The degree program, which is unique to Lethbridge College, begins in September 2021 and offers opportunities for career development, a path to further education and hands-on research opportunities, while focusing on the science of agriculture.

Lethbridge College’s Bachelor of Agriculture Science is a flexible program that ladders out of the current Agriculture Sciences diploma program. The program is the only of its kind in southern Alberta and is comparable to Bachelor of Science degree programs offered at the University of Alberta and University of Saskatchewan. The new Bachelor of Agriculture Science program is recognized by the Alberta Institute of Agrologists, meaning students will earn a Professional Agrologist designation following graduation. The program also prepares students to pursue further MSc and PhD training.

“When developing new programs, the needs of industry are at the forefront and the Bachelor of Agriculture Science will support the entire agriculture sector,” says Dr. Paula Burns, Lethbridge College President and CEO. “By focusing on the science of agriculture, this program supports sustainable, innovative and responsible agriculture and appeals to students from a wide variety of backgrounds who want to make a difference in feeding the world.”

Students studying Agriculture Science at Lethbridge College have flexibility when it comes to their educational path. Students in the two-year diploma program have a common first-year curriculum, before choosing to major in Agriculture Business, Agronomy or Animal Science in the second year. Students may then choose to earn an additional diploma with just one extra year of study, or they may choose to pursue a Bachelor of Agriculture Science degree with two more years of study.

In addition to theory and classroom-based learning opportunities, Agriculture Science students in both the diploma and degree programs have many applied learning opportunities as well, including working with the college-managed Alberta Irrigation Technology Centre and research collaborations with Farming Smarter.

Dr. Samantha Lenci, Lethbridge College Provost and Vice President, adds that this new degree option “supports the current and future direction of programming of the college that encompasses trades to degrees.”

“This new degree will link our academic program with our expanded agriculture research on special crops and irrigation that are specific to southern Alberta, creating an excellent learning opportunity for students,” adds Dr. Terry Kowalchuk, Dean of the Centre for Technology, Environment and Design. “We are also excited about the strong focus on business and communication skills, as well as the connection students will make with our community and industry partners as they work to complete the degree. We can’t wait to welcome students to this new program this fall.”

Students pursuing the Bachelor of Agriculture Science program will also have opportunities to be involved in hands-on applied research through the Centre for Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Integrated Agriculture Technology Centre. With leading researchers in irrigation, agricultural engineering technology and aquaponics, Lethbridge College students will be able to work closely with industry on real-world issues.

“Industry is asking for a new graduate,” says Byrne Cook, chair of the School of Agriculture. “There is a demand for fundamentals in plant and soil science combined with a strong understanding of data-driven agriculture. Every year there is new smart agriculture technology and opportunity.”

Cook adds: “Our students will have the scientific background to not only manage and adapt these geospatial tools and sensors to specific production settings, they will also determine return on investment. Using the latest interpretive tools graduates will prescribe solutions to soil, moisture, pest, fertility, topography and crop rotation variability. This combination of knowledge in agronomy and data analysis will create a graduate unique to Western Canada.”

Lethbridge College has offered agriculture education since 1965. Previous graduates of the college’s Agriculture Sciences programs are eligible to enrol in the Bachelor of Agriculture Science program for Fall 2021. To learn more, visit lethbridgecollege.ca/AgScienceDegree.

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The study will be province-wide and is looking for producers with 20,000- to 50,000-bushel bins with temperature and moisture monitoring. (Fully automated fan and heater control are also preferred.)

Participating growers willing to automate can get a 20 per cent discount on monitoring cables and control systems from OPIsystems in Calgary.

Contact project lead Chandra Singh at chandra.singh@lethbridgecollege.ca or 587-899-8405 for more info.

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But while it’s more water efficient compared to surface irrigation, there are few scientific studies on subsurface fertigation (SDF) specific to Alberta crops and soil conditions.

“Most of the data we have is from the U.S. on crops like alfalfa, cotton and soybeans,” said Rezvan Karimi Dehkordi, who led a two-year study on this topic. “We don’t have enough information for Alberta farmers specifically on the best timing and rate of application. Without independent local data, it is not possible to provide realistic scenarios to agricultural producers about the value of SDF.”

