Dedicated producers shift focus to soil conservation

Dec 29, 2022

It’s hard work but at the end of the day, soil conservationist farmers in southern Saskatchewan are reaping the benefits of their research, networking and soil improvements.

It has been a long time coming for soil health efforts at Box H Farm, but Laura Hoimyr sees even more improvements that can be made on her and her husband’s 250 herd cow/calf cattle farm.

Fifteen years ago, the farming couple knew they wanted more out of their conventional grazing operation down near Gladmar and started making a conscious effort to make soil care a priority.

Perennial grazing with native and forage grasses seemed a better fit than throwing money into new equipment and fighting with the marginal acres they had, Hoimyr told farmnewsNOW. Now intensified rotational grazing has become their standard practice in order to have sufficient periods of rest for both the soil and the greenery as well as low levels of cattle traffic to withstand compaction.

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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.