Olds College is offering a new program to address what they call a significant skill gap in agriculture.

This week the post-secondary institute announced Alberta Advanced Education has approved their post-diploma certificate in Agriculture Technology Integration.

Olds College Vice President of Academic and Student Experience, Debbie Thompson, says the eight month certificate has received a lot of support from ag industry since the announcement.

"It will provide our students with an understanding of how technology can be used to provide accurate information and real-time monitoring to our agriculture producers."

She says their graduates will be able to apply this knowledge to link emerging technologies with existing farm infrastructure.

The new certificate is one of many new ag tech initiatives being developed at the College.

"We've also been working on our Olds College Smart Farm and our Smart Ag Innovation Centre," she says. "That really creates a state-of-the-art learning environment for our students and gives them that competitive advantage because they provided with access to cutting edge technologies in an agriculture setting."

The program is set to teach its first set of students in September 2020, with applications opening in October this year.

For more details, you can visit their website.

 

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