Meghan Vankosky, a research scientist in field crop entomology with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), works at the Saskatoon Research and Development Centre (RDC). She holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alberta and completed her PhD at the University of Windsor. After completing her PhD, Vankosky spent a year in California on a postdoctoral project. She now lives in Saskatoon with her four-year-old standard poodle, Flurry.

Where did you work before AAFC?

Before AAFC, I worked at the University of California at Riverside. I was there one year as a postdoctoral researcher. While there, I collaborated on a release program for a parasitoid to control Asian citrus psyllid, which is an important pest of all kinds of citrus. Asian citrus psyllid, also known as ACP, vectors a disease that kills citrus trees – the disease has no cure and all infected trees eventually die. In California we were trying to slow down the spread of the insect (and the disease) by starting a biological control program.

What got you interested in this area of work?

Well, like many young people, I had no idea that being an entomologist was even a career option. When I started university, I had decided I was going to med school, but realized in my first year that I was not cut out for it.

In my second year I took a selection of courses. One of them was the introduction to entomology and it just went from there. Some fortuitous choices and some good luck and I ended up with an awesome co-mentor for my master’s program, Dr. Lloyd Dosdall, who sadly passed away a few years ago. I learned a lot from him and from other mentors in entomology.

Tell us a bit about what you are working on at AAFC.

Since I came to AAFC in Saskatoon, the biggest project I have been part of (and now co-lead with Jennifer Otani) is the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network (PPMN). Jennifer and I collaborate closely with the provincial entomologists in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and we have funding support from nine different industry groups, including Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA) and the Agriculture Development Fund.

One of the major activities of this project is to maintain and expand our records of the annual population densities and distribution of key pests of Prairie crops, including bertha armyworm, cabbage seedpod weevil, diamondback moth, grasshoppers, pea leaf weevil, wheat midge and wheat stem sawfly.

These are the major pests we monitor each year. The monitoring data is used to develop the annual risk maps available on the PPMN website. We aim to have the maps ready to share online in December or January, so that we can talk about them at winter outreach events and so that farmers can use them when planning for the next growing season. The maps can be used to estimate insect-related risk to crops going into the next growing season.

Through the PPMN and our current funding, we are also trying to do more lab research to understand better the biology and population dynamics of some of these insects. We are also partnering with Dr. Boyd Mori, University of Alberta, to better understand if there are any risks of resistance development in the insect populations we monitor. Insecticide resistance can affect how we manage insect pests, and we would like to try to add that as a layer to our mapping exercise.

There are a lot of moving parts and pieces to this project, and it is highly collaborative. We have a lot of people who help collect data and share information with us so that we can put the maps together and keep historical records. The historical records are valuable, as we can use them to build models that can help us to predict and understand how insects respond to changing climate. We hope that the PPMN is a helpful tool that farmers and agronomists use to find reliable information about insects in general and about what insects could be a problem in their crops.

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

It gives us an advantage in terms of our ability to do work that is for the public good and that will have a direct benefit to farmers. I think a lot of the work we do at AAFC and in university agriculture programs is all beneficial to agriculture, but knowing that the funds are coming from farmers towards research that aligns with the problems they are facing helps close that loop a little bit faster and bring that information back to farmers.

It is valuable that organizations like MCA have farmer board members as it provides clearer communication in terms of research priorities. I can write my proposals geared to what the research priorities of the organizations are, which are based on what farmers need.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

A big piece of all the work we are doing with this project through the PPMN is providing information to farmers on a regular basis through our weekly updates and our insect of the week articles, and at the end of every season with insect risk maps. The funding also helps get us, as researchers, to outreach events where we can talk about our research with farmers and agronomists. These conversations not only allow us to share new information but provide us with helpful feedback.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

Doing many different things! I learned all kinds of needle and handicrafts from my grandmothers and my mom growing up, so I do a bit of crocheting and cross stitching and I am learning how to embroider. I took up paint by numbers again during the pandemic, which is something I hadn’t done for years. I like to take my dog to obedience classes and learn how to teach him different things. Also, since the pandemic, I started building Lego again. Now that I am an adult and I have disposable income, my Lego collection is growing and growing. 

How do you celebrate agriculture?

I think by being an entomologist. I grew up on a cattle farm in west central Alberta. I am grateful that I grew up on a farm and had that experience, but I did not want to farm as an adult. I am very grateful that I can give back to agriculture and celebrate it by still working in agriculture by studying insects. I am glad that I can do research that I enjoy and that brings benefits to agriculture.

What gets you most excited about your work?

The insects and the people. The insects are very interesting, and we have a really great team of people here in Saskatoon. The entomology community across Canada is top notch. There are so many great people who work in this field who we collaborate with and learn from. That is what gets me excited about what we are doing.

Follow Meghan (@vanbugsky) on X.

