Seeding new agriculture technology growth

A new network of farmers and tech leaders across the Prairies will test early-stage agricultural technology tools on their farms this growing season.

Agriculture Innovation, Validation and Adoption Network (AIVA) was founded by federal Crown corporation Farm Credit Canada, Manitoba-based non-profit Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI), and the Indianapolis-based Wabash Heartland Innovation Network (WHIN).

The network will pair developers of ag tools with farmers, with the goal of both piloting market-ready projects and offering farmers a low-risk way to expand their technological repertoire.

Projects set to be tested in Manitoba during this year’s growing season include Picketa Systems, which is able to analyze plant tissue’s nutrients while plants are still in-field, and Corteva, which uses drones to apply fungicide.

Out of the 25 farmers that will work with AIVA this growing season, 13 are based in Manitoba.

Funded by Farm Credit Canada, the network comes was formed in response to the quickly-growing food demand world-wide and the search for ways to boost productivity on farms, said Graeme Millen, Farm Credit Canada vice-president of strategic finance and business development.

“When we think about our mandate to enhance Canadian agriculture — and we look at that alongside this truly unique, massive opportunity to meet global food demand and the fact that that will only be achieved through the acceleration of adoption of technology and innovation on farm — it was a clear imperative for us to support our customers, our market and align with our mandate to help make that happen,” Millen said Monday.

Last year, Farm Credit Canada said further implementing tech innovations in agricultural settings could improve productivity by as much as $30 billion in increased farmers’ incomes in the next decade.

EMILI has long heard tech developers struggle to full-scale test their products and prove how their products work across entire farms, said CEO Jacqueline Keena.

One project set to be tested this season is Geco Predictive Weed Control, which uses mapping to predict where weeds will occur in fields, pinpoint herbicide-resistant weeds and work to prevent those from emerging.

The company worked with EMILI in Manitoba for three years — the organization has two testing farms in Manitoba, one in Grosse Isle and another in MacGregor — and now, through AIVA, will be deployed across the country.

“Going forward, I think (AIVA) is going to be really significant for the development of agtech, and so that agtech developed is the best fit possible for Canadian farmers,” said Keena. “We think there’s nowhere else in the world doing this at this scale.”

Meanwhile, WHIN, which has focused on vetting new technology and helping farmers implement it in the U.S. since it began seven years ago, is expanding to bring its model to Canada.

“(Farmers) all know they have to adopt technology to be able to compete, but they’re bombarded, inundated with so many different options, and it’s really hard for them to sift through which one is really suits them and really works, and it’s going to really give them the (return on investment),” said Johnny Park, WHIN CEO.

“So the default position with all that skepticism is just stay neutral, and then just don’t adopt.”

Scott Day, who farms in the Municipality of Deloraine-Winchester area, echoed those concerns in a news release from AIVA: “New technologies are bombarding farmers from all angles these days and it is hard to know how to manage all these opportunities.”

While AIVA will have a core group of farmers adopting and testing the technology, information from the research will be made widely available through a nation-wide membership network.

The long-term goal for the project, Millen said, is to build that wider network and find ways to implement the program into other areas of agriculture.

“The ability for this platform and this approach to be expanded to other areas of agriculture which are not necessarily as seasonal — I think everything from greenhouses to livestock — has obviously a lot of potential,” he said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca