When agricultural sciences livestock student Shelby Bentt talks about holistic management, she talks about investing in the land and sustainability.

“It means doing things regeneratively,” she explains. “You’re doing what’s best for the land and for your operation. It’s about long-term goals and long-term profit, looking after the next generations, and waiting for investments to pay out even though it might take generations to see the results.”

Maddie Buhler and Jennifer Morrison, both second-year early childhood education (ECE) students, haven’t learned about holistic management as part of their curriculum. They were given the opportunity to learn a little bit about it when they teamed up with some of the agricultural sciences students to offer a free childcare program at the 2026 Holistic Management Canada Conference in Taber, Alta, in February. They left the conference with a different – and yet somehow very similar – definition.

“Family comes first,” Buhler explains. “How I take care of my family is how I take care of my crops and my animals.”

“It’s integrating the community, the family and the land as a whole,” Morrison agrees.

It’s the second year that Lakeland students hosted free childcare at the conference, though last year the agricultural sciences students took on the task without assistance from the ECE students. This year, the ECE students helped out as part of their Community Advocacy class.

It was more than childcare, though. It was an opportunity students from two different disciplines to collaborate and learn from each other, for parents to attend the conference while knowing their children were cared for, and for children to participate in age-appropriate, agriculturally inspired activities. The Lakeland students planned agricultural-themed activities like making bug crowns, playing with a sensory bin filled with oats and farm animals, nature walks and bug hunts, and plenty of playing outside.

The two groups rarely cross paths on campus, and this collaboration was a unique experience to work together and learn from each other.

“It was definitely a learning curve,” Bentt says, referencing a background of babysitting, youth coaching and helping out in schools as her previous experience. “We helped with the more agricultural education aspects, like explaining the impacts of soil and erosion.”

At a conference about investing in future generations, the free childcare option was an investment itself. Bentt explains, “It gives parents more access to come out and learn. They don’t need to worry about finding childcare or making their child sit through sessions they don’t understand. It’s a good option for the whole family to come and make a weekend of it.”

That sense of support in the agricultural community made an impression on Buhler and Morrison as well, who were impressed with how welcoming everyone at the conference was, even to two ag newbies like them. It’s what informed their definition of holistic management, and something they saw in the conference sessions they were able to take in between their childcare duties.

“You need people,” Buhler says as her biggest take away. “We were able to attend a mental health lecture at the conference and we learned that you need people. That goes with farming and with everything you’re doing.”

Morrison agrees, saying, “Farming would be so much more difficult if they didn’t have those support systems in the community, if they weren’t so welcoming and able to rely on each other.”

It’s a lesson that she and Buhler both intend to take with them next year as they enter Lakeland’s university transfer community-based bachelor of education program with the University of Calgary.

Bentt and the other agricultural sciences students were able to attend sessions as well, working on their networking skills and learning about topics like succession planning and how to break into the ag industry as a first-generation farmer. For Bentt, the opportunity to connect what she learned about holistic management to working with the children was an important one as well.

“Agricultural advocacy is very important, especially for the younger children,” she says. “Growing up in a social media-dominated world, they see a lot of things online that aren’t factual. It’s important to teach young children the truth about agriculture and how it keeps our world fed and sustainable. Without farming, we wouldn’t have a future.”

By working with future generations, she hopes to have an impact on future generations of farmers.

“Teaching kids young is planting the seed without knowing what will grow and what they’ll become passionate about,” she says.

Like investing and waiting for it to play out, even though it might take generations to see results.

 

Photos: Top - Lakeland students working with children at the concert. Below: Students make a pit stop at the Royal Tyrrell Musem while in southern Alberta for the conference.