There’s all manner of weather to deal with, plus shifting markets, crop and animal diseases and unexpected production hurdles.

In response, farmers cover their acres with crop insurance, buy policies to protect against livestock price volatility and work feed options into their forage and marketing plans, among other safeguards. But even with risk management, cybersecurity experts worry that farmers and the agriculture sector are vulnerable in the digital parts of their businesses.

Why it matters: Agriculture’s adoption of sophisticated technology and data use promises big production gains, but also opens farmers to a new type of risk.

Recent ransomware attacks on agri-food companies illustrate the problem. Ontario Pork and national dairy organization Lactanet are among the newest Canadian organizations to fall prey.

“I think it’s going to always just be this ongoing concern for us now,” said Ontario Pork chair Tara Terpstra. “(We) have to evaluate different things when it comes to cybersecurity planning, which is essential going forward in the world we’re living in.”

• RELATED: How to manage a cyberattack

Maple Leaf Foods in 2022 took an estimated $23-million hit after an attack locked down its systems and the company opted not to pay the ransom demanded by the hackers. The year before that, a cyberattack to meat giant JBS temporarily took down beef and pork plants.

In May 2020, a breach at the Agronomy Company of Canada (Agromart) compromised the personal information of hundreds of farmers, some of which was later sold, according to a lawsuit filed against Agromart and its parent company Sollio Agriculture. A proposed settlement for that lawsuit was announced earlier this year.

Farmers at risk

The computer is now a standing feature in machinery cabs, and farmers are generating and recording more data than ever before. That data is on farm systems, shared with consultants and agribusinesses and stored digitally on and off the farm.

With greater data comes a greater need to protect it. Many producers understand how to hedge their bets against weather, but the ins and outs of defending themselves digitally remains somewhat arcane.

Brennan Schmidt, an author and expert in cybersecurity from Regina, noted three key concepts farmers should keep in mind when setting up or incorporating new technology:confidentiality — ensuring no unauthorized technology or person knows the data;

integrity — ensuring there’s no alterations made to data; and

availability — limiting access so only essential persons and technologies can get to the data.

Farms constantly blend informational technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), Schmidt said.

IT is the typical pieces — computers and databases — while OT is the background that helps control systems. Both have online connections that must be protected against hacking, lest they provide a foothold into farm operations.

Darrel Petras, chief executive officer of the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network, said the organization supports many projects with elements of cybersecurity. Advances in data transmission and agriculture’s heavy reliance on technology make it top of mind.

“When we fund these projects, we want to ensure that appropriate cybersecurity measures are taken,” he said. “So, they’re using either the best practices available or, within the innovation of the overall project, they’re offering innovative cybersecurity technology.”

Innovators and companies in agri-tech development have an obligation to consider cybersecurity in their work, he noted.

On the farm

One such company is Farm Health Guardian, an Ontario-based livestock biosecurity company.

Its software promises smarter traffic control to help farms prevent and overcome animal disease. It tracks the people and trucks that enter the premises.

In Manitoba, the company’s app allows producers to report wild pig sightings to provincial monitoring and control organization Squeal on Pigs. It also offers alerts when biosecurity measures have been breached, confirmations of truck washes and other data.

The company’s largest customer base is Manitoba swine producers. Cybersecurity is hugely important to them and their sector, said Farm Health Guardian chief executive officer Rob Hannam.

The company says it protects users’ data through EU level data standards, encrypting all data and using North American servers.

Cybersecurity measures must be chosen just as carefully as biosecurity, Hannam said.

“It’s not like you’re a kid with an app walking down the street. It’s a dairy business. It’s a hog business. Some are large companies, some are smaller independent farms, but farming is a business. They need to have business-level software and business-level technology.”

The selected technology must be planned, researched and secured.

“It’s like buying parts,” he said. “They can buy the brand-name parts, aftermarket parts or used parts on a website. And if it meets the specs, it’s probably going to work.

“But in this [cyber]world, the brands they trust are likely working hard, like we are, to provide as much cybersecurity as they can. And if they’re buying other technology, they just need to be asking those questions and reading a bit of the fine print or asking how they’re backing up and securing their data.”

No blanket solution

Ontario Pork chair Tara Terpstra said that, despite ongoing staff cybersecurity training, the in-depth education provided by cybersecurity experts after the organization’s breach was eye-opening.

“(At the time) it was just trying to stay calm and listening to what they were advising us to do and what steps to take. We were learning constantly.”

