“While these technologies [automation, data analytics, etc.] hold the potential to optimize production and enable data-driven decision-making,” the report said, “their adoption has led to increased demand for workers with higher levels of education and skills.”

According to the report, published at the end of July, adoption of precision technologies like GPS guidance, yield mapping and variable rate application has been growing steadily. This is most prominent on large-scale farms. Sixty-four per cent of farms with revenues over $1 million use some kind of precision technology.

The report said that, in light of agriculture’s persistent labour challenges and its aging workforce, businesses may increasingly turn to automation. However, it also called adoption of technology “lethargic.” It attributed this to the perception of insufficient return on investment, lack of government support, and lack of in-house expertise.

Technology adoption will increase the need for certain roles and decrease demand for others.

The report put the top five fastest-growing agricultural jobs as nursery and greenhouse labours, truck drivers, landscape and horticulture technicians, animal care workers, and biological technologists and technicians.

The top five fastest declining roles are agriculture managers, specialized livestock workers and farm machinery operators, livestock labourers, harvesting labourers, and accountants and bookkeepers.

Automation technology adoption in the agri-food workforce will require a more educated workforce.

“The skills most in demand for the future agriculture workforce are product design, digital production, and digital literacy,” the report said.

The Conference Board of Canada recommended investment in education programs to develop worker proficiency with “digital tools, product design, and complex problem-solving and emphasize soft skills such as adaptability.”

It also recommended promotion of the role of farming and food production in the economy, particularly the need for tech-savvy workers.

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The move to go private comes nearly three years after Farmers Edge’s initial public offering (IPO) when shares started at $17.

A newly-formed Fairfax subsidiary intends to purchase in cash all common shares Fairfax and its affiliates don’t already own, Farmers Edge said in a news release. Fairfax currently owns more than 61 per cent of the company’s shares.

Farmers Edge announced it was considering a proposal from Fairfax in November with an offer of $0.25 per share.

The transaction is expected to be closed in the first quarter of this year following approval by shareholders, the release said.

Farmers Edge, founded in 2005 in Pilot Mound, Man. by agronomists Wade Barnes and Curtis MacKinnon. Barnes left the company in March, 2022.

On the day the company went public in March 2021, Barnes told media the company would use the new funding — totaling a little over $125 million–to build on its vision of digital farming.

“We’ll be scaling up our teams to grow the business,” he said. “We’ll also be developing new products.”

However, the digital agronomy firm was beset by financial problems. In August, it announced layoffs of 20 per cent of its workforce and consolidation of operations in North America. It also shuttered its Australian operation.

–Geralyn Wichers is associate editor of AgCanada. She writes from southeast Manitoba.

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Farmers Edge made the announcement via a media release on Nov. 16.

It said it had a received a non-binding proposal from its majority shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, which would see Fairfax acquire all common shares the company doesn’t already own at 25 cents per share.

When the company made its initial public offering (IPO) in March 2021, it did so at $17 per share.

Fairfax owns more than 61 per cent of Farmers Edge’s shares.

Farmers Edge said it has formed a committee of independent directors to evaluate the proposal and to “explore potential alternatives, including maintaining the status quo,” the news release said.

There is no timetable set for the committee to complete its review.

The digital agronomy firm has been beset by financial problems for some time. In August, it announced layoffs of 20 per cent of its workforce and consolidation of operations in North America. It also shuttered its Australian operation.

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The 330-acre Ontario site is the host of various demonstration research projects and Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show. It was established as the permanent home for the show in 2020.

“The objective is to provide farmers and agricultural professionals with tangible, applicable knowledge for their own operations. This research covers a wide range of agricultural fields, including crop cultivation, livestock management, soil health and sustainable farming practices,” the site’s website states.

Discovery Farm Woodstock and Olds College of Agriculture and Technology announced the addition Aug. 2 in a joint release. It brings the network’s membership up to eight locations across four provinces.

Other members include the farm’s sister site, Discovery Farm Langham near Saskatoon, the University of Saskatchewan’s Livestock and Forage Centre of Excellence (also near Saskatoon), Lakeland College at Vermilion, Alta., and Alberta’s Lethbridge College.

