The Prairie Provinces encompass nearly 85 per cent of Canada’s total farmland. Given the massive scale of Western Canadian agriculture, several of the world’s leading precision agriculture companies have established headquarters here. These businesses naturally need to hire many precision ag specialists said Angela Bedard-Haughn, dean of the University of Saskatchewan College of Agriculture and Bioresources. Ag research facilities also require
digitally skilled employees, and there is high demand among students for educational opportunities in this area. USask has even identified interest among students from non-agricultural areas of study.

Now in its second year, the Palette Skills Automation and Digital Agriculture Specialist Program is intended as a gateway for much-needed, skilled digital professionals to enter the agriculture sector. The eight-week Digital Agriculture course is funded by the federal government and the Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative. Open to post-secondary graduates with minimum three years of work experience, it includes subjects such as AI, big data, drones, GIS, IoT and robotics.

Students at Lethbridge College now have the ability to turn a two-year agriculture diploma into a full undergraduate degree with the institution’s brand-new bachelor of agriculture science program, which began this fall.

An antidote to stagnation, innovation is the engine that drives all business sectors. In agriculture, farmers have continuously been at the centre of innovation.