The results from that research, led by Olds College research scientist Shabeg Briar, have been promising.

WHY IT MATTERS: Farmers more often think of nematodes as dangerous crop pests, such as soybean cyst nematode, but not all nematode species are farm enemies. Research out of Alberta is looking at nematodes that target canola pest insects.

Nematodes are tiny roundworms that live in the soil and infect insects. Several species have shown high levels of pest control in lab tests.

While they’re often seen as a crop pest, interest in using nematodes to control insect pests isn’t new. In the 1980s, Cornell University researcher Elson Shields began testing beneficial nematodes as a long-term control for alfalfa snout beetle, work that would eventually help establish him as a pioneer in the field.

But alfalfa snout beetle was a very localized problem, confined to a handful of counties in New York and Ontario. That limited the commercial appeal for widespread agricultural use and, for the most part, nematodes have remained niche tools, used mostly in greenhouses and by home gardeners.

“They are currently not available in the Canadian Prairies for larger-scale use on field crops,” Manitoba Agriculture entomologist John Gavloski says. Production and marketing could scale up, he adds, if nematodes proved effective against major field crop pests.

Research done in Ontario looking at using beneficial nematodes to treat corn rootworm had promising results, he says. With continued positive results from these kinds of studies, the technology could soon become a familiar tool in Prairie farmers’ integrated pest management toolbox.

Encouraging results from Alberta

The Alberta study tested four types of commercially available entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) at various concentrations to see which were most effective.

The nematodes stacked up well. Diamondback moth larvae showed up to 90 per cent mortality; lygus bugs, up to 87 per cent; and black cutworms were almost entirely wiped out. Cabbage root maggots were also effectively controlled, reaching 83 per cent mortality, but the pupae proved more difficult to kill. Unfortunately for canola growers, their No. 1 pest, the flea beetle, appeared largely unaffected, with only 10 per cent mortality.

Still, the overall results are encouraging. With insecticide resistance on the rise and fewer chemical options available, biological tools such as EPNs could offer Prairie growers an environmentally friendly way to target insects hiding below the surface. While this would clearly be beneficial for organic growers, Gavloski suggested it would appeal to conventional farmers as well.

From lab to farm

While EPNs have yet to become available to farmers on the Canadian Prairies, the technology is already being put to use in the United States, thanks in part to the same researcher who helped pioneer it.

Elson Shields and his son Keegan have launched a company, Persistent BioControl, that’s beginning to open commercial markets for beneficial nematodes in the U.S., starting with corn and alfalfa farmers in the northeast.

The Iowa-based company grew out of Elson Shields’ decades of research, which demonstrated nematodes could provide long-term, soil-dwelling control of certain insect pests. But translating that academic success into a field-ready product wasn’t easy.

When he was thinking about retiring, Keegan Shields told his father if he didn’t want to see the technology sit on the shelf and go to waste, they ought to create a commercial source so farmers could buy it.

“The next step was to take it out of the lab and create a viable commercial enterprise,” Keegan Shields says.

Persistent BioControl was launched in 2019. When Elson retired from Cornell in 2022, he shifted his focus from research to business, taking on the role of chief technology officer for the company. Keegan is CEO.

Unlike most nematode products on the market, typically used as short-lived biopesticides in greenhouses or gardens, the nematodes sold by Persistent BioControl are designed to remain in the soil for a decade or longer after a single application. That has made the product especially appealing to row crop and forage producers.

“Our angle, and what makes this work for corn and other row crops, is the fact you can apply this one time and it’s going to give you the benefit for at least a few decades,” Shields says.

So far, more than 100,000 acres across the U.S. have been treated using this approach, most of them in New York. The company also works with organic vegetable growers targeting wireworm in root crops such as sweet potatoes, radishes and turnips, where nematodes are applied ahead of crop rotation to prevent feeding damage.

Application doesn’t require any specialty equipment. The nematodes are either injected into centre pivot irrigation systems or applied through conventional ground sprayers. For spray rigs, the tank and lines must be flushed, and all screens and filters removed.

Long-term value

The company uses a mix of three nematode species, adjusting the blend and application rate based on region, crop and pest pressure. For corn rootworm, the full cost is around US$70 per acre — higher than the $30 to $40 typically spent on soil insecticides. But for many farmers, the long-term value is clear.

