All the favourite field tours and demonstrations will be back at this year’s Ag in Motion show, and according to show director, Rob O’Connor, the excitement is building.
“I think what excites me as a show director is how the farmers really take the time to look at what’s here,” he said.
O’Connor is in charge of the demonstrations at Ag in Motion, and he zeroed-in on previous air seeder demonstrations to make his point.
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“Once the air seeder does its pass, the farmers will actually get on their hands and knees and dig up (soil) to see where that seed was placed and where that fertilizer was placed,” he said.
Ag in Motion is Western Canada’s largest outdoor annual farm show with over 100 acres of tradeshow exhibits. Companies share products and new technology during the three-day event and give farmers the unique opportunity to get behind the wheel of the latest equipment, watch machinery operating in the field and speak with company representatives about new management options for their farms.
“The show is held outdoors, so there is room to stage very large equipment on site and other products like drone technology that would be difficult to show off in an indoor environment,” said O’Connor.
The scheduled demonstrations are the core of the annual show and, not surprisingly, they draw big crowds.
“Depending on what people are interested in that year, we’ll see up to 1,600 people at each demonstration,” said O’Connor.
On the equipment side, demonstrations will feature a high-speed tillage unit, drones, air seeders and a new highlight on skid-steers. The tillage units will run for about 1,000 feet, “so we can get it up to speed and really see how that implement works the ground,” O’Connor said.
“We also have a self-propelled sprayer demonstration where farmers can actually get into a cab and drive,” he added. “It’s maybe more of a ride than it is a demonstration.”
On the livestock side, there will be feed mixture demonstrations, cattle dog demonstrations and livestock equipment demonstrations.
Speaker series
Also new for this year is the Dynamic Speaker series.
“Farmers can go from booth to booth on a self-guided tour and learn directly from those different exhibitors who have some new technology or new farming practice options,” said O’Connor.
“We really wanted to give those farmers who come to the show a unique and new experience by creating this new tour where people can go for a few hours a day and visit with some of those different exhibitors that meet their needs,” he said.
Off the Beaten Path
Attendees will also be able to scope out the various research projects underway at Glacier FarmMedia’s Langham Discovery Farm. The “Off the Beaten Path” demonstration research tour will take farmers into the fields surrounding the main show set up.
“These cross-industry demonstration research projects are a great way for researchers to test and verify the latest technologies in real farming conditions,” said Blake Weiseth, applied research lead at Discovery Farm Langham and agriculture research chair at Saskatchewan Polytechnic. “The variety of demonstrations taking place on the farm is really exciting.”
Glacier FarmMedia’s Langham Discovery Farm is one of two sites (the other located in Woodstock, Ont.) focused on testing farm innovations in real-world conditions.
The tours take place twice daily (10:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.).
“It’s an opportunity for attendees to really see what’s happening in the field,” said Weiseth.
There are three ongoing, multi-year Discovery Farm projects.
The biggest of these is the Field of Excellence. It’s a large-scale, 110-acre collaborative research project with several industry partners. It is also part of the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network, a national web of research sites that aim to help with the development and adoption of smart agricultural technologies.
“All these partners bring their expertise to this project, where we work together to address a common objective or goal,” said Weiseth.
The common goal for this year is to “close the yield gap.”
“It’s about utilizing some of these technologies and practices to really just improve our production, especially in the marginal areas of our fields,” Weiseth said.
Another multi-year project is the 4Rs Plus project, designed to evaluate strategies for optimizing water and nutrient use efficiency and measure the impact of water management on soil.
There is also a salinity project, a five-year investigation evaluating the effectiveness of perennial forages in managing salt-affected soils.
Several industry-led projects will also feature on the tour. These include:
- Northern Nutrients Ltd.: Nitrogen gas flux trials,
- Nutrien Ag Solutions Innovation Acres,
- Overton Environmental Enterprises Inc.: EcoTea soil health discovery project,
- Timac Agro,
- TopKrop Fertilizers,
- Väderstad: wheat-forage intercrop project,
- Väderstad-Syngenta: Pelta versus conventional canola seed treatment plant placement project,
- Winny Seedsz: Pedigreed seed showcase, and
- Yara Incubator Farm.
Ag in Motion is held at the Glacier FarmMedia Discovery Farm near Langham, Sask., 15 minutes northwest of Saskatoon. This year’s show will be held from July 18–20.
“Ag in Motion has long been known as a must-see event that helps farmers make key business decisions about what’s needed for their operation,” said O’Connor.
