Emerging ag Tours Alberta

As the Emerging team is based around the world, there are few instances for the all of us to come together. Twice a year, the team members of Emerging ag inc are able to come together and it always proves to be equally as fun as it is productive.

Last month the team traveled to Calgary, Alberta, Canada for four days of meetings, trainings, and farm tours. The initial meetings give everyone a chance to collaborate and review the status of clients, and give input on projects that they may not have a hand in on the day-to-day. The brainstorming sessions prove to be informative and inspirational, not just for those involved in a certain project, but giving ideas to everyone that can be utilized in different ways. From this, our clients are able to benefit as the team comes up with new and innovative ways to provide our services.

The meetings were followed by several workshops, which were led by team experts on a variety of topics, including policy analysis, business writing, and holding successful bilateral meetings, among others. The workshops always prove to be a highlight of our team retreats as it allows for group collaborations, role-play exercises, and opportunities to further develop skills that are not only useful in work place situations, but also make us think a little differently in our everyday life. 

After two days in a conference room, the planned farm tours were a welcome trip that allowed the team to gain local knowledge on the farming and livestock industry in Alberta.

Our first stop was at Olds College, an innovative agriculture-based school located approximately 45 minutes North of Calgary. Here, an expert was able to take the team around the grounds and explain the work being done in animal science, horticulture, and even touched on their budding fashion program. A particular highlight was the tour through their newly built Digital Agriculture Centre. The building boasts impressive state of the art technology in their meeting rooms, as well as cutting edge ways to monitor their crop growth, landscapes, and more over an extended period of time. It is an exciting new development coming to Olds College and something we hope to see expand into the future. Having grown up in Olds, it was especially fascinating for myself to see such innovation coming from what appears to be a small, sleepy town.

The team’s second stop was at Kaun’s Seed Farm in Penhold, Alberta, approximately 30 minutes further North, for a tour of a local farmers fields and equipment.  On this farm tour, we were able to walk through the fields and learn about the hybrid crops that are continuously being developed and put to sale, as well as the importance of crop rotation for farmers and their fields. As an added bonus, we were also able to see and learn about a large range of farm equipment. 

It was an intense and busy week, but every one of the Emerging team members there gained valuable knowledge, experience, and memories from our four days together. Personally, I can’t wait until our next meeting to be held at a still to be determined location.