By Alice McFarlane

Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute looks back at 50 years in agriculture

Jun 26, 2025 | 9:21 AM

Since 1975, the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) in Humboldt, Sask. has studied, designed, built, and tested machines, machine components, and processes.

To recognize the event, an open house is being held Thursday, June 26 with tours, several displays and the unveiling of a special sculpture made by a former PAMI employee.

PAMI started solely as a place to test agricultural equipment but has since expanded to other areas of the economy, such as mining.

Jim Wasserman worked for 36 years at PAMI, first as an engineer and then the Vice President of Saskatchewan Operations.

Wasserman’s first job involved testing grain dryers.

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“Like many of the things at PAMI, the purpose was to help farmers understand machinery better so they can make better purchasing decisions,” Wasserman said. “In those days, grain dryers were a little bit of an unknown, not used too extensively like they are now. So, I worked on grain dryer testing and developed that program.”

Wasserman said PAMI was very busy in those first years when roughly 750 different pieces of farm equipment were tested.

“We prepared farmer style engineering reports on them, and those initial PAMI reports can still be found around the world. You can go into Ag engineering departments in most any university in any country and see those PAMI reports,” he said.

PAMI evolved and started working with short-line companies, many from Saskatchewan. Wasserman said a lot of the Prairie manufacturers were a little bit smaller, and having access to testing and development support from right next door was a big advantage to them.

“We transitioned into that world, and you know, just like all farmers, everybody has to go through change, and we went through that change,” he added. “I did quick math and over our 50 years, we probably did about 4000 projects to help out our clients and Prairie manufacturers develop and improve their equipment as well as research projects to help farmers with their farming practices again, especially related to farm equipment.”

Today’s event in Humboldt is from 11:30 to 2:30. There will be a live FOPS test. FOPS means fallen object protective structure test, which is something PAMI did when they first opened 50 years ago.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com