The network expanded into Manitoba earlier this year, with the addition of the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives near Brandon and the Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative near Winnipeg.

The idea, according to the Aug. 2 release, is to create “a network of Smart Farms supporting Canada’s agriculture sector to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and resilience in response to emerging opportunities and challenges in the industry.

“The network fosters collaboration among researchers, producers, industry partners, and other stakeholders nationwide to drive innovative projects that address critical issues in ag tech development and adoption.”

Sites test and validate digital ag innovations with an eye to how breakthroughs could be applied to farm practices or research.

The network’s multiple sites and diverse geographic regions “multiplies the learnings and increases the value of data generated to connect farmers with industry and research partners to find practical solutions to ag challenges,” the joint statement read.

Olds College launched its own Smart Farm in 2018 on 110 acres. The network was launched in 2021.

Joy Agnew, vice-president of research for Olds College, noted the addition expands the network’s reach past the Prairies for the first time.

“Discovery Farm Woodstock brings production practices and soil types more common in Eastern Canada into network research activities, as well as specific expertise in soybeans and corn,” she said. “The network’s continued expansion across different agricultural zones and land bases brings depth to the network’s projects and technology evaluations, which benefit farmers and developers.”

The college also noted the farm’s links to the University of Guelph.

Lynda Tityk, Glacier FarmMedia corporate director of Discovery Farm and events, said they were “thrilled” with the site’s membership and the new range it will bring to the network.

“Working together with members across Canada in the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network allows us to transfer knowledge on initiatives that provide information that matters to Ontario farmers and connect the public to Ontario’s robust and evolving agri-food sector,” she said.

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“You have got to have the root purpose of why you got that technology. Either that or you talk to others to help you find that purpose,” said Regan Ferguson, who farms with her husband, Mike, near Melfort.

“I find that once you have a purpose, you’re more apt to dig into it further and become more comfortable with it because you’re finally finding the value in it.”

The Fergusons are first-year users of Bayer’s Climate FieldView, a multi-application digital agriculture platform. They discussed Fieldview and digital ag in general at a roundtable held Tuesday at Ag in Motion near Langham, Sask.

Research can take the mystery out of unfamiliar technology, said Ferguson.

“The more I looked into Climate, did research and learned about it, I found the ‘why’ and the purpose of its need on our farm and got more excited to get it in place this year.”

Climate FieldView has given her the ability to keep track of all equipment in the field, what it’s doing and whether it’s doing it right. It also provides a detailed record of the operation.

“It was reassuring to know that we had some kind of data to back us up if we ever needed it,” said Ferguson.

Bayer says Climate FieldView was designed to centralize data, visuals and reporting in a package that producers can interpret and act upon, by optimizing fertility, seeding management or other crop operations.

“We’ve got to do this because of our return on investment with chemical and fertility. We just want to put the fertilizer where it needs to be,” said Ferguson.

— Jeff Melchior reports for Alberta Farmer Express from Edmonton.

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Not-for-profit organization Palette Skills has launched a new eight-week online program for Saskatchewan residents focused on automation and digitization in agricultural production and processing. The enrolment deadline for the new program was May 22.

Palette’s automation and digital agriculture specialist program, running June 6 to July 29, is billed as allowing its candidates to specialize in “identifying, managing, and implementing technologies to solve challenges and improve efficiencies across the agri-food value chain.”

More specifically, it focuses on “emerging technologies” in the agrifood sector such as GIS (geographic information systems), IoT (the Internet of Things), unmanned aerial vehicles, artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors and big data.

Workers who are “upskilled” through the program “can expect to develop careers in technology and business, farm robotics, agriculture automation, precision agriculture and production management,” the University of Saskatchewan, which supported the program’s design, said in a recent release.

The program is looking to recruit participants from Indigenous communities, newcomers to Canada, recent graduates and “experienced professionals looking to transition into the growing and exciting agri-food sector,” the U of S said.

“Today’s employees often need to understand how data and digital tools are being incorporated into everything from on-farm agriculture to food manufacturing,” said Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada, the federally-backed plant protein supercluster billed as a co-investor in the program.

“By having increased access to the right skills and talent, trailblazing companies across the country can increase their workforce, expanding their production and, as a result, growing Canada’s plant-based food and ingredient ecosystem.”