Karimi worked with First Fruit Farms near Lomond, to test different fertilizer applications on durum wheat in 2019 and pinto beans 2020; she then compared the results with a control crop that did not receive any fertilizer. The 2019 study found durum wheat crops treated with subsurface fertilizers had higher levels of nitrogen and phosphorus uptakes as well as higher yields.

However, the 2020 study of pinto beans found no significant difference between the study and control crops, which is partly due to the wet conditions that year, said Karimi, a research associate on the Mueller Applied Research in Irrigation Science team.

For First Fruit Farms owner Matthew Wiens, the research partnership was an opportunity to validate some of his own observations from using subsurface fertigation, which applies water and fertilizer directly to the root zones.

“Dr. Karimi and her team provided a lot of the data collection, the sampling and counting,” Wiens said. “Instead of just getting a yield result at the end, we could watch how the fertigation was affecting the plants throughout the season so in the end we’re starting to better pinpoint the timing of the fertigation and when it is the most helpful within that plant’s growth cycle.”

The study is a first step in determining whether the agronomic and economic benefits of subsurface irrigation and fertigation are enough to justify the higher cost of these systems, said Karimi.

“It would be great to be able to better quantify exactly how much water we can save, how much we can increase the yield for different crops like winter wheat or canola and the best time to apply fertilizer,” she said. “Longer-term experiments across multiple crops would also help with adoption of SDI (subsurface drip irrigation) technology in southern Alberta.”

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The program is being revamped so there is a common first year focused on basics of agriculture, such as botany, animal science, commodity marketing, soils, sustainable agriculture and communications. Students will then select from one of three majors in their second year: agronomy, animal science or a recently introduced agriculture business option. Previously, students had to choose a major prior to their first year of study. The change goes into effect this month.

“Many students begin college unsure what area they would like to specialize in, or which area of agriculture they might find opportunity in,” said Terry Kowalchuk, dean of the Centre for Technology, Environment and Design.

The Agriculture Sciences program has a nearly 100 per cent job placement rate following graduation, said Byrne Cook, chair of the School of Agriculture.

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The Integrated Agriculture Technology Centre is one of six new technology access centres being funded by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

“The Integrated Agriculture Technology Centre will help to drive forward one of the country’s most important industries and provide a boost to the provincial economy,” said college president and CEO Paula Burns.

The centre will offer crop and greenhouse growers, food processors, and ag-tech companies access to applied R&D, technical services, consulting and training, with a focus on the college’s core research areas of aquaculture, crop production and wet processing.

“Agriculture is one of our region’s largest industries with more than 900 farms, many of which are small- or medium-size enterprises, generating $1.1 billion per year,” said Kenny Corscadden, the college’s associate vice-president of research, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The college is home to the Aquaculture Centre of Excellence, the Mueller Applied Research Chair in Irrigation Science and an applied Research Chair in Agricultural Engineering and Technology.

“The ability to support local agriculture enterprises and help them grow and scale represents a huge opportunity for the college and community, especially at a time of great uncertainty and change in the Canadian and global economy,” said Megan Shapka, manager of the new centre.

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The Lethbridge equipment dealer is providing equipment, installation and training on its precision agriculture system — a CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Station) network. It uses satellite data to improve the precision of positioning of equipment in a variety of industries. The gift, valued at $100,000, also includes installing a receiver in an on-campus tractor.

Since 2004, Hanlon Ag Centre has given almost $300,000 worth of sponsorship, equipment, gift-in-kind and financial contributions to the college.

The company has hired 19 college alumni over the years and currently has four college apprentices on staff.

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The college is getting $1 million towards its Centre for Sustainable Food Production that will be used for the greenhouse that will work in conjunction with the existing Aquaculture Centre of Excellence. This will allow for facility trials in aquaponics, bioreactor technology and integrated plant production systems.

A second grant of $147,000 will be used to purchase a system that measures the amount of moisture leaving plants as water vapour, along with three pieces of equipment for research into antibacterial activities of plants native to Alberta.

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The 110 monoliths are vertical cross-sections about one metre long that show soil from a variety of regions in its natural state. Long been housed at Agriculture Canada’s Lethbridge research centre, the soil monoliths have been appraised at $240,000, but are worth much more, say college officials.

