The Student-Managed Farm - Powered by New Holland (SMF) is about more than the crops that are grown, the fields that are tilled, and revenue generated from its harvest. It's about the lessons learned along the way.

For crop SMF Assistant General Manager Emily Creusot and Analysis Manager Kristin Sardoff, one of the biggest lessons was learning how to harness the chaos of their classmates, all from a varying degree of farming backgrounds, into a cohesive and effective team.

“As soon as you start your second year at Lakeland, you don't get time to settle in,” says Creusot, from Oxbow Sask. “You have hours to form a team out of 36 strongly-opinionated students, bring them together and get stuff done.”

For both Creusot and Sardoff, however, the opportunity to leave their family farms and get some hands-on experience themselves was what drew them to Lakeland and the crop technology program.

“I came to Lakeland because of the SMF,” Creusot explains. “I wanted that hands-on learning, to build my confidence. In SMF, you grow that confidence because you're not just reading from a textbook. You actually get to go out and apply what you're learning. You're making connections.”

Sardoff, from Wainwright, Alta., agrees, saying, “The whole time, you're around people you know. It's like a family. You're part of something bigger than yourself in ag and it's a really cool thing to be a part of. You learn a lot of life skills taking the crop program too. And just like every other harvest, it was crazy busy at first but once we got the hang of it, it seemed to flow really well.”

“Once everyone knew what to do and where to go, everything went so smoothly,” Creusot adds. “Everyone was really helpful and eager to be out there.”

Together, the crop SMF navigated a few hurdles, like dealing with crop that had been damaged by hail over the summer. They debated the merits of straight cutting vs. swathing, what to spray on it when some of the crop was green material, some was ready for harvest, and other parts were flowering.

Sardoff, as analysis manager, dealt with emerging issues when temperatures rose in the grain bins storing the canola. She and the team cycled the crop, moved it to a new bin, turned on the air and did everything they could to bring the temperature down, celebrating when it successfully dropped to single digits.

“There were issues beyond our control,” Creusot says. “They dragged harvest out longer than it needed to be, like weather, hail damage, snow. But from what I've heard, the instructors were very impressed with how things went.”

At the end of the day, they harvested corn, barley, wheat, peas, canola and hemp.

Dealing with these real-world scenarios is a huge benefit to the SMF, they explain, as well as the fact that they are placed in leadership roles and are responsible for decision-making that they normally wouldn't be at home.

As assistant manager, Creusot has been involved in the marketing of the grain, going to the elevators, sourcing the seed, fertilizer, pesticides and looking for the best prices. Sardoff has taken advantage of learning how to fill out insurance claims and other pieces of the business side she may not be involved in on her family's farming operation. They've both had the opportunity to learn about aspects of agriculture they never would have gotten to experience before the SMF, including opportunities to be more experimental.

Last year's SMF team planted hemp on campus land and this year's SMF got to experience the hemp-baling process, shocked when it involved chopping the crop down, spreading it across a field, and then raking it up to bale it.

This year, for their own more experimental projects, the SMF group is looking into different kinds of beans.

“That's just one of the bonuses to SMF,” says Creusot. “You can try things out to see what happens.”

Beans are a risk because they typically need a longer growing season, she says, adding that they've found a variety that might work and she's excited to see how it goes.

Faculty advisors on the SMF are there for support and guidance, but the decisions, in the end, are up to the students.

“Our advisors typically will never say no to us when we are making a decision,” says Sardoff. “They do ask us questions, though, to make us think the decision through.”

“They don't shut us down as long as we have evidence to support what we want to do and how we should do it and hopefully, how it will play out,” Creusot adds. “Nothing's off limits on the SMF.

“I've gained a lot more from SMF than I was expecting coming into it,” she says. “Coming here puts you a step ahead of everyone else, especially for your future career. A lot of employers I've talked to, they say ‘oh, you went to Lakeland. That's awesome, we would really like to have you.' It's pretty awesome to be involved in an industry that cares so much. It all goes back to farmers feeding the world.”

Photos: Top-Three students  kneel in front of a combine to inspect some wheat during Harvest 2023 Bottom-Two agricultural sciences students stand in a crop field to inspect some wheat during Harvest 2023