Dr. Bart Lardner receives 2026 Canadian Beef Industry Award

Published 3:48 pm Thursday, August 20, 2026

Dr. Bart Lardner is the 2026 recipient of the Canadian Beef Industry Award for Outstanding Research and Innovation.

“It’s humbling, and I’m honoured to be recognized in the same vein of the past recipients of that award,” said Lardner in a recent chat.

He added that he’s passionate about extending his program results out to the producers and stakeholders.

Lardner teaches at the University of Saskatchewan at the College of Agriculture and Bioresources. He also runs a fairly large research program and shares his results with the industry.

Next week he will be in Alberta talking about those results to producer groups.

He will be outside of Barrhead working with some producers and going to their fields for a crop walk and a question-and-answer period, talking about crop-livestock integration and the positives that come out of that, along with all of the different systems out there. He will also be discussing some of the different ways you can use cattle to enhance the crops you grow, either for cash, for feed, or improving the soil profile.

Lardner will also lead a discussion on ‘Weathering the Seasons,’ where he will cover pasture and winter feeding strategies.

“You need to look at your 2026 grazing season and how did it unfold. I always suggest looking at the different perennial and annual options that are out there for forage types,” he said, adding that sometimes that cash crop doesn’t work, so you can use it as a salvage crop to feed your livestock.

“There’s so many options out there today from simple monoculture to binary mixtures to maybe simple three or four species mixtures to even some complex mixtures too,” he said, adding that he talks about the different species that are in those mixtures, along with the different rooting systems.

Lardner said that taking accurate records is also so important. Asking yourself the questions of how many pasture types do I have on my farm or ranch, did I rent pasture or go to the community pasture, and starting to think of the plan for 2027.

“You want to rest some of those areas. Rest is a huge key definition that producers need to understand. That means no grazing on that piece of land during the active growing season, so those plants can rejuvenate.”