Visit prairiepest.ca to find weekly updates and insect of the week articles during the growing season, and risk maps at the end of the season.

Monika Gorzelak is a soil microbial ecologist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Lethbridge Research and Development Centre (RDC). Gorzelak completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Guelph in microbiology and her PhD in forestry at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She lives in Lethbridge with her husband and their two daughters, ages two and six.

Where did you work before the Lethbridge RDC?

Before I joined AAFC, I was doing my PhD in forestry at UBC, looking at trees talking to each other. My PhD supervisor, Suzanne Simard, is an inspiration. She recently published a book called “Finding the Mother Tree,” has a popular TED Talk and was recently named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2024.

What got you interested in this area of work?

I’ve always liked the whole microbial world, even though it’s a small sliver of the ecology ecosystem. There are cases where plants help each other – where microbes leverage their relationships with other organisms for their own success and help crops and plants succeed. I’m quite interested in that kind of interspecies and ecological community-based interaction research, and I like to focus on less well understood and slightly understudied concepts in ecology.

Tell us a bit about what you are working on at Lethbridge RDC.

In the Understanding the interactions of N fertilizer technologies, fungicides, and the soil microbiome to optimize sustainable agriculture project funded partially by MCA, we are trying to understand what happens to the beneficial soil microbiome when enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs) are used in cropping rotations.

We are doing that in three different ways. First, leveraging several years of small-plot-scale work by Brian Beres where they evaluated different EEFs in wheat. We sampled their plots and final year of research to compare soil microbiomes and get a grasp of the community composition and diversity of the bacteria and fungi in those soils.

Next, we are going to build on that information in the greenhouse. We are setting up our first greenhouse study to do a closer and more controlled experiment, looking at the impact of EEFs on the soil microbiome.

For the third part of this project, we are going to look at the impact of prior crop on spring wheat in the greenhouse. In summary, this project is looking at how to leverage beneficial soil microbes to help farmers be more productive; answering the question, “Can we do more with less inputs?”

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

I couldn’t do this research without funding from farmers. I am fortunate to have a job that supports me to be able to ask what I think are important questions that are relevant to others. Getting this funding from farmers indicates that they are interested in the work that I am interested in, so it feels more meaningful.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

The goal, of course, is to create more sustainable agriculture or to create information that farmers can use to make decisions, with the goal of having more sustainable systems at the end of the day.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I’m a pretty sporty person and I like to be outside when I can. I also love cooking elaborate meals. My favourite thing to cook is always changing, usually whatever is seasonal.

What is the best part about your job?

I really like idea generation and designing experiments. Having an idea and looking at data to see if I’m wrong – because data usually doesn’t lie to you – or if the idea is supported. The whole process is very logical, but it’s also creative at the same time because you must come up with good questions and novel ways to answer those questions. It’s in the design and the uniqueness of experiments where I get excited.

I’ve also loved meeting farmers, especially the direct-to-consumer farmers. I get a lot of my produce locally because I know the folks I’ve worked with and who they are, and I can show up and get a rather large portion of my food locally. That feels awesome.

What are you excited about for the future of agriculture?

I think there are a lot of opportunities to create efficiencies that are going to benefit the environment and the farmer at the same time. Technology has really developed, as well as our understanding about the systems that are needed to help mitigate climate change, for example. There is a lot of opportunity for farmers to contribute, while continuing to produce and make money.

Afua Mante is an assistant professor of soil physical processes in the Department of Soil Science at the University of Manitoba (UM). She was born and raised in Ghana, where she attained a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering and a master’s in water supply and environmental sanitation. In 2011, she moved to Canada as a graduate student at the UM, where she completed an additional master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a PhD in biosystems engineering.

Where did you work before your current role at the UM?

I worked at the Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education in the Price Faculty of Engineering at the UM as a post-doctoral fellow for two years (2018 to 2020) immediately after completing my PhD program. In that role, I was responsible for identifying, through consultation and collaboration with stakeholders, meaningful ways for genuine inclusion of Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and design principles, as well as principles of sustainable development and sustainable design, in engineering curricula. After that, I joined the land remediation group in the Department of Soil Science as a post-doctoral fellow, where I oversaw projects on the restoration of prime agricultural lands disturbed by industrial activities. I stayed in this role until January 2022 and then stepped into my current role in the same department as an assistant professor.

What got you interested in this area of work?

It all started when my uncle made what I had seen in junior high agricultural science textbooks become a reality. Use of agricultural machinery was a dream in my community. My uncle got a small tractor with one plow and one harrow. This set of machinery was “gold.” You could see the pride in my uncle’s face. You can bet he used all his savings on them. No financing opportunities. All he wanted was for the crops to meet the rains at the right time. This investment paid off. He saw an exponential increase in yield – his team was so proud to work with him and it provided my family with security.