She said the experts simplified technical concepts and advised on safeguards to protect the organization’s system in the future.

Because risk and protection perceptions differ among producers, organizations or commodities, Terpstra said it is challenging to create blanket solutions for the agriculture industry. Like biosecurity protocols, cybersecurity varies by operation. Some might employ basic standards, while others need a more robust system.

“We have to protect our farms and farm businesses from cybersecurity threats, not just disease threats, (and) it’s just one more thing we have added to how we run our every day,” she said.

Ontario Pork’s new cybersecurity protocol with multi-factor authentication protects the organization, but providing producers with farm and business threat mitigation tools is a priority for the industry group.

“We can give them tools on what to do, but we can’t force them to adopt them,” Terpstra said. “Whether it’s a cultural thing or an age thing for those maybe a little more resistant to technology, they have to decide for their family farm.”

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Currently, the PMRA mandates that drones can only be used for spraying herbicides and pesticides if that usage is clearly displayed on the product label. The problem is that very few product labels have been amended and approved by PMRA.

At the KAP AGM on January 25, a resolution to lobby the PMRA to amend its regulations to become more flexible when it comes to research drones was among the five resolutions on the agenda for the meeting.

The resolution was introduced by District 3 KAP member Reg Dyck, who also spoke to the resolution at the meeting.

Dyck said the genesis of the resolution comes from a crop tour he was on last summer.

“The people running one of the projects were telling us that they had a problem when they were using drones for research purposes,” he said. “They could only put water in the drone because they couldn’t go off-label. It was restricting the research they were doing.”

Dyck said that in the U.S., it’s a different story.

“It’s mostly wide open in most of the states; if it’s registered to spray by air, you can spray it with a drone,” he said.

“This technology is coming — it’s here already, and it’s moving really fast,” said Dyck. “We know there are drones out there. We know that people spray with them. I saw people in Brandon selling drones. And yet, we can’t even get research done.

The resolution was carried.

Another resolution, moved by David Rourke from District 1, sought to lobby the governments of Canada and Manitoba to ensure renewable diesel is prioritized for use in agriculture.

“Food companies are making net-zero pledges, so there’s more pressure to cut emissions. One of the ways that we can do that is by using renewable diesel,” said Rourke. “It’s essentially used exactly the same and has the same characteristics as diesel. I think we should have a priority in agriculture to be the first in line to use it.”

After Rourke’s comments, a lively debate ensued.

District Six delegate Charles Fossay said it’s not really a problem with who gets it first; it’s a problem of infrastructure.

“The big roadblock here right now is that down in the States, they have built dozens of plants to start processing renewable diesel, but here in Canada, we are building crushing plants to increase the amount of canola oil that can be used in these renewable diesel products, but we don’t have the refineries,” said Fossay, adding that the real effort should be to encourage the Government of Canada to provide stimulus to get more refineries built. “Otherwise, we’re just going to be exporting either canola seed or canola oil to the U.S. and then bringing the product back into Canada.”

Scott Melvin of District Two pointed out that it was an interesting proposition because farmers are both producers and consumers of this particular product, but he wondered how much difference it would make to the big picture.

“We only have one atmosphere, and who’s actually burning the product that we’re producing is really not relevant as to how much pollution is caused,” said Melvin.

But ultimately, the delegates were swayed by Rourke’s arguments, and the resolution was carried.

Dennis Thiessen of District Four brought forth a resolution, ultimately passed, to lobby the province to prioritize the reconstruction of a bridge over the Manning Canal on PTH 11 that was destroyed by fire last year.

Manitoba Pork delegate Marg Rempel, who farms near that bridge, spoke passionately in favour of the resolution. She said concern for the closure of that highway extends beyond that one bridge.

“The next bridge crossing to the north is also closed because it is inoperable. The bridge on the canal two miles to the southeast was destroyed by arson in 2018 and remains closed to this day. The next bridge down the canal after that has a 13-metric-ton load limit on it. So basically, it is limited to passenger vehicles, which does not help agriculture,” said Rempel. “You can begin to get a picture of the extent that all of this detouring has on farmers and businesses in our area.”

Another carried resolution dealt with concerns over the lack of conservation officers in certain areas of the province. The resolution moved by District Six delegate Charles Fossay suggested inadequate compensation might be the issue.

