And that's not even including all of the analyticals that we're sending a lot of this stuff for at the end of the year. That's not something that farmers have the training or the time to go and do that level of detail. So we're collecting thousands of data points on just one trial, analyzing them and determining what was consistent about it, or what wasn't. Some of my treatments, we have 22 different treatments for intercropped trials. And the other thing is for some of our trials, we're collecting 80 to 100 data points per plot on some of these trials. It's better if we do have research trials and farmer field scale trials going on at the same time on the same subjects. They can be doing their own trials concurrently. are you seeing a real effect or was this just chance that something weird happened that year? By having multiple sites, multiple years replication, and statistical analysis, we can do things on a small scale to be an adjunct to farmers elsewhere. Then you have year to year variability in weather that can make it really hard to determine. Locations in the province vary vastly on soils and climate. Does everyone else have to go and do the exact trials that you've done in order to determine for themselves what they think they're going to do by doing replicated trials? We can get much greater precision and repeatability and actual statistical analysis on that. And just because you satisfy yourself that you've answered a question on your own farm, it doesn't mean that everyone else will be able to.
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I can answer questions more effectively and efficiently than a farmer can on their own. I amplify cool things that other people are doing.
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I'm here to help you answer questions that you might have, or bring up issues that you might not have thought of. "Haven't they been doing research for many decades? Haven't they already finished doing the research? Can you just let us get on with the farming and do our own trials ourselves? Look, I'm not here to tell you what to do. Lana Shaw, manager of the SE SK Research Farm has to answer those questions all the time. So why should we research innovations in ag off the farm?
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Perhaps the first step for someone in the agricultural research business is to justify why it's being done. What I Learned in my Conversation with Lana Shaw from the Southeast SK Research Station.