“It’s priceless as a way to show our students the greater diversity of soils from a much larger region than we could visit on our own,” said Edith Olson, Lethbridge College Agriculture and Environmental Sciences instructor.

“They have practicality, which ties in beautifully with the educational goals of the college, which is presenting the strong theory, the science, and the physical learning environment so that we can actually help in the real world.”

The collection, containing eight out of the 10 official orders of soil, come from across Western Canada. The value of the collection as a teaching tool was first recognized by longtime college soils instructor Ken Perl, who has frequently taken classes to the Lethbridge research centre. He was involved in the initial talks to bring the collection to the college, a process that took many years.

“I would take students over there on field trips in our soil classification and taxonomy class,” said Perl. “It was integral to my course to show the students that soil isn’t just something you dig up and arbitrarily manipulate, it has many different classifications.

“If you stretch your imagination, soil really is a living, breathing organism like a coral reef and really just as complex.”

The history of the collection is something of a mystery. It’s believed that federal and provincial soil surveyors likely created the collection over a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s, but there is little historical documentation about the collection. The soil samples are largely from southern Alberta, but also include soils from elsewhere in the province as well as from Saskatchewan, B.C., and the Yukon Territory.

Each one is as unique as a fingerprint, and the effort that went into creating the collection was enormous.

“A considerable amount of resources, staff, labour, travel, and time would have been invested in building this collection,” said Jim Miller, a federal research scientist at Lethbridge centre. “Some of these would have been remote locations. You’ve got to travel to the sites, dig a huge soil pit and carefully cut out and excavate a large intact soil monolith.”

The process of mounting the monoliths is also arduous, as each has to be carefully placed on a backboard while preserving its physical features — a meticulous combination of art and science.

“It is a very slow and delicate process to excavate an intact soil monolith and a lot can go wrong and then you might have to start over,” said Miller. “In addition, it is a very laborious and delicate process to fill the soil pores with epoxy resin or glue back in the laboratory to ensure the soil structure remains intact and doesn’t fall apart.

Miller likens the collection to a form of taxidermy.

“A soil monolith collection is analogous to a natural history museum, but instead of preserved animals or plants, you have preserved intact soil monoliths,” he said. “Soils are not classified as species like animals and plants because there is a gradation of soil types in natural landscapes and soils are not discrete units like animals and plant species.”

To Perl, the monoliths’ value is their ability to fill in the blanks where a literal field trip — when he and his students would dig into the ground — falls short.

“We could only do one or two soil types on a field trip,” he said. “But these are fantastic because they represent all of southern Alberta and beyond.”

After taking so many classes to see the monoliths, Perl is now recognized as the resident expert on the collection.

“People would say, ‘That must get boring,’ but I would say, ‘No, every time I look at those, there’s some other detail, some value-added insight,’” he said. “It’s amazing how you can look at them in a different light and say, ‘This is what that profile is telling us, not only about the soil resource, but also the climatic and ecological conditions that shaped the soil, and in turn how the soil affected the related ecosystem.’”

The collection is now on display on the third floor of the Cousins Building, right outside of the college’s soils lab.

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All college students are eligible to join the extracurricular AgENT program. At the beginning of the academic year, they will be presented with a challenge and will then receive industry mentorship as they brainstorm, design, and test solutions. At the end of the year, they will pitch their solutions to industry with the chance to win awards and see their ideas put into action.

“Our AgENT participants will focus on idea generation and outside-the-box thinking,” says Megan Shapka, AgENT program co-ordinator. “We’re providing opportunities to develop foundational skills and inspire entrepreneurial spirit.”

To launch the program, the college is working to connect with industry partners who are interested in putting students to the test. The goal is to have students addressing real-life challenges, not just hypotheticals, that will help improve the agriculture industry in southern Alberta.

The AgENT program is made possible thanks to a $5-million gift in 2014 to Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge from Alberta cattle producer Cor Van Raay. Agriculture industry partners interested in being involved in the program are encouraged to contact Shapka at megan.shapka@lethbridgecollege.ca or 403-320-3203 ext. 5535.

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The program was launched a year ago, and those completing it were initially awarded a credential of academic achievement. The provincial certificate approval provides a variety of benefits, including making students eligible for student loans.

The program was developed specifically for those in the agriculture industry and is made up of eight core courses and two capstone courses, each divided into modules that take one month to complete.

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