Crop Technology

Picture yourself in a New Holland combine at harvest, deciding whether a canola field is ready to come off. Lakeland College’s Crop Technology diploma is a two-year, face-to-face programme taught at Lakeland’s Vermilion campus, built around agronomy, precision farming and the business decisions behind a grain operation.

Year one lays the agronomic groundwork. Plant Science & Field Crops, Soil Science and Weed & Herbicide Management teach you to identify crops and weeds and interpret soils, while Tillage & Direct Seeding Systems and Pesticide Application Technologies cover the seeding, fertilizing and spraying equipment used across the Prairies. Microeconomics, Business Records and Reporting, Agricultural Communications & Computer Applications and Grain, Oilseeds and Pulse Crop Marketing add the financial side. In year two, Insects & Diseases of Crops, Fertility Management, Diversified Crop Production and Integrated Crop Management join these pieces into whole cropping systems, alongside Grain Harvesting Systems, Applications in Precision Farm, Financial Management and Agricultural Sales.

Much of the learning happens on the Student-Managed Farm, Powered by New Holland, where crop technology students decide what to grow, how to manage it, when to harvest and how to market the grain, beginning with Student Managed Farm I. In year two you pick a route: stay on the farm through Student Managed Farm II and III, or take an Industry Practicum paired with a Farm/Field Management Simulation. Courses combine classroom, lab and field work, and you calibrate current agricultural technology and software. Graduates can continue to Lakeland’s Bachelor of Agriculture Technology, add an Agribusiness diploma in one more year, or follow 2+2 transfer routes to NAIT, the University of Alberta, the University of Lethbridge and Lethbridge Polytechnic.

Lakeland lists crop technology graduates working as agronomists, crop advisors, grain buyers, herbicide company representatives, research technicians and custom operators, and many go on to run their own grain farms. The diploma suits someone who enjoys scouting a field as much as balancing a farm budget, and who wants a practical route into Western Canadian crop production.