“I thought I was going to have to spend a lot of time explaining the multi-year payback,” Shields says. “But they all get it immediately. You can see them start doing the math in their head: If I can eliminate my soil insecticide, this is a two-year payback, and if it works for the next decade, I’m a whole lot of money ahead.”

While Persistent BioControl hasn’t yet entered the Canadian market at scale, Shields says they’ve begun working with organic growers in Ontario, first by overnight shipping small orders and more recently by setting up a broker-assisted process that allows customers to legally bring product across the border themselves. Since the nematodes are naturally occurring and non-invasive, they don’t raise regulatory red flags.

Scaling up

“This will be year six for us,” Shields said. “We’ve got a lot of demand, and now we’ve got the ability to produce for 100,000 acres a year. We’re just going through the struggles of scaling up — hiring people, building out the facility, et cetera.”

Shields wasn’t familiar with Briar’s research in Alberta but says he’s keen to see nematodes explored in crops such as canola. “I would imagine any kind of treatment in canola is going to be similar to corn.”

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Discovery Lab, a grassroots organization that supports entrepreneurs, will be hosting a pitch event on July 29, the day before AgSmart, the Alberta agriculture technology event, on July 30 and 31.

Discovery Lab@AgSmart aims to bring together Discovery Lab’s network of advisors and investors and connect them with people who are starting up agriculture technology businesses.

“The whole event is framed and constructed to help those people who are trying to start and grow a company,” said Michael Overduin, CEO of Discovery Lab.

The Discovery Lab process has benefitted Mark Olson, CEO of Flokk, a company that has created software and hardware that makes cow-side data gathering easier for management and traceability.

He worked with Discovery Lab and Olds College to bring the concept to agriculture.

“We’ve established valuable contacts every time we’ve gone,” said Olson.

Discovery Labs works to make the process of being involved as welcoming and simple for companies.

“We try and make it as easy as possible, and as a result, we attract a large variety of people,” said Overduin.

That includes companies that are at the concept phase up to those that are selling a product and looking for more guidance or funding.  They also could be looking to find a way into a new foreign market and people in Discovery Lab’s network can help with that too.

Discovery Lab has 270 advisors in its network.

There will be 15 companies presenting information about their company at the event, with room for one more, says Overduin. The companies receive coaching on their presentation and feedback after the event.

Flokk will be one of the presenters.

“We’re pursuing this because we this see as a much more effective way to try and attract and engagement investors, and we’re going and then doing it on our own,” said Olson.

Farmers are encouraged to attend the event too.

“This is a huge growth industry in Canada, with global demand,” said Overduin. Attending the event allows farmers to observe technology trends, opportunities and what they could implement on their farm. It’s also an opportunity for farmer to expand their networks.

Anyone interested in attending can sign up at www.discoverylab.ca.

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The two institutions have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which entails both schools working together for five years on various programs, notably Olds College’s Smart Farm operation.

The partnership comes as a result of an 800-acre donation west of Craik, Sask., about 85 km north of Moose Jaw, from Margery Steckler and late husband George Steckler to Olds College. It’s the largest such donation the institution has ever received.

The aim of the Smart Farm with the new partnership is to train students and give them opportunities in the technologically advancing agriculture sector, such as with drones and autonomous farming equipment.

“I mean, that’s where farming is going,” Saskatchewan Polytechnic CEO Dr. Larry Rosia said at the two schools’ announcement on Monday last week at that school’s ag equipment technician shop in Saskatoon.

“That’s another example of what we could bring to the partnership as we do a lot of drone training. We have a fleet of drones, and our drones are collecting data. We could share that data with Olds College.”

Smart Farm has over 100 different partners that range from a variety of agriculture companies. Olds College president Stuart Cullum said he believes this will be another valuable asset for students, besides getting to work with another school — namely, to learn how to work with industry, as they will be converging with them in the program.

“There’s a lot of complementary programming. This programming that we don’t have at Olds because we’re very industry-focused on agriculture,” said Cullum. “There’s some things that we do in a real deep way that we can offer to Saskatchewan Polytechnic.”

Rosia noted there’s also the possibility of students and instructors being able to crossover between the two institutions.

“It’s too early to say, but the sky’s the limit as to the opportunity for student exchanges and instructor exchanges,” said Rosia.

