Brian is chief scientist for Viresco Solutions Inc, an environmental consulting firm whose vision is “mainstreaming sustainability” by helping their clients in the agriculture value chain to strategically navigate the complex and evolving world of sustainability. Prior to joining Viresco Solutions in 2019, Brian had 33 years of diverse experience in agri-environmental research, technology application and science policy with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Swift Current, Saskatchewan. He is author or coauthor of over 200 scientific papers and book chapters covering soil and plant processes, soil health, water-agriculture inter-relationships, impacts of climate change on agriculture, quantifying carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions at field to national scales and the assessment of the sustainability of agricultural production.
On the agricultural landscape, soil organic carbon is valued by farmers and ranchers because it is positively related to soil health and land productivity. But importantly, there is also a huge interest in the business world for increasing carbon on the agricultural landscape as a way to remove the greenhouse gas, CO2, from the atmosphere. Brian’s presentation will cover ways to increase landscape carbon for grassland and forages, methods for quantifying the change in carbon stocks and approaches to extract monetary value from increasing carbon on agricultural landscapes that are relevant to Canada.