| | From AESA Council’s Chair
by John Kolk
Poultry Industry Council
One of the challenges in the work that the Alberta Environmentally SustainableAgriculture (AESA) Program and other extension agencies do with farmers and ranchersis answering the question, “Are the private and public dollars and efforts having a positive impact on our landscapes?” Or, as an AESA Council member once asked after a presentation on all of the technology transfer efforts —“So what?”
That question is an essential part of any effort that aims to bring about change. One model of extension programming uses the acronym “KASA.” It stands for: Knowledge—What do I know?, Attitude—How do I feel?, Skills—What can I do?, and Aspirations—What would I like to do?
The first concept, Knowledge, starts with measuring, benchmarking and monitoring what has happened and what is happening on our landscapes. This issue of Green Matters looks at a range of monitoring activities, from AESA’s province-wide soil and water quality monitoring program, to using GPS collars for tracking cattle grazing patterns in the Bob Creek Wildland, to simply counting the number of nests that spawning trout have created along a stream.
The information collected can and does help farmers, ranchers, watershed groups, conservation agencies and governments make better decisions about actions and efforts on the landscape.
These monitoring activities allow farmers and ranchers to assess where they have been and where they are, and to predict where they might be heading. The collected data can show if their efforts are having an impact and which specific practices are having the most benefit. But these monitoring activities are only support tools for the most basic monitoring of all: farmers’and ranchers’personal knowledge of their own land.
At the recent AESA Conference on The Value of Biodiversity in Agriculture, the Calgary Zoo’s Brian Keating answered a question about what should we do to conserve biodiversity. He said, “Think locally and act locally.” Keating has travelled the world, and everywhere he has encountered the same deep understanding that farmers have about how to sustain their local environment.
At the same conference, Don Ruzicka, a producer from Killam, quoted a Utah rancher:“We have to get more intimate with our land.” Knowing our own land and observing how it changes, whether with GPS collars or a slow, long walk through our fields, is the first step to keeping our farms healthy and sustainable. |
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