Saskatchewan Polytechnic academic chair Deanna Herman sees the partnership as a great opportunity because it upgrades the students from a small-scale operation to a much larger one, giving them the ability to train on tasks they couldn’t before, such as irrigation.

“Our students will have hands-on training and setting up irrigation systems and timing and all those kinds of things.”

Plans are still in the beginning stages for the two institutions, but their focus is to now work together and not compete.

“The past was all about competing, the future is all about partnering and collaborating,” Rosia said.

The MOU will be governed by a joint committee of representatives from both institutions.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

Olds College president Stuart Cullum (l) and Saskatchewan Polytechnic president Dr. Larry Rosia (r) shake hands after signing the MOU. (Liam O’Connor photo)

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It might be too early to say, but researchers know the self-propelled, driverless tractor-minus-the-tractor finishes what it starts.

“Every mission we started with DOT we were able to finish with DOT,” said Joy Agnew of Olds College.

“There was never a catastrophic failure or breakdown or issue that we couldn’t resolve to finish the mission. That was not necessarily expected with this kind of paradigm-shifting tool, so that was a really big win, in my opinion.”

Recently rebranded as OMNiPOWER by Raven Technologies (which bought the DOT technology in 2019) the self-propelled, hydraulically driven platform carries seeders and sprayers instead of pulling them on a route programmed by the user.

Now Olds College’s Smart Farm has some takeaways from its first year of a four-year study.

So far, the diesel-powered unit’s biggest Achilles heel appears to be fuel efficiency. When paired with a 30-foot seeding unit, the implement used more than 150 per cent more diesel than conventional seeding equipment. However, it used about the same amount of diesel per acre as conventional pull-type spraying equipment.

“A lot of variables contributed to this, including excessive idling time and transport distance to the fields,” said Agnew, the college’s associate vice-president of applied research. “We will be collecting fuel efficiency data in 2021 a bit differently to ensure we are collecting data most comparable with conventional equipment.”

Labour intensity was an issue.

Labour savings is one of the unit’s biggest selling points but the team found that it takes a lot of people to maximize the full potential of the OMNiPOWER unit. Agnew predicts both efficiency and labour requirements will go up with software upgrades and other improvements, and as users become more comfortable with the platform. Last year, 34 seeding, spraying and spreading “missions” were completed.

One of the goals was to see how long the unit could run without human intervention. On average that was 14.2 minutes for seeding and 20.2 minutes for spraying. The longest uninterrupted seeding operation was 37 minutes, while the longest period of hands-off spraying was one hour and 17 minutes.

This spring, the hands-off time for seeding increased “significantly” thanks to a manufacturer upgrade.

“Upgrades to the hydraulic cooling system greatly improved overall functionality for seeding,” said Agnew.

Traversing hilly fields did not appear to be the unit’s forte — it worked best on land with few or no obstacles. And much like any conventional farm vehicle, its operation was only as good as its operator. The unit’s abilities are based on proper preplanning and parameters such as mapping of in-field obstacles.

Although the takeaways seem to present the OMNiPOWER as something of a mixed bag, there’s a lot of room for improvement, she said.

“The efficiencies data from last year is very much baseline. It is definitely not as efficient as conventional equipment yet, but we are all confident that autonomous equipment will exceed the efficiency of conventional equipment down the road.”

The bigger picture

The college’s research on OMNiPOWER comes at a game-changing time in the field of autonomous, electric ag vehicles.

Earlier this year, Case-New Holland took a minority stake in California-based Monarch Tractor, the first fully electric, driver-optional tractor integrated in a single platform.

The tractor runs on a lithium-ion battery and features a peak power of 70 horsepower. According to the company it can run for “10-plus” continuous hours.

“The tractor is designed to assist farmers in all areas of agriculture from traditional farms, ranches and wineries,” said Donna Michaels with Monarch Tractor.

However, it doesn’t take a physics expert to understand that those stats aren’t likely going to drive large uptake by farmers pulling a heavy-duty sprayer or seeder. But proponents of electric/autonomous tractors say it’s a first step towards bigger scale, with Case-New Holland’s investment signalling confidence in the tech’s future.

The value propositions of electric vehicles are well documented, with reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the face of stronger environmental regulations possibly the most compelling. But the autonomous side is key as well, said Dawn Trautman, manager of Alberta Innovates’ Smart Agriculture and Food team — particularly when it comes to farm labour.

