Fieldmen from the 69 Agricultural Service Boards across Alberta gathered in Calgary last week for their annual in-service training.

Elden Kozak is the Agricultural Fieldman for the County of Two Hills and the President of the Association of Alberta Agricultural Fieldmen.

He says the training sessions were really good.

”So the theme of the conference is always about agriculture and trying to make agriculture a little better,” said Kozak. “So, we have had speakers on crop production and diseases to cattle production and diseases a big emphasis has been on social media and social licensing.” 

Listening to Dr. Shabeg Briar talk about @OldsCollege Small Plot Experiment at the @AAAFieldmen conference. #Abag pic.twitter.com/3S7CmaVDjQ

— Rural Roots Canada (@RuralRootsCda) December 6, 2018

Kozak says the association has seen its membership strengthen over the past several years.

”Our organization continues to strengthen as our membership grows.  We’re getting younger, we used to be an association primarily based of male employees and now out of 164 members, we’re probably about 50-50.”

He says they have a lot of youth and women joining, which brings a whole another perspective and it is just strengthening their association.  

Kozak says it is important to them that they get their message out to the public.

”The main focus has been trying to get the message across to the public that our producers and our farmers are growing safe sustainable food in a humane manner and the quality of our food is going up.”

He says getting the message out is more important than ever. 

“Some of the advocates or some of the protestors kinda like to jump on the band wagon and beat down agriculture and beat down modern farming practices, but I think with the world growing population our farmers are seeing that and we need to grow more with less.”

Agricultural Service Boards were first established in Alberta in 1945, providing expertise in weed control, soil and water resource conservation and pest management.

For more information on the Association of Agricultural Fieldmen click here.