“In the northwest part of District Six, there have been a number of offences occurring up there, and there just haven’t been enough conservation officers to enforce the rules around hunting and conservation of animals,” said Fossay. “I am told that a lot of the officers who do get trained here in Manitoba eventually leave to go to other provinces because of higher compensation.”

John Sandborn of District 12 moved that KAP organize a Canadian Grain Act (CGA) summit to review CGA policy and make recommendations that ensure the Canadian Grain Act and the Canadian Grain Commission act in the interest of producers.

“Basically, this is asking KAP and the farmers of Manitoba to join the farmers of Alberta and Saskatchewan that have already approved this,” said Sandborn. “We’re looking at having more consolidation in the grain handling industry. And this resolution is just looking to have a common farm voice.” The resolution was carried.

The post KAP to lobby PMRA to broaden drone-spraying regulations appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

As humans demand more food, more forests and other natural ecosystems are cleared, and farms intensify and become less hospitable to many wild animals and plants. Therefore global conservation, currently focused on the COP15 summit in Montreal, will fail unless it addresses the underlying issue of food production.

Fortunately, a whole raft of new technologies are being developed that make a system-wide revolution in food production feasible. According to recent research by one of us (Chris D. Thomas), this transformation could meet increased global food demands by a growing human population on less than 20 per cent of the world’s existing farmland.

In other words, these technologies could release at least 80 per cent of existing farmland from agriculture in about a century.

Around four-fifths of the land used for human food production is allocated to meat and dairy, including rangeland and crops specifically grown to feed livestock. Add up the whole of India, South Africa, France and Spain and you have the amount of land devoted to crops that are then fed to livestock.

[RELATED] Alberta Farmer Express: Alberta cattleman right at home at UN climate change conference

Despite growing numbers of vegetarians and vegans in some countries, global meat consumption has increased by more than 50 per cent in the past 20 years and is set to double this century. As things stand, producing all that extra meat will mean either converting even more land into farms or cramming even more cows, chickens and pigs into existing land. Neither option is good for biodiversity.

Unless food production is tackled head-on, we are left resisting inevitable change, often with no hope of long-term success. We need to tackle the cause of biodiversity change.

The principal global approach to climate change is to focus on the cause and minimize greenhouse gas emissions, not to manufacture billions of parasols (though we may need these too). The same is required for biodiversity.

Cellular agriculture provides an alternative, and could be one of this century’s most promising technological advancements. Sometimes called “lab-grown food”, the process involves growing animal products from real animal cells, rather than growing actual animals.

If growing meat or milk from animal cells sounds strange or icky to you, let’s put this into perspective. Imagine a brewery or cheese factory: a sterile facility filled with metal vats, producing large volumes of beer or cheese, and using a variety of technologies to mix, ferment, clean and monitor the process.

Swap the barley or milk for animal cells and this same facility becomes a sustainable and efficient producer of dairy or meat products. The factory would take up far less space to produce the same amount of meat or milk.

[RELATED] The high-tech future of meat is just around the corner

Other emerging technologies include microbial protein production, where bacteria use energy derived from solar panels to convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen and other nutrients into carbohydrates and proteins. This could generate as much protein as soybeans but in just seven per cent of the area. These could then be used as protein food additives (a major use of soy) and animal feed (including for pets).

It is even possible to generate sugars and carbohydrates using desalination or through extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, all without ever passing through a living plant or animal. The resulting sugars are chemically the same as those derived from plants but would be generated in a tiny fraction of the area required by conventional crops.

These new technologies can have a huge impact even if demand keeps growing. Even though the research is based on the assumption that global meat consumption will double, it nonetheless suggests that at least 80 per cent of farmland could be released and used for something else.

That land might become nature reserves or be used to store carbon, for example in forests or in the waterlogged soils of peat bogs. It could be used to grow sustainable building materials or simply to produce more human-edible crops, among other uses.

Since there would be less pressure on the land, there would be less need for chemicals and pesticides and crop production could become more wildlife-friendly. Global adoption of organic farming is not feasible at present because it is less productive.

This transition must be coupled with a full transition toward renewable energy because the new technologies require lots of power.

Converting these technologies into mass-market production systems will of course be tricky. But a failure to do so is likely to lead to ever-increasing farming intensity, escalating numbers of confined animals, and even more lost nature.

Avoiding this fate – and achieving the 80 per cent farmland reduction – will require a lot of political will and a cultural acceptance of these new forms of food. It will require economic and political “carrots” such as investment, subsidies and tax breaks for desirable technologies, and “sticks” such as increased taxation and removal of subsidies for harmful technologies. Unless this happens, biodiversity targets will continue to be missed, COP after COP.