“We have a fairly short growing season and there’s a lot of risk associated with that,” she said. “There are all these climate factors where you might only have a short window of time to get your seeding done or to get your crop off. Having those autonomous systems in place can really help producers alleviate that strain of labour shortages and trained labour shortages.”

Safety is another factor, said Trautman.

“A lot of farm accidents are due to human error,” she said. “Sometimes farmers are working 18-, 20-hour days at seeding and harvest time so mistakes can sometimes be made. (The Monarch Tractor) has all these safety precautions built into the software and the hardware that can reduce some of those issues as well.”

Still, the arrival of autonomous electric tractors of large farms is years, possibly decades, away, she said.

“Right now the robotics and the batteries are still quite expensive so the return on investment (for larger operations) is still very much a stretch,” she said. “Monarch’s focus on these smaller operations where everything is a little more hands on is a good place to start. I would say it could be common in vineyards and orchards in five to 10 years.”

At the same time, Trautman admits that guessing timelines for technology can be a shot in the dark. She cites electric cars as an example.

“All the big companies thought that the technology was still 10 years away and then Tesla came along. Maybe there’s some startup going to come along with who knows?”

Agnew said the Monarch Tractor — or any advancement in autonomous technology — is a step in the right direction.

“At Olds College we never expected that DOT and the way DOT operates would be the only way that autonomy in agriculture was going to happen,” she said. “We were investing in the fact that autonomy is coming and we wanted to build the expertise and skills and knowledge around its overall functionality.”

As far as electric tractors are concerned, the college is already on the case.

“We’ve had a lot of great discussions, mainly within our academic group the Werklund School of Agriculture Technology, looking at the potential of electric tractors and electric autonomous tractors. We’re definitely looking at a near-term opportunity to get an electric tractor here on campus to work with as part of an applied research project or as part of the academic training we provide our students.”

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The Olds College Smart Farm will lead the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network, which will also include Glacier FarmMedia Discovery Farm at Langham, Sask. and the Lakeland College Student-Managed Farm – Powered by New Holland at Vermilion, Alta.

The new network’s first joint project will evaluate the “functionality, connectivity and value of data” from a common suite of sensors measuring soil, climate and crop conditions.

Each of the project sites has installed Metos Canada’s wireless sensors and other data-gathering devices such as for field monitoring, weather monitoring and forecasting, water management, disease modelling, insect monitoring and crop nutrition management.

The data will go to make on-farm management decisions — timing fungicide applications, for example — and the farms will “evaluate the benefit of using data to manage those decisions.”

Some funding for the new network’s activities will come from the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network (CAAIN), a separate network of over 60 technology and agrifood companies and organizations backed with funding from the federal innovation, science and economic development ministry. Both Olds and Lakeland are among CAAIN’s core partners.

A specific focus for CAAIN, when that network was launched in 2019, was to “create and implement a smart farm platform that integrates partners and creates the context for testing, demonstrating and scaling technologies.”

In all, the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network will pay for network-approved activities with a $2.9 million funding envelope including $1.1 million over three years from CAAIN, about $570,000 from other public-sector agencies and the balance from private-sector partners.

The Pan-Canadian network was one of nine winners of funding through CAAIN’s 2020 Closed Competition, in which other recipients include a project to develop a non-invasive approach to determine the gender and fertility of pre-incubated chicken eggs. In a separate release Thursday, CAAIN said it will announce the seven other recipients “over the coming weeks.”

On a call Wednesday with editors from Glacier FarmMedia — whose media assets include this website — Dr. Joy Agnew, Olds College’s associate vice-president of applied research and principal investigator for the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network project, said the new network has “ambitious” plans to expand to additional sites in the near future.

The initial collaboration — taking place across different agriculture zones and land bases — is expected to bring more depth to the results of the evaluation, she said in a joint release Thursday.

“Independent validation of ag technologies is critical and so is ensuring that validation is done using more than a single smart farm,” she said. “By joining with other partners, we’ll be providing farmers with information that will meaningfully inform their decisions about how and where to use sensor technology.”

The new network, she said on the GFM call, is “truly an example of a situation where one plus one plus one equals five.”

Blake Weiseth, applied research lead for the GFM Discovery Farm and agriculture research chair for Saskatchewan Polytechnic, noted the farm has been using Metos sensor data in field-scale projects and “having access in real time to similar data from other sites in Canada will expand our understanding of its value.”

