Ag’s role in Prairie Resilience

Dec 03, 2018

The province released its new Climate Resilience Framework on Thursday

By Kate Ayers
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Saskatchewan recognizes the roles farmers play in climate change mitigation and reducing the province’s environmental footprint, the province’s new strategy shows.

The framework, a Climate Resilience Measurement Framework, is the first of its kind in Canada, a Government of Saskatchewan release said on Thursday.

One commitment in Sask.’s framework is to include Fertilizer Canada’s 4R Nutrient Stewardship practice. This field management protocol uses the Right Source @ Right Rate, Right Time, Right Place®, a Fertilizer Canada release said on Friday.

Indeed, the Sask. government aims for 25 per cent of the province’s cropland be under the 4R designation by 2025.

This component is part of the broader strategy, which will measure and enhance climate change resilience in the province using 25 parameters. The plan is a part of Prairie Resilience and aims to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 12 million tonnes by 2030, the Sask. government release said.

“Our government has made significant progress in the development of Prairie Resilience since it was announced nearly one year ago,” Dustin Duncan, Sask.’s environmental minister, said in the release.

“This new resilience framework covers a broad and balanced set of measures that will help ensure we are working to protect Saskatchewan people and communities from a changing climate.

“This (strategy) is an important part of our comprehensive plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve better results than a singular carbon tax policy.”

Some specific measures that the framework include are:

percentage of ag land area with a 4R Nutrient Stewardship plan
provincial forest harvest designs
floodplain mapping for at-risk communities

Ontario and Manitoba government officials also included the 4R Nutrient Stewardship practice in their respective climate change strategies, Fertilizer Canada’s release said.

More information on Sask.’s Climate Resilience Measurement Framework can be found here.

mycola/iStock/Getty Images Plus photo

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.