– Chris D. Thomas, Jack Hatfield, and Katie Noble are researchers at the Center for Anthropocene Biodiversity, University of York, UK.

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In some cases, however, the future is now while in others it’s coming quickly — it all depends on the type of sensor tech you’re interested in.

Well-known spraying expert Tom Wolf separates precision spot-spraying tech into two categories: ‘green on brown’ and ‘green on green.’

Green-on-brown sensors such as the WEED-IT have been available in Canada for some time and can be used for pre-seed burn-off. Green-on-green sensors which consistently differentiate between crops and weeds are still a little ways away — but not by much, said Wolf.

“I think there is certainly work being done judging by my discussions with some of these (green-on-green) companies,” he said. “They would say the first 80 per cent (accuracy) was a lot easier than the last 20, so they are refining and working on it and it’s just an ongoing process.

“I’m going to quote Yogi Berra: it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”

A weed-targeting sprayer has two obvious advantages — saving money on herbicide and using less herbicide reduces environmental impacts (such as spray drift floating into water bodies and other at-risk areas).

But from an agronomic point of view, the biggest advantage is delaying the onset of herbicide resistance.

Right now, one of the most powerful tools in the fight against herbicide resistance is mixing multiple effective modes of action in the spray tank. But that’s expensive, said Wolf.

“We broadcast treat (many fields) with glyphosate plus one or two tank mix partners for resistance management,” Wolf said. We could save somewhere between 60 to 80 per cent of that cost by spot spraying them.

“Site-specific technologies like spot spraying make resistance management affordable. I view these technologies as important tools for the preservation of our herbicide capabilities.”

How green on brown works

Put simply, this technology uses ultraviolet light to tell the sensor ‘this plant is green’ and turn on the spray nozzle. That’s not useful for in-crop spraying, but can save big bucks during pre-seed burn-off.

“Users are reporting between 95 and 97 per cent accuracy,” said Wolf.

Although this technology is not new (the WEED-IT, for example, was first released commercially in the Netherlands in 1999), it continues to be researched for its suitability in Western Canada. An upcoming two-year research project by Olds College’s Centre for Innovation will evaluate the latest version of WEED-IT — the Quadro — under Prairie conditions.

The replicated strip trial will collect data from pre-seed herbicide applications on Olds College land in the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons. The scope of the project may be expanded to include post-harvest application and another site (at Lakeland College) pending approval of additional research funds.

“We are specifically looking at the effectiveness of the spot-spraying technology for controlling weeds,” said Joy Agnew, the centre’s director of applied research. “We’re looking at the effect of stubble types, travel velocity and spray settings on spray effectiveness.”

What makes this project different, said Agnew, is that it will help fill in gaps in the existing research on a season-long basis.

“There’s some great information from some of the early adopters about how much chemical use reduction is happening with spot-spray technology. However, no one has been following that through the growing season to see how effective the weed control really is and if there is an effect on yield down the road.

“We are going to map that all the way through to get a true value assessment of the technology’s return on investment,” she said.

Wolf is excited about the potential of the Quadro.

“The sensor has improved. It has a blue light which is more energy efficient and more sensitive. That should facilitate better detection accuracy and maybe even better travel speeds.”

The second aspect which Wolf describes as “very significant” is the Quadro’s addition of a complete pulse width modulation (PWM) capable boom. A PWM system adjusts flow to nozzles individually via pulsing solenoids located at each nozzle.

“The PWM boom is valuable in its own right,” he said. “When you are done sensing in the early spring then you simply use the same boom but turn the sensors off. They’ve merged those two technologies together, which is a significant step.”

Green on green still needs work

The computer algorithms which power green-on-green weed recognition are essentially the same ones which enable facial recognition on your smartphone. And while they’re getting better at recognizing weeds, the technology isn’t quite there yet, said Wolf, adding some European sensors have achieved a good — but not great — accuracy rate of 80 per cent.

“Everyone is being very cautious and the reason is because there has been a high bar set by the performance of herbicides,” he said. “When a producer sprays herbicide for weed control they have come to expect better than 95 per cent results. We can’t afford for anything to escape the herbicide pass.

“If these sensing technologies cannot meet that standard, their commercial success is placed in question. If you are only 80 per cent accurate do you have a product that has any chance of success in the marketplace? Right now I would say the answer is no.”