More than that, I got the opportunity to see the equipment in action. I was mesmerized watching the whole show. My uncle said to me, with a smile on his face, “we have people who research into how these machines work.” That got me interested in pursuing the agriculture path.

I received opposition to that idea from some of my high school teachers. They had not experienced the magic of agriculture, or they were somewhat disconnected from how we need agriculture. To them and many, agriculture was a way to punish kids at school. It had a negative image. I was lucky to have experienced my uncle’s investment at work. My decision was solidified when I figured out that one of my mentors who had visited my high school to support our education was pursuing agricultural engineering (which I did not know existed at the time) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He enlightened me on career opportunities in agriculture and from then on, I never looked back.

Tell us a bit about what you are working on at the UM.

I teach the course “Soils and Landscapes in our Environment” at the undergraduate level, soil physics courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and the equity, diversity, inclusion and bias sections of the “Principles of Scientific Research and Communication” course at the graduate level.

I run the soil physics research program. In the program, I supervise both graduate and undergraduate students on various projects. We collaborate with stakeholders to identify opportunities and address challenges to advance the agriculture industry. With our projects, our main goal is to understand the complexity of the soil system and how to subject it to applications and interventions in a sustainable way to allow us to continue to enjoy the ecosystem services it lends to us. Currently, we are looking into a wide range of applications and interventions, including farm traffic systems, extreme moisture events, cropping systems, nutrient management, freezing and thawing processes, brine contamination, pipeline construction, and how they interact with the soil for sustainable crop production and a healthy environment. There is more room to expand our research, considering the complexity of the soil system.

I am currently collaborating with two researchers at the UM on a project, “Building resilient soils with cover crops in Manitoba,” funded through Manitoba Crop Alliance and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP). In recent years, we are seeing an increase in the number of farmers in Manitoba who are adopting cover crops to conserve the soil, for nutrient cycling or for improving soil health. In addition to these benefits that are associated with cover crops, we are exploring how cover crops can improve soil strength to support trafficability and reduce the risk of soil compaction and other soil deformation processes. Our focus is not just on the wet condition, but also on the dry condition, as that contributes to the deformation processes of the soil under our climate. This project is an opportunity to present a holistic view on the benefits of cover crops integrated into annual cropping systems by taking into account the agronomic and climatic conditions that prevail in Manitoba.

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

As we know, producing food has many pieces to it. In our province, our climate and our wide range of soils make our challenges unique. To overcome these challenges in our community, we have to recognize that we all have a role to play. But here is the catch: it is one thing knowing you have a role to play and quite another having the resources to support your role.

Farmers’ financial contributions to our research programs make it possible for us as researchers to play our role. We are able to train highly qualified personnel (HQP) for the sector and secure resources we need to address current and emerging challenges in our community. This ongoing farmer support demonstrates a community where we all work together for continued success.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

As I mentioned earlier, there are several pieces to producing food. When farmers provide the support, they set the priorities. They directly influence the sector. They tell us what their actual challenges are. Many times, what we may perceive as a problem is not seen as such by farmers. Also, how we may define a problem to provide solutions may not align with the reality of management. As key stakeholders, we consult and collaborate with them to create working solutions. Knowledge sharing through the life of a research project and after becomes integral to the research. It promotes accountability as well as (re)evaluation of the outcome. Also, with the plethora of challenges the community faces, we need all hands on deck. When we train HQP, we build the workforce needed to tackle the challenges. All these lead to fostering stronger relationships in the community.

Anything you want to add or any comments to our farmer members?

Farmers are our heroes. It is my hope that we all recognize that. They begin the story of the food on our plates. It is a very lengthy story. We may not always hear the story, but what we can all agree on is the excitement and the sense of renewal we have after treating ourselves to a wonderful meal. Thank you, farmers.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I serve as the vice-chair of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank board of directors, where I offer my perspectives and leadership on the organization’s mission to end global hunger and shape Canada’s contribution to international aid and development. I also write songs and poems, which is a great outlet for me. The most fun thing I do is when my kids and I make up songs and sing them unending.

What is your favourite TV series right now?

Monk – a series on Netflix. The characters all have their unique strengths that they bring to accurately solving cases. What I have learned is that sometimes the strength of another may be frustrating when we are not used to it. It may be too slow or too detailed for us, and we think it could be easier to quickly jump ahead, but then it doesn’t lead us anywhere. When we begin to create the space to understand one another, we realize that we complement each other. To have an effective collective, we need to understand and accept the individuals within the collective.

What is the best part of your job?

The training of HQP. I have HQP from diverse disciplines. This requires me to be intentional about knowing them as individuals so that I can train the whole person. This leads to my HQP owning their training and accepting the challenge to be more. It is a joy to see such a development in them.

Connect with Afua on LinkedIn.