FCC’s Innovation Farms network will be spreading roots into the western part of the province.
The initiative, which, in Manitoba, partners Farm Credit Canada with agriculture technology accelerator EMILI, launched in 2022. EMILI’s initial site on Rutherford Farms near Grosse Isle has been devoted to testing and validating agriculture technology under real-life commercial farm conditions and, in 2024, opened a 8,500-square-food Innovation Farms Centre.
Now, Farm Credit Canada announced July 15, there will be a new Innovation Farms site. The 6,000-acre site near MacGregor, Man., is operated by JP Wiebe Ltd. The facility features 2,600 acres devoted to potato production, representing the initiative’s inaugural potato-focused site.
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Much like at the Rutherford Farms site, EMILI will take the lead in testing and validation work on the MacGregor location.
“World leading innovation is essential to helping Canadian farmers keep pace in a highly competitive global industry,” said Justine Hendricks, FCC president and chief executive officer in the same release. “FCC’s Innovation Farm Network and its partners are critical to delivering this vital innovation to Canadian producers when they need it the most.”
Five technologies will undergo trials at the facility, focusing on potato cultivation, crop rotation systems, and irrigation management. The list includes storage monitoring sensor technology created by Cellar Insights, which belongs to FCC Capital’s investment portfolio, the lender said.
Other technology to hit the testing ground includes Agi3’s Crop Sentry and Ukko Agro’s ForeSite field monitoring and data collection systems.
“With the addition of this site, we can evaluate more technologies in more settings and see how they perform in (P)rairie conditions and on different crops,” said EMILI’s managing director, Jacqueline Keena, in the release.
FCC’s Innovation Farm network has grown to encompass over 17,000 acres nationwide, the lender said. Outside Manitoba, it includes sites like Innovation Farms Ontario near Bothwell, Ont., in partnership with the Western Fair agricultural society.