However, research and innovation in the green-on-green space continues to advance.

Europe is a hotbed for this technology because EU regulations limiting herbicide use for crop production are driving innovation, said Wolf. He got a peek into what European companies are doing at last year’s Agritechnica — the world’s leading trade fair for agricultural technology — in Hanover, Germany.

One such innovation has seen developers flip what the sensors are intended to recognize.

“Some companies have come to realize that identifying every single weed by species is probably a pretty big ask and so they have done something that is the reverse of that,” said Wolf. “They’ve decided to start looking at row crops like corn and have the sensors say, ‘Hey, this is corn and we are 100 per cent sure that it’s corn.’

“If the sensor sees corn it says, ‘That’s safe.’ If it sees something that isn’t corn it says that’s got to be ‘not corn’ therefore it’s probably a weed so it will spray that.

“That approach is what the Xarvio Smart Sprayer will be launched with. It will then eventually, incrementally grow into the kind of row spacings and canopies that can be more difficult.”

Wolf thinks the Xarvio sprayer may become the first green-on-green sprayer tech to be available in Canada, although it may have limited utility in some parts of the Prairies.

“It’s initially going to be a row-crop unit; not so much a Saskatchewan/Alberta product but rather an Eastern Canada, Manitoba and U.S. Corn Belt product.”

Is it worth it?

For most farmers, the biggest question is: How much is it going to cost me and will I save enough on herbicide costs to justify it?

That’s a tough question when it comes to green-on-green tech; however, green on brown is a different story.

According to WEED-IT retailer Croplands Equipment, a 120-foot WEED-IT system will run you about $182,000, not including labour and installation materials. The company claims a producer spraying 8,000 acres per year would recoup that investment in a little over 2-1/2 years.

“That’s a tremendously fast ROI (return on investment),” said Wolf. “That’s driven, of course, by how much you would use it.”

This article was originally published at the Alberta Farmer Express.

The post Smart sprayer tech developing quickly appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Teresa Vallotton of FarmFemmes is aiming to pique the interest of kids for future careers in agricultural technology. Vallotten’s “AI in a Day” coding camp sessions recently held at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon gave kids a quick introduction to artificial intelligence (AI) and allowed them to play around with aspects of the technology.

Here, Vallotten talks about how AI can assist farm operations and her passion for “gen2gen ag,” which is aimed at getting young people interested in the technology side of agriculture.

The post VIDEO: Coding camp for kids aimed at building interest in ag tech appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“One of the biggest challenges we have is the size of our equipment,” the award-winning agronomy coach and founder of the consulting firm Sure Growth Technologies said.

Aberhart, who farms 15,000 acres with his wife Lichell and his father Harvey, predicts the future of farm equipment will be smaller and more agile. What’s more, he sees a more profitable future by taking some acres out of production.

Why it matters: Precision technology can help farmers make more efficient use of their fertilizer and pesticides, but only if they have equipment that can manoeuvre smaller field zones.

Aberhart told the audience in a breakout session during the annual event hosted by Glacier FarmMedia that the simple pursuit of economies of scale — investing in increasingly larger equipment to cover ever-expanding acreages — might have run its course in Prairie agriculture.

“The trend in agriculture equipment and practices, generally speaking, in broad-acre crops has generally been bigger, bigger and bigger,” he said in a followup interview. “But I think that’s totally going to get flipped on its head.”

Aside from the sheer cost of acquiring and maintaining all that ‘big iron,’ the development of precision agriculture technology and metrics is showing just how inefficient those systems can be, he said.

“With new technology and robotics and automation and stuff like that, we could have 10 or 12 sprayers that are 10 feet wide… and it is going to allow us to farm much more precisely,” Aberhart said.

Farmers are increasingly managing smaller zones within a field, varying the application of inputs, sowing different varieties or crops and embracing regenerative agriculture principles such as reduced tillage and intercropping.

While farms may stay the same size, or even continue to grow larger, fields will be broken up into sectors based on where mapping shows farmers will get the most response out of their input investments.

The turning point for Aberhart was when he realized through the use of profit mapping they were farming acres that were actually costing them money because they were applying inputs that produced no yield response and because the non-productive acres dragged down the field’s average yield.

After tracking the performance of one their fields over several years, they knew one field in particular was netting an average of $50 per acre but there was one section of the field that was dragging it down.

