Jim Hole says his family wouldn't be where it is today without the U of A's faculty of agriculture.
His father, Ted Hole, graduated from the University of Alberta's agriculture school before starting his famous farm in St. Albert, and, on the advice of his university colleagues, became one of the first people in the province to buy a precision seed drill.
Hole said the U of A also gave him the cutting edge information and basic tools he needed to run a successful business.
"Without that education, we couldn't do what we're doing today."
Hole, the co-owner of the Enjoy Centre in St. Albert, shared these and other tales of his family's history Wednesday afternoon as he shared the stage with former premier Ed Stelmach, former prime minister Kim Campbell and researchers Janet Fast and William Shotyk as part of a panel on leadership in providing solutions to global challenges.
The panel was part of the kick-off of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Science's 100th anniversary celebrations.
"The hootenanny starts today," said Dean Stan Blade in an interview.
The faculty has events planned all school year, including a gala at the Devonian Botanic Garden and a centennial lecture series. Wednesday also saw the launch of the faculty's new history book, A Century of Solutions.
The efforts of this department helped save Canada's canola crop from the scourge of blackleg and helped scores of world war veterans find an education, said U of A president Indira Samarasekera, addressing the crowd of about 200 delegates at the Myer Horowitz Theatre.
Today, its researchers are discovering new ways to convert chicken protein into plastic and fat into fuel, she continued.
"The faculty has clearly delivered on (founding president) Henry Marshall Tory's promise to uplift the whole people."
Looking ahead
Hole said that agricultural research had changed a lot since the 1970s when he was at the U of A. Instead of focusing on just making crops more productive, researchers are now taking a more holistic view that includes nutrition, pollution, ethics and local food production.
"Climates are changing. Consumers' needs are changing. We can't keep doing the things we have done in the past."
Consumers are calling for more value-added products and crop diversity, Hole said.
Stelmach said Alberta needed to do more in the next century to get trade access to other nations so its products can get to market. It also had to deal with its labour shortage if it wanted its value-added market to grow.
"When we talk about the ag-food industry, we have a hyphen between 'ag' and 'food,'" he said.
That reflects the fact that primary and secondary producers (e.g. ranchers and meat packers) right now often make money at each other's expense, he said.
"We have to remove that hyphen, because we're all in it together," Stelmach said.
Queen of Hugs
Also opening Wednesday as a part of the agriculture faculty's celebrations was the Lois Hole: the Queen of Hugs exhibit. Organized by the department of human ecology, it features eight of her former outfits.
Lois Hole served as the U of A's chancellor from 1998 to 2000.
The exhibit features yellow baskets that the Hole family used to collect eggs from its 2,000 hens, said Hole, who got his first look at the exhibit Wednesday. Also featured is one of the stirrup hoes the family used for weeding.
Hole said he could remember his mother wearing many of the items in the exhibit, particularly a set of white running shoes.
There's also an old blue dress that he remembered as always being splattered with dirt and water due to Lois's work in the greenhouse, he continued.
"It's the cleanest I've ever seen it," he quipped.
The free exhibit runs until March 22. Visit ales100.ales.ualberta.ca for details.