More information about the program and its format is available on the Palette Skills website.

CORRECTION, May 24, 2022: An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized the automation and digital agriculture specialist program as a University of Saskatchewan program. We regret the error.

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Farmers Edge, founded in 2005 in Pilot Mound, Man. by agronomists Wade Barnes and Curtis MacKinnon, has carved out a niche using field-centric data, artificial intelligence and its FarmCommand data management platform.

CEO Wade Barnes called it an exciting day during an online press conference Wednesday marking the event from the firm’s Winnipeg headquarters.

“It’s a transformational day for Farmers Edge and a huge change for all of agriculture as we see the digitization of the most important industry in the world,” Barnes said.

Barnes added that the company will use the new funding — totalling $125,001,000, based on 7,353,000 common shares issued at $17 per share — to build on its vision of digital farming.

“We’ll be scaling up our teams to grow the business,” he said. “We’ll also be developing new products.”

In many ways the IPO process represents the maturation of any company, he said, but added that it accomplished some specific things for Farmers Edge.

Most of the venture capital that’s been raised over the past few years has now been converted into shares, he noted.

“It leaves us with a really clean balance sheet, and lots of dry powder to go out and grow the business organically,” he said. “This is at a time when digital agriculture is growing rapidly.”

Responding to questions from financial journalists during the virtual question-and-answer session following company presentations, David Patrick, Farmers Edge’s chief financial officer, said interest was strong in the offering.

“Our underwriting partners told us there was about nine times the interest as there were available shares,” he said.

By 2 p.m. on the day of the IPO, share prices had already climbed to $19.64, rising $2.64 from the IPO price of $17 per share.

The company initially aimed to sell a 16 per cent stake with shares priced between $10 and $17 each, according to Feb. 9 sale documents.

National Bank of Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce led a group of five investment banks on the IPO, and have an option to acquire an additional 15 per cent of the offering.

The company will trade on the TSX under the symbol FDGE.

— Gord Gilmour is editor of the Manitoba Co-operator in Winnipeg.

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“While glyphosate will continue to play an important role in agriculture and in Bayer’s portfolio, the company is committed to offering more choices for growers,” Bayer said in a statement on Friday.

Bayer said these measures seek to address public concerns arising from its acquisition of Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide which, according to thousands of U.S. plaintiffs, causes cancer. Bayer contests this.

Reducing the environmental impact of Bayer’s ag portfolio would be done by “developing new technologies, scaling down crop protection volumes, and enabling more precise application.”

The company said its R+D investment will go toward “improving the understanding of resistance mechanisms, discovering and developing new modes of actions, further developing tailored integrated weed management solutions and developing more precise recommendations through digital farming tools.”

It said it will also partner further with weed scientists around the world “to help develop customized solutions for farmers at a local level.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Tassilo Hummel. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The Competition Bureau said Wednesday it has an agreement with Bayer to deal with “concerns that the proposed transaction would have significantly harmed competition and innovation in Canada’s agricultural sector.”

Germany’s Bayer has been collecting regulatory approvals worldwide for its takeover of U.S. peer Monsanto, an all-cash deal it first proposed in September 2016.

Several of those approvals, including the blessing obtained Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust division, have arrived in recent weeks ahead of a June 14 deadline, after which Monsanto could pull out of the deal or seek a higher price than Bayer’s US$128 per share offer if it wishes.

The bureau said Wednesday its review has concluded the proposed deal would “likely substantially lessen and prevent competition in Canada” in the supply of canola seeds and traits, soybean seeds and traits, carrot seeds, and certain seed treatments used to protect crops against nematodes.

To that end, the bureau’s agreement calls for the sale of a list of assets that Bayer has largely already agreed to sell to German seed and chemical peer BASF, to meet other regulators’ conditions.

Those include Bayer’s canola seed and traits business, soybean seed and traits business, carrot seed business, nematode seed treatment business, glufosinate ammonium (a.k.a. Liberty) herbicide business, LibertyLink herbicide tolerance technology and digital farming business in Canada.

