By Alice McFarlane

Improving soil health skills through new training program

Sep 4, 2024 | 3:55 PM

A soil health up-skilling program for crop advisors is taking root in Manitoba and Saskatchewan with support from leading food and beverage companies, collaborators, and scientific partners.

The Canadian Prairies Trusted Advisor Partnership will launch its first cohort at the start of 2025 as a counterpart to the North Dakota Trusted Advisor Partnership, which formed in 2022 to provide Certified Crop Advisors (CCAs) with practical soil health training.

The Trusted Advisor Partnership aims to fill the continued gap in technical assistance for science-driven soil health management in the Prairies. By providing agronomists with the next-generation skills, technological know-how, and professional networks they will expand their consulting reach to thousands of additional acres.

The Canadian Prairies TAP is supported by General Mills, PepsiCo, Bimbo Canada, Nature United, and South East Research Farm, and will offer education in soil health agronomy, water management, and diversified cropping systems, covering established and emerging stewardship practices in topics like residue management, zone mapping, variable rate technology, and tillage reduction.

The initial cohort will open to CCAs in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The program could expand to other provinces in the future. Assiniboine College in Brandon, Man. will host the TAP curriculum and coordinate the issuance of Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

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Assiniboine’s Dean of Ag & Environment Tim Dean said the TAP program is an obvious fit with its current set of programs.

“Assiniboine is a national leader in flexible, adaptive, distance learning, and TAP provides the practical information and peer networking that crop advisors require to make sustainability a core part of their business, now and in the future,” he said. “In the Northern Great Plains and Prairie Pothole regions, areas of the U.S. and Canada, ecosystems are threatened by erosion, weather extremes, and disease and pest pressures.”

TAP is speeding up the transition of hundreds of thousands of acres to sustainable management in the coming years by empowering trusted advisors and their farmer clients.

The North Dakota TAP, which offers a three-month online training curriculum, in-person workshops, and financial incentives to participating farm advisors and producers, has garnered strong interest so far.

More than 30 independent CCAs have graduated from the unique curriculum, which focuses not only on the principles of soil health, but the logistical considerations, labor needs, and site-specific constraints that pose common barriers to adoption of sustainable agriculture.

In the next five years, the Canadian Prairies TAP plans to train more than 225 agronomists in soil-centric land management, potentially bringing cutting-edge conservation agriculture to well over 500 farmers by 2029.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @farmnewsNOW