Alberta commodity groups have a good appreciation of what their Saskatchewan counterparts will be facing in the wake of a provincial budget that cut 119 agricultural extension staff.
The same thing happened one province over in 2002 when Alberta chopped 186 jobs from the agriculture ministry.
“We lost a lot of people in the field,” said Janette McDonald, executive director of Alberta Pulse Growers.
“The idea of the old public agronomists who would give you all their information because they were paid to is almost gone.”
Read Also
Powdery mildew can be combine fire risk
Dust from powdery mildew can cause fires in combines.
Alberta Agriculture officials say nothing has been lost because producers now have access to a call centre that offers them expert advice and refers their concerns about disease and insect outbreaks to private and public sector agronomists.
But Alberta Pulse Growers feels the cutbacks created an information-sharing void it is now trying to fill.
The group has established a pulse agronomy network it hopes will strengthen communication between private agronomists and those remaining in the public sector. The result should be better agronomic advice for the province’s pulse growers, said McDonald.
“(Producers) can be more confident that everybody in the industry knows the most recent information.”
A pilot version of the network was launched in 2003 when a team of 10 agronomists prepared one-page biweekly bulletins on a variety of topics that were distributed by e-mail to a small group of their peers throughout the growing season.
At the end of the year, participants were asked to rate the usefulness of the network.
“The evaluation was gratifying,” said McDonald. “We’re really enthused. And we went from 57 (participants) last year to 330 this year.”
Alberta Agriculture pulse extension specialist Mark Olson, who helped found the network, thinks Saskatchewan Pulse Growers should consider offering a similar service once the government job cuts in that province take effect on April 30.
“It’s something they should look at, no question.”
Garth Patterson, executive director of Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, said it’s too early to make that decision. A number of provincial grower groups are meeting with Saskatchewan Agriculture officials next week to better understand how the layoffs will affect them.
“We’re not at the point where we’re concerned yet, but we may be after we learn more about the specifics.”
In the meantime the association is putting its pulse production manual on its website in the next week or two, which provides considerable agronomic advice to growers.
McDonald said Alberta’s pulse agronomy network, which focuses on peas, was such a hit the association is test marketing a bean agronomy network that will be delivered to a group of 30 bean industry specialists this summer.
