Lethbridge College Offers Risk Management Program for Online Learning

Mar 29, 2016

In the summer of 2014, Cor Van Raay, a renowned agricultural entrepreneur in southern Alberta, donated $5 million to Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge to establish the Cor Van Raay Southern Alberta Agribusiness Program. And, as of last fall, the first initiative was offered under the program.

The initiative is called the Agriculture Business Risk Management Program, and is offered through Lethbridge College. Developed in collaboration with industry groups across the province, the program offers the opportunity for participants to focus on financial risk, and topics associated with it.

“The program is made up of 11 courses, and within those courses, we’ve made it very accessible by breaking them down into modules,’ explains Lyndsay Smith, agriculture industry liaison with Lethbridge College, “and a module is equivalent to one month of learning.”

The program covers topics like:

Effective Communications
Market Fundamentals
Government Policies and Marketing
Statistics or Agribusiness
Introduction to Market Tools
Market Tools
Market Currencies

And, the learning opportunity is not limited to registered students. In fact, the program, and its individual modules are all available online.

“This course is fully online,” Smith told RealAgriculture. “It is not offered at the campus right now. So all students would be taking it online. So there’s no geographical limitations to that — you can take it anywhere.”

Source : Albertacanola

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.