Neil Harker retires from Agriculture Canada after 33 year career, which included a shift in focus to non-herbicide alternatives
When Neil Harker began his career in weed science, most of the conversations revolved around one topic: herbicides.
Back then, in the 1980s, weed scientists studied what to spray and how to spray it but little else.
“I kind of fell in line with everybody (in weed science) and just started looking at herbicide options,” said Harker, an Agriculture Canada weed scientist in Lacombe, Alta.
“I (did) this for 10 years or so, just looking at herbicide options and herbicide mixtures and ways to improve herbicides with adjuvants.”
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Harker, who retired Dec. 15 after nearly 33 years with Agriculture Canada, began his career focused on herbicides but the second part of his research was much different.
Harker shifted his attention to non-herbicidal weed control and became a globally recognized leader in integrated weed management.
“He sort of saw ahead that resistance (to herbicides) would be a problem in the future and we had to develop these integrated strategies,” said Hugh Beckie, an Agriculture Canada research scientist in Saskatoon. “Trying to reduce our reliance on the big hammer, which (is) herbicides.”
Harker, born and raised in Magrath, Alta., and educated at the University of Alberta, University of Guelph and the University of Minnesota, shifted the focus of his research in the mid-1990s.
By that time, wild oats had become resistant to weed killers in Western Canada and Harker realized there was more to weed science than herbicides.
He began to think about ways to make crops more competitive.
One of his first insights was seeding rates.
If growers increased seeding rates, a field would have a higher population of plants. More plants per sq. metre could help suppress weeds.
“That was a substantial change and one of the things I’m happy I was involved in,” Harker said. “A lot of people eventually realized that’s an easy way to increase crop competitiveness, at a fairly low cost, especially in cereals like wheat and barley.”
Harker, who published more than 190 scientific papers during his career and has presented his findings around the globe, didn’t give up on herbicides but he studied ways to use them more effectively.
In the 1990s, the ag industry had shifted to post-emergent herbicides but growers weren’t using them properly.
“Everybody was waiting and waiting until all the weeds were up. They thought: oh, I can get them all,” Harker recalled. “(But) they were losing a lot of yield…. We studied the effects of early weed removal and found it was very critical.”
At some point in his career, Harker also realized there’s more to research than gathering data and publishing papers. If a scientist wants to have a real world impact, the research must include information on real world profits and losses.
“I think a big step was getting the economists involved (in the research),” he said. “Until you get an economist involved, you can talk all you want but people just say, oh well … that sounds great but I can’t make as much money doing that.”
Beckie said Harker made an impact on growers and his fellow scientists.
“Neil has been a pioneer in terms of integrated weed management,” he said. “He really was one of my mentors … when I joined Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.”
Harker may have had a successful career and made a difference, but he remains concerned about two major changes in prairie agriculture. One is the size of farms and the other is the disappearance of mixed farming.
Larger farms can be more economical, but they can cause what Rene Van Acker of the University of Guelph has called Betty Crocker farming, where growers follow a production recipe.
“When you get bigger and bigger, you want to do the same things over and over and do the simplest things…. It’s harder to do diverse things,” Harker said, adding the loss of farms with livestock and grain has removed forage from many crop rotations.
“(It) leaves us fewer options for forages … and all those things that can be really good in a rotation.”
After more than three decades with Agriculture Canada, Harker is now looking to do something else with his life. He hopes to make an impact in a different way.
“I’ll have fun playing with a bunch of grandkids. Also, my wife and I are talking about doing missionary service…. We’ve applied and we’ll see what happens.”
