Mr. Jeff Schahczenski is an agricultural and natural resource economist with the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and he has worked on sustainable and organic for over 25 years. For the last 14 years he has worked on whole farm revenue and crop insurance generally. . He wrote and help develop a NIFA, Organic Research and Extension Initiative project entitled, Is Organic Farming Risky?: Overcoming and Understanding Crop Insurance Barriers to Expanding Organic Food Production and Markets, which, in part, undertook an extensive analysis of the Whole Farm Revenue Protection policy. This work has garnered national policy attention. Results of this work will be available at the MOA conference.
His other efforts include publication of studies on blockchain technology and agriculture supply chain management, biochar, conservation policy, organic economics, impact of GMOs on sustainable agriculture and the role of agriculture in climate change. He was a past elected member of the Organizational Council of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Executive Director of the Big Hole River Foundation and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (WSAWG). Jeff has built his own straw bale house and greenhouse. Before moving to Montana in 1991, Jeff worked for Rutgers University, started one of the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms in New Jersey, received graduate degrees in agricultural economics and political science, served in the Peace Corps in Belize, Central America, and worked many summers on his grandfather’s dairy farm in Wisconsin.