RDAR on the Road: Medicine Hat

Clay, Agriproducts Manager with WestMET, has a wealth of experience in the mining, energy and agricultural industries. Clay started his career in the oil and gas industry as a drilling engineer in Alberta after completing his Petroleum Engineering degree at the University of Calgary.

After starting his professional career in the oil and gas industry as a drilling engineer, Clay returned to his agricultural roots by operating an ag services business specializing in water well development.

After the development and sale of his startup, he joined the Sheerness mine as a mine engineer. As Clay also owns and operates a family ranch a short distance from the Sheerness mine, he quickly saw the agronomic value in the rich humalite deposit at the mine.

Clay accepted a role as the Agriproducts Manager developing humalite into various agricultural products.

Rob Dunn is a Professional Agrologist based in Lethbridge, providing consulting support to farmers and agricultural organizations through his company, FarmWise Inc.

Prior to 2014, he served in various specialist and program coordination roles with Alberta Agriculture, focusing on cropping system and soil health research and technology transfer.

Over the past six years, Rob has managed the southern region APG P2Field trials and is currently helping to coordinate the ABG P2Farm trials beginning this year.

Andy Kirschenman is a third-generation dryland farmer at Hilda.

He tries to blend applicable soil health principles with necessary technologies to have a successful farming operation in what can only be described lately as ”adverse conditions.”

Thierry is a Research Scientist with Farming Smarter. Thierry assists in the design and development of innovative research projects that help to improve soil health and nutrient availability while also coordinating research grant applications for new projects. At Farming Smarter, he also publishes project reports for peer review.

Thierry comes from a background in environmental archaeology, studying microfossils and re-creating environments from the past.

Before joining Farming Smarter, he completed a Post-Doc with University of Alberta, involving a pilot study that evaluated the impact of farm management practices on soil health, nutrient availability, and carbon sequestration for the Regenerative Alberta Living Labs.

Dr. Yamily has managed the Chinook Applied Research Association's (CARA) crop and soil program for the past seven years and now manages CARA's Soil Health Lab (CSHL), the first of its kind in western Canada. The CSHL focuses on the evaluation of physical and biological soil properties and allows producers the opportunity for hands-on evaluation of their soils.

Prior to joining CARA, she was a crop production consultant based out of Ottawa, where project work took her to Central and South America as well as points in the south and west of Africa. Her passion for understanding and improving the health of soils has contributed to improvements in the local agricultural economies where she has worked.

Yamily is a sought-after speaker and has addressed producers across western Canada on various soil health topics and demonstrations.