Work is already underway to find more smart farm network members across Canada, the partners said, adding they expect to have opportunities to link the Pan-Canadian network with other smart farms internationally.

Glacier FarmMedia’s other Discovery Farm site, at Woodstock, Ont., is an example of a farm that could be added to the Pan-Canadian network if sufficient funding is made available, Weiseth said.

Josie Van Lent, Lakeland’s dean of agriculture technology and applied research, said Wednesday the network will also provide real value on the education side as “living labs” for the colleges’ students.

At Lakeland, the Pan-Canadian network’s activities are expected to be integrated into the college’s crop technology, animal science technology and bachelor of agriculture technology programs.

“When Olds College submitted this project for consideration, we were immediately intrigued,” CAAIN CEO Kerry Wright said in Thursday’s release. “Smart farms validate and demonstrate the use of innovative agricultural technology in a specific environment, and they provide opportunities to train students enrolled in post-secondary agriculture programs on the latest trends in ag tech.”

Another advantage for the Pan-Canadian network, she said, lies in “its opportunity to link smart farms across the country, thereby multiplying learnings and increasing the value of any data generated.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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But your farm is way ahead of you.

Soil sensors have been monitoring moisture levels, and they’ve already called for reinforcements. A drone deploys, taking pictures of your crop with its near-infrared sensors and analyzing them for disease development. The drone must have found something because your DOT sprayer starts making its way down the field.

“Ah,” you think as you sip your coffee, watching the autonomous machine begin its spraying operation, “we caught it right on time.”

This may sound like something straight out of the ’60s cartoon “The Jetsons” — but that future is a lot closer than you might think.

“In a nutshell, DOT is a robot that represents a significant step toward autonomous field operations for broad-acre crop production,” said Joy Agnew, associate vice-president of applied research at Olds College.

“It makes a lot of sense for a farm of the future to adopt this leading-edge, paradigm-shifting technology that incorporates a growing number of mechanical and digital systems to gather information, execute tasks, and relay information to the user.

“It’s really pushing the envelope when it comes to robotics for crop production.”

Over the past growing season, the college has put DOT to work on its Smart Farm, using the made-in-Saskatchewan autonomous platform (which can be fitted with a variety of implements) for seeding, spraying, and spreading fertilizer. And as DOT does its work, the college has been working with researchers, students, and producer partners to assess the efficiency of the self-driving machine when compared to conventional equipment.

“For our first year of operations with DOT on the applied research side, we definitely did focus on the operational data collection to compare the labour, economic, and environmental advantages of autonomous ag equipment compared to conventional,” Agnew said in a recent college webinar.

Still, that work is aimed at paving the way for a Jetsons-style future — one where an algorithm uses weather station and soil sensor data to pinpoint the right time to spray. And then deploys an autonomous sprayer when the time is right.

“We’re several years away from that, and there’s a considerable amount of research and validation required to get there,” said Agnew. “But it illustrates that autonomous and automated equipment has the potential to not only address the labour shortage but also facilitate better usage of data for data-supported management decisions.”

It’s a tantalizing idea that goes beyond sipping coffee while watching robots do the work.

The bigger prize is reducing inputs while boosting quality and yield. (So in the spraying example, that could mean using less fungicide because the disease has been caught at an early stage but also getting a better outcome than if you sprayed more a day or three later.)

“Ultimately, that is what’s going to help farmers improve the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of their operations,” said Agnew.

‘Fewer educated guesses’

That’s been the real draw of DOT for Olds-area producer Jeff Carlson, who has partnered with the college to help trial the equipment.

“As we go on producing commodities, we’re always challenged to produce more with less,” said Carlson. “That’s a continual theme, and it has been through my 30-odd years of farming.

“We can use genetics, fertility programs, variable-rate application — all these other technologies, but really, in the field, there’s still the same implements. There’s still tractors pulling something with operators in them.

“So there are efficiencies there that we’re hoping to achieve. We were really keen on gathering data from an operational efficiency standpoint.”

And for Carlson’s son Josh, that could mean a future on the farm that isn’t spent behind the wheel of a tractor or a combine.

“What we’re striving for is to be able to reach a point where we can operate this equipment day and night,” said Josh. “You should be able to run it 24 hours, and one operator should be able to manage multiple DOTs simultaneously. That’s the ultimate goal.”