By taking one area that was not responding to inputs out of annual crop production and sowing it down to hay, they are now getting $70 to $80 per acre from the hay sold off that piece and the average returns from the remaining acres on that field have risen to $74 acre. “We’re doing less and making more,” he said.

Whereas yield maps only show the farmer the location of low-yielding areas in a field, profit maps show how much it is actually costing to farm that land.

“Do you want to pay to go to work?” he said. “We’re doing that on our farms in some cases. That’s the difference in a profit map, it helps you understand that equation and then you can decide, hey if I have to pay to go work, maybe I don’t want to go to work.”

Aberhart has also tracked the differences between flat applications and varying the rates of inputs applied in field, putting more investment into the acres that could potentially pay off, and less on the areas that are unlikely to respond.

“We are using our inputs more efficiently and in some cases we are saving money, depending on whether it’s fertilizer or variable-rate chemicals or whatnot. But we are also increasing output,” he said.

He noted farmers are often tempted to increase their nitrogen applications across the entire field in a bid to boost yields. When he tracked the performance of nitrogen applications of up to 160 pounds per acre spread across the field, he actually saw average yields decline.

He identified a $78-per-acre spread between the return on investment using variable-rate applications compared to flat-rate nitrogen applications, which adds up pretty quickly.

Aberhart said he’s changed his approach to how their farm uses precision agriculture tools. He told his audience, it’s not about perfection, it’s about doing better; incremental changes can yield big dividends.

He now follows the 80/20 rule, which says the first 20 per cent of effort delivers 80 per cent of the value.

He said he looks for the simple changes they can make before engaging in complicated and expensive changes on the farm.

“We started our precision ag journey and we tried to go to the tenth degree and figure out all the variability and it drove us crazy and it was really stressful,” he said. “It was also quite costly and cumbersome to implement and then we just started thinking there is so much simple stuff we’re missing here.

“Why are we overcomplicating it? Just look at the simplest thing, like hey, this whole 20-acre patch is losing money. Well, don’t farm it anymore. That’s a form of precision agriculture.”

That said, Aberhart said it was access to precision data that helped identify how they could make small changes on their farm that add up to big gains.

The post Scaling up precision decision-making could shrink Prairie fields appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The longtime researcher for Canada’s National Farmers Union appeared on my radar in Feb. 2017 with a blog post titled “Agribusiness takes all: 90 years of Canadian net farm income.”

In it, Qualman draws a bright-blue/green/red chart that tracks the key elements of Canada’s farm economy from 1926 to 2016; blue is farmers’ expenses, green is net farm income, and red is negative farm income.

The unmistakable feature of the graph is how its blue area — the colour depicting “the amounts (farmers) pay to input manufacturers” — has grown from a small area that once steadily corresponded to net income into a yawning mouth that now devours nearly every cent of Canadian farm income.

In fact, “… in the 32-year period from 1985 to 2016, inclusive, agribusiness corporations captured 98 per cent of farmers’ revenues — $1.32 trillion out of $1.35 trillion… (to make) themselves the primary beneficiaries of the vast food wealth produced by Canadian farms. They have left taxpayers to backfill farm incomes; approximately $100 billion has been transferred (through government payments) to farmers since 1985.”

While that could be used as evidence to launch an indictment of Big Agbiz, Qualman uses it as a crowbar to pry farmers to consider alternatives to today’s high-input, high-output, no-profit farm and ranch models. In subsequent blog posts, this “avid observer of the big picture” notes that the last century of agriculture — the century that brought high costs and low to no profits — is an outlier to the 100 centuries of agriculture that preceded it.

“For 99 per cent of the time that agriculture has existed there were few farm inputs, no farm-input industries, and little talk of ‘high-input costs,’” notes Qualman in a January 2018 post.

The change, “admittedly,” has made today’s agriculture “high output. But this last fact must be understood in context: the incredible food-output tonnage of modern agriculture is largely a reflection of the megatons of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals we push into the system. Nitrogen fertilizer illustrates this process. To produce, transport, and apply one tonne of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer requires an amount of energy equal to almost two tonnes of gasoline.”

This has made “modern agriculture… increasingly… a system for turning fossil fuel calories into food calories.”

And not efficiently, either. Before petroleum, every “unit” of energy put into food production yielded five to 10 units of energy in terms of food, Qualman relates, quoting other research. Today, however, “(O)ur modern food system returns one unit of energy for every 13.3 invested.” That “energy” return on investment works out to be an astonishingly tiny 0.081.

