, Government of Canada, and Canadian Agricultural Partnership, as well as the partnership with Manitoba Agriculture, Manitoba Beef Producers (MBP), and

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