The bureau’s agreement also calls for Bayer to shed assets related to its Centurion herbicide, a clethodim (Group 1) post-emergent product registered in Canada for control of grasses in crops such as canola, soybeans, flax, peas, chickpeas, lentils, potatoes and sunflowers, among others.

The bureau, which noted BASF has been proposed as the buyer of all those assets under the agreement, added it “is actively reviewing the suitability of BASF as the proposed buyer of these assets.”

The bureau’s more detailed position statement on its Bayer-Monsanto review is expected to be published “in the coming days,” it said.

John Pecman, Canada’s commissioner of competition, said Wednesday the bureau’s agreement with Bayer “will protect competition and innovation in Canada’s agricultural sector, and is the result of a collaborative approach with the parties and our international counterparts” such as the European Commission and the DOJ.

‘Stuck’

Some organizations scoffed at the bureau’s announcement, among them the National Farmers Union, whose vice-president Jan Slomp said Thursday it’s “foolish to believe that genuine competition between four global agribusiness companies that control over 70 per cent of the market will keep input prices down and spur innovation.”

Specifically, the NFU said, given ChemChina’s takeover of Syngenta and DowDuPont’s plans to spin off its merged seed and ag chem businesses under the name Corteva Agriscience, and Bayer’s Monsanto takeover and asset sales to BASF, four corporations are poised to control 70 per cent of global seed sales.

“Joint ventures between them are still possible, they license the use of their products to each other, and none have anything to gain by reducing the prices they charge farmers for their products,” Slomp said.

“More and more, we are getting stuck with what a handful of multinational corporations want to supply, regardless of what we need or want.”

Lucy Sharratt, representing the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, panned the merger Thursday as leading to an “unprecedented level of corporate control over seeds and pesticides.”

Other observers have warned of a likely reduction in innovations benefitting farmers as mergers lead to staff cuts and reduced budgets.

“The Competition Bureau seems more attuned to the political environment than to protecting farmers’ interests,” Craig Hunter of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association told Country Guide’s Maggie Van Camp in January.

“The only thing they’ve done is to say the companies can’t merge unless they sell off sections of the company or certain products so they don’t have too much control overall.”

Hunter also warned there may be little to stop the remaining major players from limiting access to products through agricultural supply retailers.

In the same article, former ag chem executive Warren Libby of Savvy Farmer said having only four companies controlling seed for most of the world’s main crops isn’t necessarily bad or good, just a consolidation of power in a few places.

The merged companies will still have huge resources, he said, and with multiple patents and traits in a single shop, the potential for stacked traits is even stronger. Also, he said, fewer of the companies’ combined resources would be spent on duplication of effort. — AGCanada.com Network

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Bayer, which had previously only agreed to grant a licence to competitors, said on Wednesday that as part of the changes agreed with the European Commission it would retain a licence to certain digital farming applications.

Digital farming, which combines sensors, software and precision machines, is still in its infancy but all the large players in the seeds and pesticides industry are developing digital offerings.

The changes stem from an agreement in principle with the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) over an antitrust approval, with only a few remaining details to be hammered out, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that an outline deal with the DoJ had been reached.

Bayer, which has already secured conditional European approval, declined to comment on Wednesday which regulator had prompted it to make the changes.

It added that BASF was the intended purchaser of all the assets it was selling.

In a separate statement, the European Commission said it had approved Bayer’ modifications to the commitments it made to get approval for the Monsanto purchase.

The competition watchdog said it was still assessing whether BASF was a suitable buyer for the units under an April 30 deadline.

The head of Bayer’s Crop Science unit, Liam Condon, told Reuters in September that Bayer’s approach in digital farming had been to control plant pests while Monsanto’s focus in digital farming was on improving yields.

The changes to the antitrust remedies were made “in response to corresponding indications from regulators,” Bayer said in a statement Wednesday.

In addition, certain Bayer seed treatment products will be offered for sale instead of Monsanto’s NemaStrike seed treatment brand.

The changes do not affect Monsanto’s digital farming offering, which Bayer will keep after the deal.

Bayer reiterated on Wednesday that it would seek to wrap up the deal in the second quarter.

The German company has already pledged to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 5.9 billion euros (C$9.18 billion) to BASF, as well as its vegetable seeds business.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ludwig Burger.

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