Is winter really an off-season in agriculture?

So if you think the winter is a slow time for agriculture, just ask a few of the Ontario FS crop specialists what they have been up to these past few months.

“Our philosophy is to utilize this time to maximize our knowledge base,” says Don McLean GROWMARK agronomy business director.

Right after harvest, GROWMARK gets very busy in the business of education by providing FS crop specialists with a variety of learning opportunities on everything from horticulture, custom application training to nutrient management. Each one of these topics is dissected into a number of full-day training programs that give FS System employees more insight into their day-to-day operations and better prepare them for the upcoming spring growing season.

Over 100 crop specialists attended
the 2015 GROWMARK Agronomy Conference
at White Oaks Conference Centre in St. Catherines.

It all wraps up with the biggest show of the year for the agronomy folks with the Annual GROWMARK Agronomy Conference. Bill Brown, GROWMARK field sales agronomist and one of the event planners summed up this year’s conference as “one of the best”. Bill admits he hasn’t seen the official survey results from participants, but from the comments back, he knows it was a very worthwhile event.

Ontario FS crop specialists took some time to stretch 

during a 15-minute re-energize session provided 

by White Oaks staff.

“Quality speakers, attention to detail and science based knowledge made a huge impact this year,” says Brown. Topics such as white mold and weed resistance are common subjects, but GROWMARK’s weed science technical manager Dr. David Powell took it to a whole new level with great detail into the science of how white mold organisms move and the motivation behind its growth.

“The subject of economics in most cases can be very dry, but key note speaker Aaron Gampel, vice president and deputy chief economist with Scotiabank brought a humourous spin to the subject with a variety of personal stories from his local Niagara region making the subject of economics captivating and light-hearted,” says Brown.

Overall the conference covered the core subjects and offered more unique discussion on topics such as how nodulation happens, how large growers think and then finished off with a quick session on how to take great pictures in the field using just your iPhone.

In the midst of all this training, add a number of tradeshow opportunities and outside conferences into the mix, and you have the makings of a very productive winter for FS agronomy teams. Within the province, there was representation at the Canadian DairyXPO in Woodstock, London Farm Show, Lindsay Farm Show, Certified Crop Advisor Conference and later this month FS employees throughout the province will be working the FS exhibit at the GFO March Classic.

Bill Brown of GROWMARK at this year's Canadian Dairy XPO. Also helping to man the booth
was Scott Snowe and Scott Cressman of FS PARTNERS, Luke Hartung of North Wellington Co-operative Services
and Brent Lamont of Huron Bay Co-operative.