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Comment by newyankee | Hacker News Reader

I am thinking of a similar route, as a data scientist i am eager to know what graduate level courses would you recommend ? Especially for agriculture in cold climate (Canada )

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Hi - coming from a PhD in agriculture (focus on sustainable ag), graduate level courses are going to be tough to jump into unless you have a strong background in ecology. Most of my grad-level courses assumed years of training in e.g. genetics, soil science and chemistry, plant physiology, ecology, weed science, entomology, etc. Agriculture is a very broad life science field.

That said, if you want a quick primer, "Crop ecology: productivity and management in agricultural systems" is a good primer on most of the basic ecological systems in agriculture. I've read it cover to cover many times.

However, you don't need a grad-level education to farm (believe me, I have been reminded this endlessly) - this is more for people doing research. For applied/actionable specifics for cold climates, your best friend is going to be local crop-extension services (in the US, most land-grants run an extension service). They will have tested techniques for your area and will be able to point you to good resources for farmers, not people researching agriculture.

One last thing - to be a successful farmer has very little to do with growing crops. Take business classes - the rest is relatively easy to figure out.

I don't know what to recommend you. I know a few people doing syntropic agriculture in Portugal which is as close as a close climate that I know. There is a guy in Florida, he have a company called GreenDreamsFL, hes the only one I know in the US doing this. But sadly this is not very much taught in academic courses down here in Brazil, but anything related to agroecology is very close, also understanding deeply plants biology helps A LOT when working with this systems, so we see a lot of people from Biology with a focus on Botany and Plant's physiology, and "florest engineering" I couldn't find a good translation to it, but its an academic course found here in Brazil which also helps a lot on understanding forests processes.

It's not a graduate course in the traditional sense, but Paul Wheaton runs a number of hands-on permaculture classes and courses on his land in Montana. Maybe not Canada-cold, but there's a large focus on shaping land and designing buildings to use energy more efficiently.

https://wheaton-labs.com/

If you want to learn about agriculture, find a farm you can support close to you, and enroll in a summer program. You will learn more if you get your hands dirty.

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