The Joe and Laverna Hranac family estate recently donated $2.8 million to the post-secondary school, the second largest single donation in the institution’s history.

The announcement was celebrated at a field day at the school’s 385-acre research facility.

“This legacy gift from Joe and Laverna Hranac ensures our students and researchers can continue to work alongside industry partners to solve real-world agricultural challenges,” Brad Donaldson, president and chief executive officer of Lethbridge Polytechnic, said at the event.

“It’s a lasting investment in education, innovation and the agricultural community that helped shape the Hranacs’s lives.”

The gift will support operations at the school’s Research Farm, enabling the continuation and expansion of applied agriculture research and innovation. It also enhances the polytechnic’s capacity for student-focused, industry-connected agricultural research.

Lethbridge Polytechnic has been conducting applied research in agriculture for more than 30 years, most recently within the Centre for Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The centre has managed operations on the research farm since 2020 as part of a lease agreement with the Alberta government.

“The Hranac family’s gift, to support the research farm, strengthens our ability to respond to emerging challenges in southern Alberta’s agriculture and agri-food sector, specifically in the areas of integrated food production systems, irrigation science and post-harvest technology,” said Andrew Dunlop, associate vice-president of research.

“Their generosity also supports the polytechnic’s commitment to hands-on, applied learning that is deeply connected to industry.”

Born and raised in southern Alberta, Joe and Laverna Hranac were lifelong sugar beet, grain and canola producers who farmed land south of Chin and Cranford. Joe passed away in 2008 and Laverna in 2022.

The Hranacs were closely connected to their extended family who say their gift to Lethbridge Polytechnic was inspired by a shared belief in the power of education and a desire to invest in students and agriculture for generations to come.

“Joe and Laverna’s roots were based in farming, and along with that they carried a love of education and family throughout their lives,” said their niece, Cindy Powell.

“They believed in working hard, helping others and creating opportunities for the next generation. This gift reflects their vision of what’s possible and the kindness they shared with everyone around them.”

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The Agriculture Research Innovation Facility is housed in what was called the Farm Stewardship Centre when it was operated by the provincial agriculture ministry. It was acquired by the college in 2022.

It will be home to seven research laboratories and also assist “small- and medium-sized ag-tech and agri-food producers in their efforts to start up and scale up operations and develop new market opportunities,” the college said in a release.

The federal money is coming from Prairies Economic Development Canada – also known as PrairiesCan – a department created last year when it was spun off from Western Economic Diversification Canada.

The $2-million Lethbridge College grant was part of a series of funding announcements totalling $11.2-million that were made when the department’s minister, Dan Vandal, opened PrairieCan’s Lethbridge office. It also has offices in Calgary and Edmonton.

That sum includes $3.5-million for Lethbridge & District Exhibition for “state-of-the-art digitization of the Lethbridge Agri-Food and Trade Centre” and $242,000 to the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers to “evaluate new market opportunities.”

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“Current demand for fresh, locally grown produce far outstrips the available supply in a market reliant on Mexican and U.S. imports for most of the year,” the college said in a news release on a new initiative it is undertaking with Sunterra.

“This project aims to optimize the growing conditions for pre-commercial and commercial-scale production of strawberries and tomatoes on the vine, and boost Alberta’s crop output during times of limited supply and low import quality.”

Acme-headquartered Sunterra is adding a major greenhouse component to its extensive operations (which includes pork production and processing, cropping, a lineup of traditional Italian cured meats and a grocery chain).

“It’s a good news story — we believe that for Alberta, agriculture is the future and in a lot of ways will be an economic growth driver,” said Ray Price, president of the Sunterra Group, which owns Sonterra Markets, which has eight retail locations across the province.

“We have land, we have energy, we have people, and we have water, and we should be using those to feed not only Albertans but people around the world.”

The effort is getting a $783,000 grant from Results Driven Agriculture Research (the provincially funded body allocating research dollars).

The greenhouse vegetable sector in Alberta has been on a tear in recent years with sales more than doubling to nearly $120 million in 2020 compared to 2016, the college release states.

