By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG
The Ministry of Agriculture and Food is organizing a series of soil workshops throughout the province, two of which will be held in the northern region of B.C. The Ministry has not announced the dates and locations of the workshops, but they will take place from January through March of 2025.
Participants will get the dirt on how to analyze their soil and improve their soil management practices to increase productivity, said Ahmed Lasisi, a soil carbon specialist for the Ministry.
“Soil, on a large scale, is so diverse,” Lasisi told The Goat. “We hope that when farmers come, they have the opportunity to ask questions that are relevant to their own environment, and the message delivered in the workshop itself is relevant to that particular environment.”
For example, large swaths of northern B.C. have a soil moisture deficit due to drought, Lasisi said. He hopes the northern-based workshops will discuss how to conserve soil moisture.
Soil management is crucial for efficient food production and developing economic resiliency, said Lasisi.
“If you are able to improve the organic matter in your soil, it’s an aid to the productivity of your soil and also creates an environment so the soil is resilient to any environmental changes,” he said. “The overall goal is to increase productivity… but part of it is that we want to develop soil health for resilience, especially to events from climate change.”
To that end, the workshops will also teach producers how to use tools to assess their soil health, improve resiliency, and improve economic return, he added. Healthy soil provides a strong foundation for agriculture and increasing B.C.’s food sovereignty, according to Lasisi.
“Part of our responsibility [in the Ministry] is to support producers with our expertise,” Lasisi said. “Being soil scientists, we feel that if we’re able to improve the resiliency in their soil, their productivity will definitely be improved.”
