Conferences
Quantifying and Reducing Production Risk in Agriculture: Key Takeaways From a New Soil Health Risk Model
Harley Cross
Summary
Pioneering farmers and researchers have shown many benefits of building soil health, both on farms and beyond, yet adoption of soil health management systems remains low in much of U.S. agriculture. Important barriers limiting farmers' adoption include upfront costs and uncertainties about how practices will work out on their land.
Furthermore, while it's generally understood that soil health practices can mitigate agricultural production risk (primarily by increasing resilience to flooding and drought), the institutions that price risk, such as lenders and insurers, do not yet recognize these risk reduction benefits or return this value to farmers.
In this presentation, Harley Cross, co-founder of the soil health non-profit, Land Core, shares their groundbreaking work building an actuarially-sound, predictive model of the risk reduction associated with specific soil health practices, and the preliminary findings demonstrating the empirical link between soil health and on-farm risk.
Join to learn more about:
- The research (done in partnership with an interdisciplinary team at UC Berkeley, Michigan State University, & University of Arkansas) detailing the impacts of soil-health practices on production and economic risk
- The associated tool designed for lenders and insurers to quantify the savings derived from client practice adoption
- Lessons learned from a partnership Farm Credit System leader, Compeer Financial (with $30 billion under management)
- The industry-wide possibilities for unlocking unprecedented market-based funding mechanisms to help producers catalyze a rapid transition to a more resilient agricultural system
- Opportunities for technical assistance and Extension personnel to utilize the data in serving producer demand for support in transitioning to soil-health management systems.
Details
| Conference | 2023 Extension Risk Management Education National Conference |
| Presentation Type | 30 minute concurrent session |