The project will focus on both establishing best practices for water and nutrient management (and energy efficiency) and also on technological innovations in greenhouses that “will increase their environmental efficiency while making their operations more productive and competitive.”

College associate vice-president Kenny Corscadden said it will be a long-term research collaboration.

“There is excellent market potential in our province for both strawberries and tomatoes and these pre-commercial trials in our Brooks research and production greenhouse with Sunterra will contribute to this growing sector,” he said.

The college’s greenhouse research facility at Brooks is 60,000 square feet but it will be dwarfed by a new facility Sonterra is building at Acme, the hometown of the Price family.

An initial 20-acre phase is scheduled to open this month and “will be built to accommodate 70 acres of growing — making it one of the largest food production areas under glass in Alberta,” the college news release states.

It also says there is currently about 200 acres “under glass” in the province but that could grow “to 1,000 acres within five years, creating 3,000 new jobs and generating $1 billion in revenue.”

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Lakeland is getting $1 million in federal funding for smart agriculture technology. It will be used to construct a new Livestock Reproductive Technology Laboratory and boost “on-farm connectivity infrastructure” for its Student-Managed Farm (SMF).

This will include specialized sensors and monitoring technology, emission detection equipment for livestock, optical spot-spraying technology and a drone fitted with two multispectral cameras. It also supports the college’s new $2.6-million Agriculture Technology Centre, which is opening at its Vermilion campus this fall.

“We’ll continue to move forward with establishing our new Agriculture Technology Centre as the ‘nerve centre’ for the research, collection and analysis of data collected from new ag technologies we use on our SMF,” said Michael Crowe, Lakeland’s VP of academic and applied research.

Meanwhile, Lethbridge College is getting $1.3 million from the same federal funding source, the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

More than $900,000 of those funds will go towards creating the Advanced Post-Harvest Technology Centre.

“The proposed state-of-the-art facility in partnership with the agriculture industry will be unique in Alberta and will fill the much-needed research capacity gap in post-harvest research focused on Alberta crops,” said applied research chair Chandra Singh.

The remaining $411,000 is for the Spatial Technologies Applied Research and Training (START) initiative, which will employ virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) technology. Although known for its entertainment uses, these technologies can also be used by businesses to “realize cost savings, enhance collaboration, and increase safety,” the college says on its website.

Alberta’s colleges are acquiring more cutting-edge technology, and developing the expertise in using it. That has prompted seven of them to sign a declaration to work together “to advance agriculture and food research in Alberta.”

In addition to fostering joint research, the declaration will allow the schools to “support consistent and competitive fee structures for agriculture and food-related applied research services, facilitate work-integrated learning opportunities for students, and to collectively share data and results,” they said in a joint release.

The other participants are Grande Prairie Regional College, Medicine Hat College, NAIT, Olds College and SAIT.

– information above provided via news releases.

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The degree program works in conjunction with the current agriculture sciences diploma program. 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 their second year. Students may then choose to earn an additional diploma with an extra year of study or can pursue the bachelor of agriculture science degree with two more years of study. 

Both programs have a strong focus on applied learning, the college said in a release, citing its Alberta Irrigation Technology Centre and research collaborations with Farming Smarter as examples. 

“Industry is asking for a new graduate,” School of Agriculture chair Byrne Cook said in the release. “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.”

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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 memorandum of understanding will sometimes see the two colleges conduct joint projects but will also have them “refer companies to each other based on the best fit with infrastructure and research expertise, and share relevant data and data networks.”

Both schools are adopting the latest ag tech and both do research for private sector companies on a fee-for-service basis.

“Our impact is significantly enhanced through collaboration and information sharing,” said Olds College president Stuart Cullum.

The MOU initially covers a three-year period and will be governed by a joint committee of representatives from both institutions.

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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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“Our water system is closed,” said Willemijn Appels, an irrigation scientist with Lethbridge College. “There is no more extra water that can be withdrawn for agriculture. Our water licences are already allocated.

“We need to use water more wisely and make more out of what we have.”

That has been occurring. The recently announced $815-million expansion will bring another 200,000 acres in the south under irrigation, largely by replacing canals with underground piping and adding four new reservoirs. And a move to low-pressure centre pivots and drip is also producing ‘more crop per drop.’