Even so, Josh believes the role of a farmer won’t disappear entirely — just change — as these technologies become more widespread.

“There will always be a need for farmers. It’s just a matter of making it easier for them to have the efficiencies that they need.”

Olds College student Daniel Stefner agrees.

“In the near future, I would expect things to become more automated but not necessarily fully autonomous. I think there’s a place somewhere in the middle,” said Stefner, who has been working with DOT as a research technician at the Olds College Centre for Innovation.

“I’m also expecting to see a higher integration of technology within the farm, where producers and farm managers are spending more time behind a computer desk and less time behind the workbench.”

That integration is what will allow producers “to make more informed decisions and fewer educated guesses,” he added.

“Just as GPS and auto steer have refocused our attention in the cabs of equipment, the next level of automation that DOT is bringing will enable producers to refocus their attention again on other important aspects of the operation, like agronomy, finances, and marketing,” he said.

In the meantime, the college and its partners will continue working with DOT to “support further development and validation of new implements,” said Agnew.

Machine learning

Part of that will be using additional sensors in what college officials call a ‘connected’ farm. But it also involves artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning.

One of the more prominent examples of this is the ‘See & Spray’ system developed by a Silicon Valley company called Blue River Technology, which was acquired by John Deere three years ago. It’s developed a sprayer that uses an array of cameras coupled with graphics processing units that, in turn, can access a photo library of more than one million images of weeds. This allows the “robotic nozzles” to learn what is a weed and only spray it, and not the crop.

“The cameras and computers on a See & Spray machine use deep learning algorithms that are similar to what’s used in facial recognition,” Blue River official Ben Chostner says in a company video.

“The first time we saw pigweed, the machine didn’t know what kind of plant it was. But we taught it by giving it tens of thousands of examples of that pigweed and now it’s an expert in pigweed.”

The sprayer also reports back on weed types, densities and locations allowing a farmer to tailor a herbicide mix specific to that field — a hint of the kind of work that might take up time formerly spent in the cab.

The technology, which is still in the testing phase, could cut herbicide use by 80 to 90 per cent, according to John Deere, which also says it will work just as well for fungicide and fertilizer applications.

And it’s still early days, said Agnew.

“Really, the sky’s the limit when it comes to autonomous technology, and we’ve barely left the ground at this point,” she said. “I’m very much looking forward to what the next few years will bring when it comes to autonomous ag equipment development, validation, and testing.”

But for the young farmers working with this equipment, the future really is now.

“I was walking behind the tractor as it was going,” said Stefner. “I never thought I’d be walking behind a tractor with nobody in it.”

This article was originally published at the Alberta Farmer Express.

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“It’s continuing to show the importance of technology, and adopting technology, on the farm,” said Remi Schmaltz, CEO and co-founder of Decisive Farming, a digital ag and farm management company.

“We need to continue to take a very proactive stance on how we’re adopting and supporting technology in the market. These aren’t nice-to-haves — these are table stakes to a successful industry.”

Investment in smart ag technology that allows farmers to produce more with less land, labour, and inputs has ramped up over the past five years, but much more is needed, said Schmaltz.

“There’s a real focus around food supply chains,” he said. “There’s a lot of discussion occurring due to COVID-19 around that, and the ability to track food production and provide transparency of the supply chain is going to become more important than ever before.”

An ongoing labour shortage is another issue that’s been highlighted by the pandemic, said Joy Agnew, associate vice-president of applied research at Alberta’s Olds College.

“A lot of technology development is about dealing with labour shortages, and labour availability for farming is a hugely uncertain thing right now,” said Agnew.

Olds College has recently acquired the self-driving DOT Power Platform, which can be equipped with implements such as a seeder or sprayer.

That type of equipment has obvious labour-saving advantages as does robotics in food-processing plants, said Cornelia Kreplin, executive director of smart agriculture and food innovation at Alberta Innovates.

Both technologies require the capture and processing of lots of data, and the pandemic has shown that’s equally true in ag and food supply chains, she said.

“There’s an increasing awareness of the importance of technology. It’s vital to control disease outbreaks, especially in pandemics, and agriculture has learned this along the way,” said Kreplin. “The better our data systems are, the more quickly we can put appropriate measures in place.”

Investing for the future

But funding for new technology is hard to come by — that was true before the pandemic and is only worse now, said Schmaltz.

