Boosting agriculture production innovation

GROSSE ISLE — The sensors are ready; potatoes will soon be tracked.

At least, they will in a storage facility on a MacGregor farm. The operation — J.P. Wiebe Ltd. — is the latest to join a growing network of research farms across Canada.

“We’re not printing arable land,” Graeme Millen, a vice-president at Farm Credit Canada, said Tuesday. “If you want to get more out of the land we have, it’s singularly going to be through innovation.”

Farm Credit Canada, a federal Crown corporation, tabbed $2 billion for agriculture and food innovation earlier this year. Committing six-figures annually to research at J.P. Wiebe Ltd. is part of the fund, Millen said.

Farm Credit Canada doesn’t divulge specific funding, a spokesperson added. However, a four-year funding agreement for J.P. Wiebe is in place.

Millen has noticed increased demand globally for Canadian food as recent trade wars unfurl. (Overall, exports to countries aside from the United States jumped 5.7 per cent month-to-month in May, hitting a new record.)

Even without current geopolitical tensions, Canada is among the world’s top food exporters. Agriculture and agri-food exports account for roughly seven per cent of the national gross domestic product.

“We always have to have a lens to how Canadian agricultural production stacks up … compared to our international counterparts,” Millen said.

Hence the 2024 creation of Farm Credit Canada Capital, the Crown corporation’s investment division. It funnelled more than $170 million into agriculture and food technology companies in its first year, Millen relayed.

Farm Credit Canada has been inking deals with research farms for the past four or five years. J.P. Wiebe Ltd. marks the second farm site in Manitoba and, at minimum, the sixth in the country.

“We just see this as an incredible pathway to driving the adoption of innovative technology and practices across Canadian farms,” Millen said. “We want to keep pushing boundaries together to drive the competitiveness globally.”

Already, projects are underway at J.P. Wiebe. The 6,000-acre farm seeds 2,600 acres of potatoes annually and rotates its crop.

OpticAg, an artificial intelligence-powered startup, is developing its software — which combines different softwares tracking farm performance — and is gathering data from J.P. Wiebe.

Cellar Insight will monitor potatoes in storage through its in-development hardware. Its sensors use air flow and humidity, temperature and carbon dioxide tracking to detect potato rot and depletion.

Traditionally, farmers use visuals and smell to scout potato loss.

“The challenge, we feel, is … how can you detect it earlier than you smell it? Because obviously it’s (already) started,” said Terry Sydoryk, Cellar Insight’s chief executive.

J.P. Wiebe Ltd. marks Cellar Insight’s first venture into Manitoba. The startup is working with roughly 30 farms in Alberta and New Brunswick; it aims to grow to the United States.

Research farms like J.P. Wiebe Ltd. are “critical,” Sydoryk said.

“(We) have to respect the fact that you can’t upset that (farming) cycle in a fashion that you might in other industries,” he added. “It’s basically a livelihood that’s being invested, and ultimately, that needs to be protected.”

Producers need to see startup offerings in action and businesses benefit from testing their wares on farms, explained Jacqueline Keena, managing director of Enterprise Machine Intelligence Learning Initiative (EMILI).

EMILI will oversee research at J.P. Wiebe Ltd. The potato operation is the second under EMILI’s Innovation Farms umbrella. Rutherford Farms, a 5,500-acre company in Grosse Isle, is the first.

The latter farm seeds dryland crops — wheat, canola, oats. Planting such crops on J.P. Wiebe’s irrigated land is an experiment opportunity moving forward, Keena said.

“(It’s) relevant as you think about climate change and increased heat and moisture variability,” she added.

A nearby Grosse Isle canola field has lost most of its flowers this July due to lack of rain. It’s “not an excellent” sign for harvest, Keena noted.

Wildfire smoke has affected companies at Innovation Farms by disturbing drone and satellite images used in algorithms. One business has changed its algorithm to rely less on satellite footage, Keena said.

“All of these environmental variabilities that make growing crops more variable are reasons why we need to test different sorts of technology,” she said. For example, testing crops that are more drought-resistant in August or seed varieties that’ll germinate in spring could be helpful.

EMILI launched Innovation Farms in 2022. Upwards of 50 projects have covered the Grosse Isle operation since, including weed prediction and grain tracking.

Sheldon Wiebe, owner of J.P. Wiebe Ltd., was out of the country and unavailable Tuesday.

Millen from Farm Credit Canada said he had initial discussions with Wiebe about the partnership last year.

“When I heard about what EMILI was doing, testing and validating technology at Innovation Farms, I knew it was something I wanted to contribute to,” Wiebe wrote in a statement.

Farm Credit Canada is working to better co-ordinate data and findings between its partner research farms in Manitoba, Ontario and Alberta, Millen added.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com