Space for ag technology start-ups to test tech on a working commercial farm has officially launched, announced EMILI (Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative).
“We intend to use this space to develop real world digital ag solutions that will give Canadian producers the edge in a quickly changing industry,” said EMILI board chair and Enns Brothers president and CEO Ray Bouchard in an Oct. 20 news release.
“Innovation Farms Powered by Ag Expert” is an ag tech testing and validation site that ‘lives’ on Rutherford Farms, a working commercial farm and seed retailer near Grosse Isle.
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While testing began at the site at the beginning of this year’s growing season, an Oct. 20 announcement of about $2.5 million in federal funding allowed EMILI to officially launch the initiative.
A 100-acre ‘cutout’ on the farm makes space for testing and validation of tech—for instance, helping Ukko Robotics develop a small-scale version of its autonomous, mobile pastured-poultry barn; and working with Carbon Assets Solutions to test its measurement technology.
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Test plots don’t provide nearly enough space to prove that technology is ready to use on a full-scale farm, said Jacqueline Keena, EMILI’s managing director, in an interview with the Manitoba Co-operator.
“By giving startups access to that space to test and validate, we’re hopefully going to get them more customers and get them more investors to keep scaling their business in Manitoba,” she said.
Sensors are scattered all over the 5500-acre farm, collecting everything from weather data and soil moisture levels to crop disease and pest surveillance said Keena.
EMILI will analyze the data to “compel the story of what those sensors are collecting and, sort of, what story it shares about the role of new technologies in ag,” said Keena. The data set will also be available to students, “so they have access to real-world data to experiment with and run trials,” she added.
Rutherford Farms is no stranger to data collection.
They’ve got a complete data of every pass over the farm since 2014, owner Rick Rutherford told the Co-operator.
Rutherford appears to enjoy technology—he showed a Co-operator reporter an app on his smartphone that showed his staff’s progress combining that day. He also talked enthusiastically about how his staff uses a drone to fly scouting missions—and to dive-bomb each other.
He’s been working on projects with EMILI since 2019—something he said likely began because he was close to Winnipeg and had all the crop varieties they needed for a particular trial.
Rutherford said he saw Innovation Farms as a benefit to his farm, and potentially to his retail customers also.
“Is it self-serving? Maybe in a way,” he said. “But, you know, we’re always looking for new technologies and if we can go through and vet some of this stuff… there’s so many technologies that come to the market, there’ll never be return on investment. So why are we putting energy into these things?”
Along with the federal government, industry groups including Enns Brothers, Farm Credit Canada, John Deere Canada and Rutherford Farms have contributed about $6 million in funding to Innovation Farms.