But the next frontier is precision irrigation, reducing water use by applying — based on soil moisture, topography and other factors — just the right amount in different parts of a field.

That’s the point of an ongoing four-year study led by Appels.

College researchers are monitoring both fields and existing management practices of area producers growing potatoes under irrigation. If successful, it may well mark the dawn of variable-rate irrigation (VRI) — a.k.a. ‘precision irrigation’ — in the province.

Appels does not expect to find comprehensive solutions that will revolutionize irrigation management. Even within a field, soil moisture is just too variable for that. Rather, the results of the project — which just completed its second growing season — will likely serve as a foundation for the development of tools to help growers understand if VRI would pay off for their farm, and what fields would offer the most bang for the buck.

“Ideally I would like to come up with a procedure,” said Appels. “When a farmer is considering upgrading their irrigation technology, we could offer a procedure that evaluates the potential impact of VRI as a function of the soil and topography variability of their field.

“It might say, ‘For this kind of field you should be looking at a useful application of VRI in, for instance, five out of 10 years or two out of five years. This may make a difference in X numbers of litres of water.’”

The project — a partnership between the college’s Centre for Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Potato Growers of Alberta — is taking place on five volunteer farms chosen by the growers’ association.

The farm locations (comprised of five research areas each) are located across a wide swath of southern Alberta on irrigated farms near Vauxhall, Bow Island, Chin and Taber.

A key thing to know about precision irrigation is that it by and large doesn’t exist.

Precision practices today are mostly relegated to irrigation timing requiring diligent by-hand soil testing and rainfall monitoring, said Appels. Avoiding problem areas such as wetlands and salty patches can also be considered a precision practice.

The research team hopes to expand on that.

Basically, they are recording farmers’ irrigation water use and measuring how it corresponds to soil moisture levels and yield. Factors such as topography of the landscape (high- versus low-lying areas) are taken under consideration in the final analysis.

The value of VRI

The problem with variable-rate irrigation, and the reason why it’s rarely used, is that it’s both data and time intensive. Also, the necessary foundation — primarily soil moisture maps — does not exist on a mass scale.

“It’s quite complex because you need to be aware of how your field responds under certain circumstances, which means you have to either install a lot of sensors or sample a lot of different locations,” said Appels. “And lots of people don’t have time for that.”

Most producers currently adjust their irrigation to crop requirements, but that doesn’t account for potentially crucial factors such as topography and distribution of soil moisture. However, having access to representative field data — such as that being collected in this research — may help producers practise VRI to a greater extent.

“When you think about it, you grow this same crop throughout this highly variable field,” Appels said. “As long as you meet the water demand of that one crop you might be OK; you’re just providing what the crop needs whether or not that land happens to be on a hill or in a depression or on a slope.”

The problem with that approach is fields are rarely, if ever, uniform in terms of soil moisture. Actual moisture levels within a field can vary within a matter of metres, she said.

“If you think of the roots as a bucket, in one location the bucket may leak more than in another location,” she said. “You may have to change how much water you put in or what frequency you put it in.”

Potatoes were chosen for the project, which is funded by the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s a high-value irrigation crop in the area, with processing infrastructure to match. Spuds are also very sensitive to the soil moisture around them, and can serve as a starting point for VRI on other irrigation crops such as canola, sugar beets, wheat and beans.

“Water is important to (those crops) and knowing the hydrology of a field can be beneficial for them.”

The research team is still in the process of analyzing the data from this year’s growing season, but what they do know is that variability within a field is highly dependent on the weather. Last year was dry (creating very little soil moisture variability) while this year’s rainfall has offered the researchers more to go on.

“This year, because of the June rainfall, soil moisture patterns were more complex and interesting for a while,” said Appels. “We’re running mode simulations to see if VRI at the various monitoring locations would have made a difference in yield or water use efficiency.”

Appels has high praise for the producers who have volunteered areas of their farms for the research.

“These are people who are interested in moving the irrigation industry forward. It’s been great to work with them.”

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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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