• Dan and Jocelyn talk about the big picture in farming
• Jocelyn's thoughts about soil health as a buzzword
• The importance of a family farm and sustainable ag
• Conversations Jocelyn has with farmers to advise on the future of their farms
• Will Millennials start to care about where their food comes from down to the soil?

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Stuart McMillan farm manages Legend Organic Farms near Kamsack, Saskatchewan, with a background in entomology and molecular ecology from the University of Manitoba and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He pushes back hard on the idea that organic farming means rejecting modern science.

The conversation covers what a data-driven organic operation actually tracks, from nutrient budgets across a full rotation to the collaborative culture in the organic sector, where growers share both successes and failures openly. Stuart also walks through the real economics of organic production, including the yield gap with conventional neighbours and what's actually driving it.

What's Inside

- Why Stuart says he's never seen a poor farmer become a good one by taking tools out of the toolbox, organic or conventional

- How organic producers run full-rotation nutrient budgets, and why that challenges the assumption that organic means "no inputs"

- The three types of organic farmers Stuart has met in the field, and which one actually drives long-term success

- What's really behind the yield gap between organic and conventional grain in Western Canada, and where that gap is starting to close

- Why the organic sector's regulatory standards are driven by producers themselves rather than government or industry

- What a University of Manitoba long-term trial revealed when an organic rotation started losing phosphorus, and how it was corrected

Referenced Articles

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IN THIS EPISODE:

• how their families are holding up in the Covid Crisis
• how the COVID ERA is more like our parent's time
• the good side and the bad side of the quarantine
• Lichelle's home schooling strategy
• Warren's home economics eductional musings
• Terry gets smacked upside the hide by a teacher
• Terry can't help but compulsively film family events
• the Aberharts get a chef to help them cook as a family
• Warren talks about his HELLO FRESH subscription
• how the ingredients of the food Aberhart Farms produces fits in
• how to get kids to eat healthy
• the convergence of ag/food/health
• how the "BEYOND BURGER" is produced
• Terry wants a "Star Wars" shake
• how Peter Diamonds gets the perfect supplements every day
• Warren reveals the secrets of Singularity University
• 3D Printing of food and ventilation maksks
• Warren's BIG Hairy Audacious Goals
• Terry speculates on connecting food with people in the future
• what Holden wants to do in the future
• how the current crisis is a wake up call to reality

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Cassandra and Stephanie farm several thousand acres of malt barley, canola, and soybeans in Manitoba alongside their father, and they built an online platform, The Tulepps, that blends farming, fashion, and family life for a following that reaches well beyond agriculture.

Both sisters hold professional degrees, business and graphic design, and both chose to come back to the land and run the equipment themselves. This conversation covers the operational reality of a brutal 2019 harvest, finishing soybeans in the snow in late November, and the choices that make their operation work: who runs the sprayer, who handles seeding, and why they took over all their own equipment maintenance the year they had no hired help.

What's Inside

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Wes Anderson of Crop Pro Consulting spends this Farm Forum session making one argument: yield maps and NDVI imagery show you where a field performed, not why, and building fertilizer plans off yield alone gets the response backwards more often than growers expect.

His alternative is SWAT maps, a patented method that layers topography, electrical conductivity, and elevation data to delineate management zones based on stable soil properties, the ones that don't shift year to year the way yield does. From there, the real work starts: matching fertilizer response, not yield potential, to each zone.

What's Inside

- Why yield maps and NDVI change every year, and why fertilizer decisions built on stable soil properties hold up better over time

- The difference between low yield potential and low fertilizer response, and why they're not the same thing

- A real field example where correcting a single sandy ridge for copper deficiency changed the outcome

- Why eroded knolls are often starved for phosphorus while depressions are already overloaded, and what that means for reallocating inputs

- What it actually costs to map a field with a SWAT box, and why the map holds up for years once it's built

- The line Wes borrows from a colleague that sums up the whole philosophy: good agronomy applied precisely, not poor agronomy applied precisely

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

YouTube: Growing the Future

Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast

LinkedIn: Growing the Future

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.