Summer opportunities with Farming Smarter

By Kyle Weinberger 

As you walk into the Farming Smarter building you hear laughter and chatter. You’re blinded by the sun as you feel the heat sweltering around you. You smile as the sun begins to set and you look at all the hard work you just finished. These are just a few of the experiences a summer at Farming Smarter provides.  

Farming Smarter is a nonprofit registered charity that is helping to make a difference in agricultural endurance. Farming Smarter started as an amalgamation of two different associations in 2012, the Southern Applied Researcher Association (SARA) and the Southern Alberta Conservation Association (SACA). The two organizations came together to help improve the way we grow our crops and to teach others.  

Farming Smarter offers summer jobs for high school and post-secondary students who will be returning to school next year. Students can be enrolled in any program, not just agriculture. However, some students have changed their programs after they have experienced what Farming Smarter has to offer. 

Christian Alloway is a returning summer student who added agriculture to his degree after his first year. “Farming Smarter introduced me not only to agriculture as a general practice but also the applied research behind improving it. It showed me that there was a way to not only continue my degree in school, but how to incorporate agriculture.” 

Farming Smarter helped Alloway find his love for agriculture and the work that goes into it. He hopes to continue learning and growing his agricultural knowledge during his second year at Farming Smarter. Farming Smarter Association provides opportunities for all its summer students to learn innovative and sustainable agricultural practices. 

Students take part in every step of the crop growing process throughout their summer at Farming Smarter. From prepping the field, seeds, and fertilizer to seeding and later harvesting. During the summer, students will take part in the data collection and analysis side of agronomy research and maintain the plots. This includes roguing weeds and possibly threshold spraying for weeds and pests. The students have come from all over Canada to learn at Farming Smarter this summer.  

One of these students is Levi Mitchell, a third year Environmental Science student. 

“I had a friend who told me that her friend worked here and that she thought it was a great experience.” Mitchell plans to enhance his own agricultural endeavours with what he learns at Farming Smarter. “It relates to my interests and schooling, so I decided to get a job here for the summer.”  

Farming Smarter hopes to provide students with the opportunity to build on what they have learned and develop their skills further with practical hands-on experiences like pest management, nutrient management, crop rotation and precision farming. These practices will help to keep the next generation of agricultural professionals skilled in sustainable practices for the betterment of the industry. With summer students getting into the field, Farming Smarter’s social media will host exciting updates of their work. Be sure to follow us on your favourite platform to be part of the excitement!