Kaylie Krys approached her post-secondary career with a carefully calculated plan. With her farming background, her end goal was to graduate from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) with an agriculture degree. Her best path to achieving that goal, she decided, was to attend Lakeland College, earn a diploma in environmental sciences, transfer those credits to USask, and end up working in agriculture.

Her plan worked - sort of.

“At the time, one of the best ways to transfer into an ag degree at the University of Saskatchewan was to start in environmental sciences at Lakeland, for the high-quality soil and plant science courses,” Krys explains.

A second-generation student, Krys' mother Deanna Krys attended Lakeland as well, graduating with a diploma in herd health technology in 1995. Krys enrolled in the conservation and restoration ecology (CARE - recently renamed land stewardship and conservation) program in 2017. At the time, Lakeland hadn't yet launched the bachelor of agriculture technology.

That's when her plans for a career in agriculture shifted.

“I absolutely loved my Lakeland experience,” Krys says. “I enjoyed the hands-on labs, especially in the fall. It's where I got my love for plants.”

That love for plants followed her to USask where she completed an agriculture degree majoring in soil science and minoring in field crop production. She jumped right into her master's degree in plant science after that, which is still on-going. It's there that her environmental sciences and love of plants started informing her choices a little more.

“For my master's project, we're looking at a methodology for applying UAVs (Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles) at the field scale, looking at canola emergence counts in the spring,” she explains. “We're looking at how we can use drones as a scalable tool to scout canola and perform plant counts. Precision agriculture technology hasn't really been applied at the emergence growth stage historically. Using drones, we're able to assist those scouting in the field to be able to do it in a more timely and less invasive manner.”

That interest in increasing efficiency and using precision agriculture to lessen the impact on crops is a byproduct of starting her studies in environmental sciences.

“Using technology and other applications in agriculture helps us do what we are doing in a more efficient and environmentally sustainable manner. That allows producers to either produce more or do more with their time. Time and land are two of the things we can't create more of in agriculture,” she says. “With my environmental sciences background, I really see the importance of precision agriculture beyond the dollar being saved. I see the value of conservation in agriculture, how we can protect and maintain our land as well. Taking care of our soil is just as important as the yields coming out in the long run.”

While working on her master's degree, Krys has travelled internationally to conferences to share what she's learned. She's also hosted webinars and keeps an active presence on X (formerly Twitter) at @KaylieKrys.

Throughout it all, however, Krys has never forgotten her Lakeland experience, particularly Field Week. It's an intensive, week-long series of on-site labs designed to get second-year environmental sciences students out of the classroom and into the wilderness. This year, Kris attended Field Week again - as an instructor.

She launched her career as a Lakeland College environmental sciences instructor in September 2023, teaching field botany, wetland classification, rangeland management and site remediation.

She is excited to bring back what she has learned about combining her love of agriculture and environmental sustainability to the college where her studies first started.

“Some of the students I am teaching are in the agriculture sustainability program, and that's something I likely would have been into if it had existed when I was a student,” Krys says. “I'm definitely interested both on the ag and the enviro side to see how technologies such as drones and GIS are going to be applied at Lakeland in the next few years."

Photos: Top - Kaylie Krys. Bottom - Kaylie Krys operates a drone in a canola field.