“We all hate waiting for that circle of death,” said Trevor Armitage, vice-president of global operations at Farmers Edge, referring to the familiar buffering symbol used while waiting for available bandwidth to catch up to demand.

He said user experience drives much of technology uptake. If it takes too long to load, producers may just go back to what they know.

On August 2, the federal government announced just under $8 million in funding for internet improvements for rural communities in south-central Manitoba. A similar announcement was made in January 2018.

Winkler-based Valley Fibre will get $6.9 million and Lockport-based High Speed Crow will get slightly less than $800,000 to bring broadband internet to rural communities. Both companies are chipping in some of their own funds.

Armitage said he’s sat in kitchens with farmers trying to boot up Farmers Edge software and said, “Oh my goodness. I can’t believe this isn’t loading.”

“You’re just sitting there helpless,” he said.

In a 2017 survey from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 45 per cent of farmers said internet speed or cellular coverage was a “significant barrier” to adopting precision agriculture technology.

The survey covered Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and had 261 respondents.

While 98 per cent of farmers said they had access to internet, 52 per cent said they were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the speed of their connection. Eighty-four per cent said they used precision agriculture technology on their farm.

Adam Gurr farms in the Brandon area. When he moved to his home 18 miles north of Brandon, internet and cell service were intermittent and poor quality.

“There were a lot of dead zones,” said Gurr. “There were some fields we couldn’t even send a text from.”

Recently Telus put up a tower in the area and phone service has improved. His internet service has also improved over the years — enough to stream movies.

“It’s still nothing like living in the city,” said Gurr. “We’re paying too much for our internet.”

He said he pays probably three times as much as a city-dweller might, and has strict data limits. Sometimes they exceed their limit, internet slows down to dial-up speeds. This wastes a lot of time, as sometimes he has to drive elsewhere to get service.

Gurr’s farm has been using scouting apps for five years, and he said he generally finds Wi-Fi and cell service adequate. He said he uses a USB drive to transfer data to his computer, which doesn’t require a connection.

“This will change rural internet, no doubt,” said Conley Kehler, senior vice-president of Valley Fibre. Kehler said faster internet will have a positive effect on emergency services and education, as well as streaming services.

Valley Fibre’s network is a “high-density” build, said Kehler. Each customer gets their own strand of fibre, giving consistent speed.

“It doesn’t matter what mile road you’re on,” Kehler said.

Kehler said Valley Fibre will be consulting with rural municipalities in the next few weeks, and he hopes to be putting fibre in the ground by next spring or summer.

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briefs

staff / The National Farmers Union (NFU) has paid tribute to the late Adrian Ewins, calling him an inspired journalist and a gentleman.

Adrian Ewins was always well respected for the integrity and the intelligence he brought to his profession, the association said in a release.

Ewins worked as a reporter for the Saskatoon-based Western Producerfor more than three decades. He fought the cancer that finally claimed his life for 23 years.

It has always been a pleasure to work with Adrian. He was an exceptional reporter who was committed to always putting complex stories into their full context, said NFU president Terry Boehm.

Farmers advocate honoured

The non-government organization GRAIN International is among four recipients of this year s Right Livelihood Awards, granted annually by the Swedish Parliament. Known as alternative Nobel Prizes, the awards were introduced in 1980 to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today.

GRAIN was honoured for its worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in developing countries by foreign financial interests.

GRAIN will share the 150,000-euro cash prize with two other recipients: Jacqueline Moudeina, a human rights worker in Chad, and Ina May Gaskin, a U.S. advocate for safe childbirth methods.

An honorary award goes to Huang Ming of China for his work in harnessing solar energy.

Phone system on speed dial

staff / MTS has announced plans to deploy advanced Long Term Evolution (LTE), the world s fastest mobile wireless network, beginning in 2012.

LTE will further improve our customers wireless service experience by providing increased data speeds, access to exciting new wireless devices and by increasing their ability to access converged multi-media services across MTS high-speed Internet, Wi-Fi, and mobile wireless networks, said Kelvin Shepherd, president, MTS .

LTE technology is expected to feature initial peak data rates as fast as 75 megabits per second (Mbps) with future data rates of 150 Mbps and beyond. The new LTE network will support average user speeds that are up to five times faster than MTS s current 4G HSPA+ wireless network and will enable MTS to expand its handset options.

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That’s because Netco, a new joint venture between competing telecom giants Rogers and MTS, will flip the switch province-wide on a new service called HSPA+, which stands for High Speed Packet Access.

Months in the making, the tower-shar ing agreement between the two companies will allow owners of compatible mobile phones and wireless data devices to surf the Internet using the speedier 3.5 G wireless data protocol, which previously was only available in Canada in big cities.

That means rural folks who haven’t already splurged on satellite or line-of-sight broadband connections will soon be able to find out for themselves just what all the fuss is about with YouTube, iTunes, and other data-heavy thingamajiggers out there on the World Wide Web that were just too darn slow to bother with before.

“It’s going to be providing customers with access to the Internet at much faster speeds than they’ve been experiencing to date,” said Laura Kwiatkowski, general manager for Rogers in Manitoba. “This will be a dramatic improvement.”

Although the two rival companies are joining forces and sharing towers, billing and rates will be operated separately, just like before.

Rogers, which uses the GSM/ GPRS wireless data system, and MTS, which uses CDMA, will both continue offering their old technology, so users won’t be required to update their phones.

FASTER DOWNLOADS

Farmers will benefit from faster downloads for staying up to date on commodity prices on their BlackBerrys and tablet computers in the tractor cab. As well, the faster data speeds will help with GPS-guidance applications that use the existing cellular network, she said.

Kelvin Shepherd, president of MTS, said that the new network will offer speeds up to seven times as fast as the company’s CDMA data service, or a “theoretical” speed of 21 megabytes per second.

DSL, or the basic home broadband Internet currently offered via cable modems in the big cities and for some lucky townsfolk, clocks in at anywhere from three to seven MBPS.

The new wireless Internet service, however, is not a “dedicated” link, and could vary depending on distance from the tower, obstructions such as hills or valleys, interference from sheet metal roofing, and the number of users with open connections to the tower.

“There’s a whole lot of other factors involved. But it’s certainly going to be quite fast, and a huge improvement over dial-up,” said Shepherd.

The biggest advantage, he added, is the fact that it is portable.

Those with BlackBerrys or iPhones could, if they wished, “tether” their devices to their laptops via Bluetooth or cables and use them to surf at the new higher speeds, whether at home or on the road. However, they will need to have a wireless billing plan that allows that, and be mindful that the extra data used comes at a cost, unless an “unlimited” plan is purchased.

GADGETS

Other Wi-Fi gadgets are available from both companies. Some can be plugged into a USB port on the computer, and others act as a wireless “node” allowing multiple devices to surf at the same time. So, in other words, no more fighting with the kids over who gets to use the Internet.

Access to the millions of video clips on the web may come in handy, because, amazingly enough, some of that stuff on the Internet is actually useful for farmers.

For example, a YouTube search of “diesel injectors” turns up 1,810 clips, one of which shows in detail how to remove an injection pump on a Ford F250. There are also clips of the latest in Swedish horse-logging gear. In short, there’s a mind-boggling array of interesting, educational stuff.

HSPA+ is touted as offering DSL-like speeds, which means that the clips should load and play in a reasonable amount of time.

Farmers shopping for new equipment, or a new bull, will also find that the experience is less of a chore with faster Internet, Kwiatkowski said.

Rural residents in areas near existing cellphone towers, even in areas farther north such as Swan River, The Pas, Eriksdale and Thompson will benefit from the new service.

But those who live in an area that, for whatever reason, doesn’t already have cellular service, or where the signal is too thin, will likely be out of luck.

So why has it taken so long, when countries like Cambodia, one of the poorest in the world, has had fast wireless data for a couple of years already?

Kwiatkowski said that many poor countries without widely distributed landline telephone systems have skipped that phase of telecom development and instead, have worked aggressively to put cheap wireless mobile phones in the hands of their citizens.

“Canada is not the easiest country to service. We have a very large geographic expanse of land and the population is fairly spread out,” she said. “In countries like Cambodia, the population is fairly concentrated so costs are lower.”

daniel. winters@fbcpublishing.com

———

“Thiswillbeadramaticimprovement.”

– LAURA KWIATKOWSKI

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When I first decided to start observing and recording the weather at home, about a dozen years ago, there were not a lot of choices for the home consumer. If you had a lot of money there were a handful of weather stations to choose from, but if your budget was more modest, there was not much you could get and what was available was not very good, especially if you wanted to go electronic. Today, that has all changed.

Each year in November I take a look at what is out there, and try to provide some insight into what you should look for if you want to buy yourself or someone you love a weather station. This year I thought I would take a different approach by offering some recommendations based on different cost levels. Before I get to this, I do have to point out that I have no affiliation with any manufacturer or company that sells these products. Also, I don’t get “freebies” to test out, so most of these recommendations are based on the manufacturer’s reputation, discussions with different users, and my own insight.

I do tend to use one web-site in particular, www.ambientweather.com, since it easily offers the most comprehensive assortment of weather hardware out there.

UNDER $50

To begin, let’s look at what you can get for under $50. As far as I was able to determine, you can’t get a reasonable full weather station for under $50, but you can get some really neat and useful instruments. The first of these would be a hand-held wind and temperature meter. There are several of these instruments available, and while at the high end they can be several hundred dollars, there are a few available in the $30-$40 range.

One of the handiest instruments you can get for under $50 would be a wireless, self-emptying rain gauge. Oregon Scientific, La Crosse Technology and Honeywell all produce several different types of rain gauges. While some are simply rain gauges with an indoor console for monitoring, others have thermometers included. Most of these are fairly reliable, but do require batteries.

$50 TO $200

In this range you now have full-blown weather stations available to you. While there are complete weather stations available for less than $100 I would look at the stations in the $100 to $200 range as the best place to start. One of the best ones that I see in this price range is Ambient Weather’s WS-1080 Wireless Home Weather Station with Data Logging. This weather station measures wind speed, wind direction, temperature and humidity (both inside and outside), rainfall and barometr ic pressure. What makes it a really good deal is that you can also connect the station to a computer, which will allow you to download the data and share your data online if you want to.

If a complete weather station is not what you’re looking for, another interesting instrument you can get in this price range is the General Tools DLAF8000 Anemometer, Hygrometer, Light Meter, Thermometer. If you are on the go or need readings from different places, this just might be the tool for you.

$200 AND UP

Our final category is pretty big; at the low end of this price range you will find a whole lot of complete weather stations available to you. A couple of good stations would be the Oregon Scientific WMR200A Wireless Solar Powered Professional Weather Station with UV. This station gives you all the weather data you’ll need and is equipped with a touch panel and captures over 10 weather measurements, from up to 300 feet away. The second station found at the lower end of this price range is the Davis Instruments 6250 Vantage Vue Wireless Weather Station.

If you are looking to step up to a full-blown, all-the-bells- and-whistles weather station, then I would recommend the Davis Instruments Vantage Pro 2 Plus. This station has it all, including both solar and UV detectors. You can also add a large number of additional wireless sensors to the unit, including soil moisture and leaf wetness sensors. There are numerous different configurations for this unit, starting at $500 for the base unit, and going all the way up to around $1,700 for a Wi-Fi-enabled unit with all the extra sensors you can think of.

I wish I had more room to write about all the different offerings out there. As I pointed out earlier in the article, if you are really interested in weather instruments and you want to feel like you did when you were a kid going through the toy catalogues at Christmas, check out Ambient Weather – just make sure you set aside plenty of time!

The post All I Want For Christmas Is… A Weather Station! appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration consultant was almost immediately downloading information on reservoir levels, downstream flows below the reservoir and current use rates – from an irrigation system located in rural Idaho.

In a nutshell, that’s the power of the remote sensing systems, Shewfelt says. They harness the power of modern information technology and put it to work for growers so they don’t have to be running all over the country babysitting pivots during the irrigation season.

“I could log on today and get the level (of the main reservoir) right now,” Shewfelt told the recent Manitoba Potato Production Days meeting in Brandon.

Remote sensing systems have been improving in recent years and that development dovetails nicely with advancements in other information technology like cellphones, Wi-Fi wireless connectivity and hand-held data devices like the Canadianmade BlackBerry. It’s all in an effort to answer the perennial question for potato growers and other irrigators, says Shewfelt.

“Is your irrigation system delivering what you think it is, where you think it is?” Shewfelt says. “That’s the big question.”

PFRA’s Shewfelt says the systems can be very expensive, but reasonably priced options are also out there, but making sure the system does what a farm needs is the key. “Lots of options exist, so do your homework,” Shewfelt says.

gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com

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