Given that diminished ratio, little in today’s agriculture is either environmentally or economically sustainable. But, he adds quickly, relax, “We’re not going back to horses.” Instead, “It’s time to question the input-maximizing production systems agribusiness corporations have created, and to explore new methods of low-input, low-energy, low-emission production.”

A low-input, low-energy system, Qualman explains in an April 3 telephone interview, does not mean a stampede to organic farming. “But it does mean, for example, that big, non-organic farms will likely need to learn the low-input fertilizer methods that organic farms have already figured out and use.”

This “cross-pollination” between high-input/low-input farming, he offers, will be necessary if everyone in today’s agriculture “grasps the nettle” to harness the change that is coming, ready or not, before it harnesses us.

Equally important is that “We can do this,” he adds wryly, “because we’ve done it before.”

We have. In fact, we’ve changed from horses to tractors, from open-pollinated seeds to GMOs, from Grandpa’s pencil to GPS.

More recent changes have featured the cross-pollination that Qualman suggests; yesterday’s windmills are today’s wind turbines and every sun-baked acre can now “grow” electricity from solar cells.

Indeed, change is what farmers and ranchers do. We also know that it’s better to drive change before change drives us.

The Farm and Food File is published weekly through the U.S. and Canada.

The post Opinion: The long, sustainable view appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

So Tim Sharbel, the research chair in seed biology at the Global Institute for Food Security in Saskatoon, had his audience’s full attention at the recent Canadian Farm Writers Federation annual meeting.

“Clearly we are in a dire strait on this planet because population is growing at a fast rate and based upon status quo agricultural practices we can’t feed everybody in the next few years,” he told his audience. “So scientists and all these policy-makers are scrambling around trying to figure out how we’re going to feed everyone.”

Sharbel, who got hooked on evolutionary biology studying the reproductive habits of flatworms in the Italian Alps, has been trying to figure out how some species have developed an ability to reproduce through apomixis, meaning without sex.

Flatworms are among a handful of creatures in the world in which populations reproduce both sexually and asexually depending on where they are located. The one form of reproduction combines gene transfers from two parents while the other essentially clones itself.

Sharbel’s work is focused on finding the genetic switch that makes that possible and applying it to agriculture. His work has the potential to transform how often farmers buy seed.

Over the past 30 years, farmers have been gradually pushed away from saving seed for next year’s crop towards buying new seed every year. Some of it has been dictated by contracts. But it’s mostly due to use of hybrids. The “hybrid vigour” achieved from crossing two or more parent plants can boost yields in the first generation but if farmers plant the seed the next year, the plants revert to their parents. The result is a horrifically variable crop with lower yields.

If Sharbel cracks the code, farmers could continue using their hybrid lines indefinitely.

“If we can have a genetic switch that turns sex on and turns sex off, just like you see in natural populations… the idea would be that you create this first-generation hybrid and then you turn sex off and the plants reproduce clonally,” he said. “The farmer can buy seed from that company one time and never again.

“It’s an extremely disruptive technology,” he said, likening it to the impact MP3s had on the music distribution industry until the business model adapted.

It’s an intriguing concept and one that’s bound to appeal to farmers who enjoy the yield boost from hybrids, but who have felt the sting of dramatically higher seed costs. However, judging from the capital-venture interest this research is attracting, some folks see good potential for making money off this innovation, quite possibly by selling the spray that quashes a plant’s amorous tendencies.

Indeed, it could be a game changer. But will it feed the world? Probably not.

Despite the rhetoric, there is little evidence to suggest the world has a productivity problem. In the industrialized world, markets are more often depressed due to oversupply than not. This year is no exception.

Most of the world’s hungry people are farmers in poor countries who must grow their way out of poverty. Often they see upward of 60 per cent of their harvest lost due to lack of storage, transportation and market infrastructure. For them, increased yield only means one thing — more rot. They are unable to take full advantage of hybrid crops because they are working with soils so biologically degraded they cannot efficiently use water and fertilizer.

In this context, the single-minded focus on yield gains is actually destructive because when markets are depressed due to oversupply, it results in farmers selling crops below their true cost of production. That’s a travesty considering those crops were produced with non-renewable resources.

It drives more farmers out of business and perpetuates practices that evidence suggests will prove unsustainable.

Of course, we can’t expect individual researchers such as Sharbel to solve all the world’s problems. But we can expect more from the Global Institute for Food Security for which he works.

