Dr. Guy Lafond, a native of Manitoba, received his BesA from the College de St. Boniface in 1974, his BSc(hons) and MSc from the University of Manitoba in 1978 and 1980, respectively. He received his PhD from the University of Saskatchewan in 1984. From 1984 to 1985, Guy worked as a professional research associate at the Crop Development Centre in Saskatoon working on winter wheat and from 1985 to the present, he has been employed as a cropping systems agronomist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at the Indian Head Research Farm. More recently, in addition to his research, he was seconded to the Agri-Food Innovation Fund acting as the co-ordinator of the Spoke Program under the Specialized Crop area from 1997 to 2001. Guy has published numerous articles in the scientific literature and popular press on various aspects of tillage and cropping systems.
The mandate given to Guy when he was hired at the Indian Head Research Farm was to do research on soil conservation. Before coming to Indian Head, he had been working on the winter wheat project with Dr. Brian Fowler at the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. At that time, he realized that if he could get producers to grow winter wheat, they would automatically become familiar with the concept of direct seeding so that the switch to using direct seeding for spring crops would be easier and more gradual. From a research perspective, he made a conscious decision to approach the research in direct seeding by proving that direct seeding could work in order to avoid technological and personal biases regarding this new technology.
Guy has conducted a number of research projects over the last 17 years. The list includes the following:
Interactions of tillage systems and crop rotations - A 12 year study from1987-1998; Feasibility of using anhydrous ammonia during seeding in a No-Till system; Performance of different openers that can separate seed and fertilizer without causing fertilizer damage to the seed in wheat and canola; Impact of packing weight, opener configuration and packer shape on the production of canola, spring wheat and field pea; Refining oat, flax, durum and canaryseed production under No-till; Impact of fertilizer separation on the production of flax and wheat; Development of ways to assign management units to a no-till field in order to apply a variable rate fertilizer application of nitrogen fertilizer; Impact of different nitrogen management, nitrogen form and nitrogen timing on nitrogen use efficiency in wheat, canola and flax and on grain production and nitrous oxide emissions; Impact of nitrogen, row spacing and seeding rates on the yield of spring and winter cereals and flax; Impact of No-till on the production of winter and spring cereals; Impact of different N management and risk management strategies for wheat and canola with respect to delayed applications till after seeding; and the Feasibility of applying all the fertilizer nitrogen at seeding time in winter wheat.
Guy's current areas of interest pertain to new approaches to land management using site specific tools for nutrient management as well trying to develop new tools such as optimum machine size given the irregular shapes of fields and obstacles in a field. He is interested in the use of robotics technology for doing field scouting. He is also interested in the whole area of harvest management. Guy would like to duplicate the success in direct seeding with harvest management to reduce capital and energy costs. With direct seeding, we went from a multi-pass system to a one pass system. He thinks that the future in harvest management is to go from a one or two pass system to a multi-pass system as a way to reduce overall costs, nergy and capital. There is also some fine tuning left to be done with nitrogen management.
Guy has received numerous awards for his extensive work such as the SSCA's Award of Merit in 2001; the Weed Science Society of America Award of Excellence in 1994 and the Manitoba - North Dakota Zero Till Association. Award for Outstanding contribution in developing zero till and direct seeding methods for the Prairie Provinces in 1993
The SSCA invited Guy to be a Director-At-Large in February 2002. Guy believes strongly in what the SSCA has accomplished. He believes the organization will take a leadership role in promoting overall sustainability and that it has the ability to be a very good promoter of appropriate technology.