A local agronomist who has been part of several technological changes in farming for over 40 years has been selected to join the Ontario Agricultural Hall of Fame.
Dale Cowan, who is now the agronomy strategy manager and senior agronomist at the Chatham-based AGRIS Co-operative, will be inducted, along with 10 others, in June. Cowan is being recognized as a reliable agronomy source for governments and associations, for advising crop growers and for exploring new technologies over his career.
“Farms are still farms. We still grow crops, but how we go about growing them, the information we have at our fingertips is just unbelievable today,” he said.
“I would say that we just had an explosion of knowledge in the last 20 years and the accessibility has just gotten much, much bigger than it was in the early years.”
Cowan grew up on a small farm in Essex County. Working for local farmers from a young age and seeing his older brothers attend the University of Guelph showed him the appeal of working in the industry, he said.
He went on to study crop science with a minor in animal science at the University of Guelph. He worked for CIL, an agriculture retailer now known as Agronomy Company of Canada, in the late-1980s.
In the early 1990s, he had the opportunity to purchase Agri-Food Laboratories in Guelph, which he managed until he sold the company before joining AGRIS around 2008.
“That really helped me in agriculture and got me into different farm associations and kept me interested,” Cowan said. “We did all sorts of soil testing and livestock feed testing at the labs.”
By his estimate, during this time he looked at over one million soil samples, which he said gave him a “very good working knowledge of what goes on in the province from a fertility standpoint.”
Cowan became a certified crop advisor shortly after the designation was introduced in Ontario in 1997. The Ontario Certified Crop Advisor Association, of which he is a member, nominated Cowan for the hall of fame.
At AGRIS, he said his job has focused on choosing the right strategies, using the technology appropriately and making sure customers have a good experience with it.
Cowan said the agriculture industry has always been finding new methods to farm, but the biggest change he has witnessed has been the move to digital technology, particularly GPS systems and monitors being used on farming equipment.
He said he realized the precision agriculture method would take off back in 1993 or 1994.
“My wife and I, we became one of the first people to actually operate a GPS system where we could actually map fields and do soil sampling,” he said.
Using this technology at the time showed them “the variability in fields and the opportunity that gave us to manage fields differently and better,” he said.
Since use of the technology expanded, Cowan said farming has become more precise and has strived to follow the four Rs of nutrient stewardship – right source, right rate, right time, right place.
“As we develop more and more challenges with environmental concerns, our ability to be more precise in our nutrient placement just keeps the nutrients on the field better and now we have better tools to measure our progress in that area,” he said.
Cowan said the technological advances haven’t stopped. AGRIS has looked to a program called Soil Optics, which captures soil properties by sensing gamma radiation in the soil. As well, the use of satellite and drone imagery has expanded, he said.
“I’ve just been passionate about what I do and I’m always looking for the latest technology and understanding how it might benefit our customers,” he said.
Now in the latter part of his career, Cowan said he spends a lot of his time mentoring younger people in the industry.
“That’s been very gratifying,” he said. “I think that’s an obligation that more senior people have is to keep mentoring and nurturing the people coming up behind us and to pass on knowledge and information.”
The induction ceremony will be held June 11 at the Grand Way Event Center in Elora. Tickets for both the in-person and virtual ceremonies are available at www.oahf.on.ca.