The City of Yorkton had provided land to the Parkland College and East Central Research Foundation (ECRF) Research Farm for the past two years.
Monday Research Farm representatives provided the regular meeting of Yorkton Council with a brief report on its efforts.
Glenn Blakley with the ECRF said the idea of the partnership between the college and his organization was one initially put forward by former City Manager David Putz.
"Agricultural research we are doing is a first for any College in Saskatchewan," he said, adding the Partnership between ECRF and Parkland College is unique in Saskatchewan.
Gwen Machnee, Coordinator University and Applied Research, said the partnership is opening new doors in terms of research.
"It's a big step for us," she said.
The joint effort is helping in terms of accessing funds.
"Between the two of us we have access to different pools of funding," said Machnee.
Having the City come on side providing crop land for the research farm has been another key element for the farm.
Having the land to work with, and the ECRF and College partnering has opened doors in terms of both research and course development.
"Parkland College is the only college in Saskatchewan engaged in Ag research," said Blakley.
As an example, an Agriculture Operator course had students from across western Canada, no Yorkton residents, all stayed in Yorkton for six days for each course, a total of 20 people.
We couldn't have done the Ag Operator program without the research farm, said Machnee.
Through AgriARM linkages, Yorkton region is now connected with the other seven AgriARM sites. Multi-site research with a Provincial reach, added Blakley.
While the partnerships are working well, Blakley explained research is still costly.
The equipment is very small but costs about the same as regular size equipment, he explained.
The research scientist commands a higher salary. One of the reasons the partnership between ECRF and Parkland College has worked so well is the ability of Parkland to find other work for the research scientist so that we can keep him in the area.
Seeding and harvesting up to 1000 plots is very time consuming and labour intensive.
Having the land base provided by the City helps with costs. Each year, one third of the land is in plots and two thirds is fill crop.
The income from the fill crop helps to offset the much higher costs of planting and harvesting small plots, explained Blakely.
With that in mind the Research Farm requested the lease fees be continued as a donation to the research farm from the City of Yorkton.
"We are sometimes able to use the donation from the City of Yorkton as matching money as an in kind donation to increase our funding from other sources," said Blakely.
The request was left with City Administration to be brought back to Council at a later date.