The Saskatoon-based institute portrays global food security as a yield issue that is solvable through “disruptive innovation” and sexy science. It is focused on a future problem that wouldn’t exist if we put some effort into ‘constructive’ innovations that can make a difference today. This is absurd given its altruistic mantra.

So here’s a thought. For every dollar that goes into increasing farmers’ yields, let’s start spending a quarter on research aimed at ensuring increased productivity is used to its fullest potential. Only then will the good work of scientists such as Tim Sharbel not be wasted.

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Monsanto will join a Brazilian investment fund with up to 300 million reais (C$118 million), managed by Microsoft, evaluating ideas for new digital tools to be applied to agricultural production in the country, executives said.

Selected ideas will receive initial funding of up to 1.5 million reais (about C$591,000) for early development. Project owners will have the option to pay back the investment after three years or convert the money into equity.

“We want to foster new startups in the agricultural sector. There is a vast area for research and development,” Rodrigo Santos, head of Monsanto in Latin America, told reporters on the sidelines of the Global Agribusiness Forum (GAF 2016).

Technology company Qualcomm is also investing in the fund.

— Reporting for Reuters by Marcelo Teixeira.

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Investment in this technology, which spans plant and soil technology to drones, amounted to $2.06 billion in the first half of 2015, on pace to smash last year’s record $2.36 billion, according to AgFunder, which matches startups with investors.

Technology that reduces reliance on chemicals and fertilizers is one area of interest. The most widely used herbicide, glyphosate, was classified this year by the World Health Organization as a probable human carcinogen, and farmers also face scrutiny for overapplying fertilizer.

“Biologicals,” which use natural sources such as bacteria, are especially attractive. In this field, researchers harness soil and plant microbes and bacteria for products that protect plants from disease and drought.

Biological solutions face fewer regulatory hurdles and are more environmentally friendly than chemicals while still yielding crop production benefits, agricultural experts said.

“This kind of capability is really what we believe is necessary for the future of food production,” said Sonya Franklin, director of microbial traits at Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed company.

Some companies in the sector could see revenue growth of 20 per cent per year for five years, said Todd Solow, a partner in Norwest Equity Partners of Minneapolis.

Norwest’s sale of agriculture technology company Becker Underwood to BASF Corp. for $1.02 billion in 2012 came after its revenue increased fourfold to $246 million from the time of Norwest’s 2004 purchase of a controlling stake.

“If you have differentiated technology and can prove to the market that you have yield-enhancing capabilities, you have the potential for very significant growth,” said Solow.

That kind of return has attracted the interest of Bank of Montreal, which is looking to help companies raise funds prior to any initial public offerings (IPOs) and facilitate mergers and acquisitions.

“There are all sorts of new technologies being developed in and around crop nutrients, crop efficiency, seed efficiency,” said Greg Pearlman, head of Bank of Montreal’s food and consumer group. “We think this is a hot area.”

Monsanto, together with Syngenta AG and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are investors in North Carolina-based AgBiome LLC, which recently raised $34.5 million for research and the launch of a new biological fungicide.

“The industry has an ongoing need for new and innovative products. We have a lot of people to feed in the coming decades,” said Dan Tomso, AgBiome’s chief science officer.

Another company with large interests in agriculture, Canadian fertilizer maker Agrium Inc., bought stakes in two plant technology companies in 2014.

“In the last two years definitely it’s picked up in the number of companies willing to talk about joint ventures or all-out acquisitions,” said Brent Smith, vice-president of Agrium subsidiary Loveland Products.

A recent deal in the sector was last month’s $160-million purchase by U.S.-based Intrexon Corp. of Oxford University spinoff company Oxitec, which specializes in controlling insect damage to crops.

Venture capital firms have also been attracted to the sector, with funding up two per cent from July 2014 through June 2015 over a year earlier despite a 16 per cent dip in the broader “clean tech” sector, according to professional services firm PwC.

Massachusetts-based Symbiota LLC, launched two years ago with $7.5 million from Flagship Ventures, is testing products to help crops yield more with less water and fertilizer, while fighting disease.

“The potential for this space is absolutely astronomical,” said founder Geoffrey von Maltzahn.

At the ground level, farmers are paying more to grow more.

Mark Nelson uses modern technology on much of his Kansas farm, but he said the costs are high.

Still, he sees improved yields from the latest farming advances. “It’s not our father’s agriculture anymore.”

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