“The ‘death valley’ of ag tech in Canada is really financing,” said Schmaltz. “Access to capital right now is probably worse than it was previously. Investors aren’t ramping up in general — they’re focused on supporting their existing portfolios.”

However, he predicted, many “good tech companies” will likely go under because they won’t be able to find the capital needed to keep operating.

Farmers, too, will be reluctant to spend money on smart ag technology, said Agnew.

“If there is an economic need and a farmer is going to make money by adopting a new technology, then yes, there’s going to be a lot of innovation and a lot of technology adoption,” she said.

“But with the uncertainty in the economy and in markets, I don’t know for sure what it’s going to look like after this.”

Even those who can afford it will likely hold off awhile, said Kreplin, adding Alberta Innovates is working to develop a network of smart farms across the province to trial emerging technologies.

“Industry adoption depends on the perception of the return on investment,” she said.

“Agribusinesses might see the benefit and have the resources to adopt these new technologies, but these early adopters need to see the return on investment. It isn’t easy to change from traditional production to trusting this new world of big data or automation.”

Staying competitive

But waiting comes with a cost, too.

“Without the constant development and adoption of new technologies, we’ll see Canada become less competitive in the global marketplace,” said Kreplin.

Schmaltz agrees.

“If we see a lack of tech companies and new technology coming, that’s going to affect our ability to be competitive globally in agriculture,” he said.

Governments should look to ag as they seek to rebuild the economy, said Schmaltz.

“Certainly, the government plays a role in that to help foster some of these things. We’ll see what role it plays, but for sure, it needs to be more active.”

Government and the private sector should partner in this effort, said Kreplin.

“In my perfect world, all sorts of funding would rain down on agriculture, but if we have joint investment from the private sector and government, we’ll see a better outcome at the end of the day,” she said.

The can-do spirit that has been demonstrated during the pandemic needs to be harnessed to seize on opportunities such as investment in ag technology, said Agnew.

“Six weeks ago, if you had told me that we would shift an entire college to online learning and have 80 per cent of the workforce working from home, I would have said you were nuts,” she said in an interview last month.

“But that type of thing has been achieved over and over and over again around the world.

“If we’ve learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that when everyone turns themselves toward a common goal, we can achieve almost anything.”

This article was originally published at the Alberta Farmer Express.

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The Liberal government committed up to $950 million (over five years) in its March budget to create hubs that would focus on key economic sectors in an effort to kickstart investment, boost exports and create jobs.

The proposed Smart Agri-Food Super Cluster “is intended to create a pan-Canadian platform to help the sector’s diverse, and sometimes disparate, ‘silos’ align more coherently to identify and resolve challenges in the agrifood value chain,” its three proponents said in a news release.

“We felt it important to create something that constructively brings together all the players that comprise the ways we do farming and food,” said Bill Whitelaw, chair of the group’s steering committee. “Our approach is intended to resolve some of the fragmentation dynamics that often hinder innovation efforts.”

The group’s goals include promoting innovation in cropping, livestock, digital and agrifood processing technologies, the release stated.

If successful in obtaining federal seed money, the cluster would seek to involve businesses, not-for-profits, research organizations and post-secondary institutions in projects that create new jobs, export opportunities and safer and more sustainable food production.

“Ottawa would like to see innovation as the driving force that significantly improves Canada’s already strong ag and food leadership position globally,” said Whitelaw, a senior executive with Glacier Media Group (parent company of this website).

“Moving the country upward in global export rankings could create billions of new economic impact.”

If its proposal is funded, the Smart Agri-Food Super Cluster would be administered from Calgary but would seek out partners from across the country, he said.

The supercluster concept has been successfully applied in California’s Silicon Valley, Canada’s Kitchener-Waterloo region, and cities such as Berlin and Tel Aviv, the federal government said in announcing the program.

The creation of superclusters will depend on what proposals are submitted, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains told the Toronto Star earlier this year.

He identified agrifood — along with areas such as advanced manufacturing, digital technology, and health/biosciences — as sectors where Canada is well positioned to become a stronger global player.

Calgary-based Agrium is in the process of merging with PotashCorp to form a new company to be called Nutrien. MDA (formerly MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates) is based in Vancouver and has annual revenues of more than $2 billion. –– AGCanada.com Network

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