Agriculture Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre has played a pivotal role in the region’s development.
It was established in 1906 on the western side of the Palliser Triangle, a vast stretch of prairie once deemed too dry for productive agriculture.
Its initial mission was to develop irrigation in the notoriously dry region and breed crops that would work in rotation with sugar beets, the first irrigated crop.
Thus began a research mission that encompasses crop breeding projects for soft white wheat, forages, beans and potatoes, and projects that are at the forefront of cattle research in Canada.
Read Also
Research looks to control flea beetles with RNAi
A Vancouver agri-tech company wants to give canola growers another weapon in the never-ending battle against flea beetles.
Research manager Brian Freeze credits the facility for much of the agricultural development in the region.
“Southern Alberta is really unique,” he said. “A lot of other areas on the Prairies just grow crops and export them. Here, a lot of material that we grow, the sugar beets, potatoes, canola, a lot of that stuff gets processed here.…. That’s why this area is so rich. It doesn’t just produce crops, it produces value-added processing.”
He noted the development of the Alberta bean industry, which bene-grown
fited from breeding development and agronomic research and now exports 80 percent of the beans grown in the province.
Potatoes are another example of research put into action. Breeding programs at the centre led to a huge expansion of the industry.
“There’s actually more potatoes here now than there is in Prince Edward Island and the Maritimes,” said Freeze.
“That’s why we have four plants that process potatoes here: the two chipping plants on the way to Taber and then the Old Dutch in Calgary and Frito-Lay plant in Taber. So that’s been a real driver for this area, that regional crop production.”
Freeze said the centre’s research into conservation tillage has been widely adopted. It was largely developed by Wayne Lindwall, who worked for much of his career at the Lethbridge research facility.
Freeze said the centre’s strategic location in feedlot alley, which has the highest cattle feedlot concentration in the country, is no accident.
“This is the main beef research centre for the country,” he said.
“Our sister centre in Lacombe does most of the post slaughter research on beef … but here we do everything up to slaughter. This centre was the key developer for the feedlot feeding system in this area.”
He said the centre’s development of a barley finishing system was instrumental in feedlot operations. For example, the practice of tempering barley by adding water to rations was studied and tested at the research centre and is now common practice in feedlots.
About 500,000 cattle per year are finished in the County of Lethbridge and three million in Alberta.
Cattle cross-breeding research, grazing studies on short-grass prairie and extensive work on livestock pest management also appears on the centre’s resume.
“This centre had probably the only livestock pest management group in North America,” Freeze said.
“We used to have up to 10 scientists looking at livestock pests, everything from cattle grubs to horn flies to mosquitoes to lice and ticks on cattle.”
New research directions relate to the environment, including compost studies, manure management and the presence and transmission of pathogens from manure.
There are also projects on cattle and greenhouse gas emissions and a major initiative on developing triticale as an industrial biorefinery crop.
Freeze isn’t particularly concerned about adequate funding for research, a topic that has sparked a concentrated farm lobby to increase federal agricultural funding.
He was involved in developing the federal agriculture policy framework that has morphed into Growing Forward. It advocates research initiatives that involve funding by industry and commodity groups.
“What people sometimes see is a decrease in the federal contribution but actually, in terms of the partnership, we’ve increased the funding quite a bit and in the last, second generation of the APF called Growing Forward, we actually increased substantially the amount of money going to universities for agricultural research.”
He said industry funding ensures that research addresses particular agricultural needs, such as crop breeding for resistance to specific diseases.
However, he recognizes the need for the centre to take on high risk projects that industry isn’t inclined to tackle. Examples include the triticale project and much of the environmental research.
Lethbridge Research Centre
- Established in 1906
- Employs 53 scientists, 350 employees and more than 50 post-doctoral students.
- 2,300 sq. metre laboratory and office complex
- 1,285 acres of land for field trials and long-term plots
- Includes a feed mill, 1,000 head feedlot, controlled environment building and insect containment facility
- Conducts major research programs in cattle nutrition, reproduction and animal welfare; biocontrol of rangeland weeds; crop breeding; and environmental impacts of agriculture
- Latest research directions include BSE prion degradation, dried distillers grain in feedlot diets, food safety, industrial triticale for biofuel and cattle gas emissions
