Precision Farming, Sixty Years Before It Had a Name

Les Henry took one of his first soil fertility jobs working out how a farmer might sample forty or eighty acres and do something useful with what came back. That was six decades before anyone called it precision agriculture. This conversation was recorded the week before his eightieth birthday. Henry was a University of Saskatchewan extension specialist and researcher, the author of Henry's Handbook of Soil and Water, and the man behind the Prairie stubble soil moisture map that ran every year from 1979 onward. He spent a career turning complicated science into something a producer could pick up and use, and he is unusually direct here about the concepts he had to simplify because he could not follow them himself.Les Henry died in 2024 at eighty three. This episode is one of the fuller records of how he thought.What's Inside- Why his earliest fertility work was precision agriculture under another name, and why he never believed most fields needed fifteen zones- What the first zero till adopters were told by everyone watching them, and how long it took before that looked like the right call- The 1988 drive across the Prairies that sat behind the annual stubble soil moisture map- His case that carbon dioxide is the most under-discussed plant nutrient in agriculture, and the pea trial numbers he points to- Why he says the ideas he is best known for explaining are the ones he struggled with first- What he said about the piece of ground he would not sell at any priceConnect with Growing the FutureWebsite: growingthefuture.caYouTube: Growing the FutureInstagram: @growingthefuturepodcastLinkedIn: Growing the FutureSubscribe to the Growing the Future Podcast wherever you listen, and register for Convergence Conference 2027 at convergence.ag. Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.