With this rise in technology use in the ag industry, the security and privacy of farmers’ data and personal information has become a hot-button issue. Farmers are increasingly being asked to complete customer questionnaires, sign data usage contracts, agree to various software applications’ terms of service, and provide more information to their suppliers and manufacturers.

Hand-in-hand with this rise in disclosure requests, farmers recognize there can be negative consequences in having so much information floating around. This begs the question, “What are you doing with my information?”

Are you prepared to answer this question?

As agronomists and agrologists, collecting more information about a particular grower can provide numerous benefits. In addition to strengthening the farmer-agronomist relationship, the more information and farm data you have on a specific grower, the better-quality advice and crop recommendations you can provide.

However, by possessing a farmer’s personal information you have automatically imposed on yourself legal responsibilities concerning collecting, protecting, storing and using a farmer’s data and personal information.

A high-level overview of these legal obligations is discussed below.

The primary piece of data protection legislation for private businesses in Canada is the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Although this act does not explicitly address agricultural data, it applies to the collection, use, disclosure and retention of personal information in the context of the agriculture industry.

“Personal information” can mean any factual or subjective information, recorded or not, about an identifiable individual. Examples include a farmer’s name, address, date of birth, phone number, email address, driver’s license number, bank account number, financial institution name and credit card information. This is sensitive information that could be used by cyber criminals to perpetrate identity theft.

LISTEN: The Cyber-Savvy Farmer

Given the highly sensitive nature of this information, PIPEDA requires you to communicate your purpose for the data you are collecting and to obtain consent from the farmer before it is collected. PIPEDA also requires that you take steps to protect all personal information (regardless of how it is stored) against loss, theft, or any unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.

If the personal information you collect is intended to be shared with third parties or ag industry partners, you must obtain the farmer’s specific consent to use their information for this purpose. You must also ensure that those third parties and industry partners comply with the same legal terms and conditions you initially presented to the farmer in terms of processing, sharing and retention of data collected.

If the requirements under PIPEDA sound strict, that is because they are. You are being entrusted with sensitive information.

Non-compliance with PIPEDA can result in serious consequences for businesses, including fines of up to $100,000 per violation, in addition to the reputational damage due to the negative publicity associated with said violations.

To help keep you on-side of PIPEDA, we have compiled a few tips and recommendations that can help minimize your potential liability:

Understand your obligations

The first step in protecting customer data is learning about your responsibilities. While reading this article is a start, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Familiarize yourself with applicable data protection laws and regulations in your industry. PIPEDA is not great bedside reading material, but there are numerous articles summarizing a business’s data protection responsibilities on the web.

Consider having clients sign a data license agreement

Farmers must know why you’re collecting their information, what you will do with it, and how you will protect it. Providing a brief legal agreement for your clients to review and sign can be a valuable tool to ensure they understand your data protection processes.

A “data license agreement” is a legal contract that can play an important role in informing your clients about your business’s data processing practices and informs clients of the collection, use, safeguarding and sharing of their information.

It is critical that such legal documents be written in simple language that is easy to understand.

Keep your software up-to-date and password-protected

Technology such as mobile devices and laptops are in regular use in the ag industry to store farmers’ data. At the same time, security risks are heightened. To avoid breaches such as ransomware, which locks owners out of their data, you should install protection software, maintain strong passwords and do frequent data backups.

Constant software update notifications may seem annoying, but updates are a cybersecurity best practice. These updates typically involve security patches and other modifications that make it harder for hackers to break into your system. Cybercriminals are often searching for businesses that don’t have their software up to date — avoid becoming an attractive target by keeping your software updated.

Further, if you have a WiFi network for your workplace, make sure it is secure, password-protected, encrypted and hidden. To hide your WiFi network, set up your wireless access point or router so it does not broadcast the network name.

Properly dispose of information you no longer need

Once you determine that you no longer need to store some personal information — for example, when a business relationship ends — it is important to ensure that such personal information is properly deleted. Further, when disposing of old computers and portable storage devices, use software to securely erase data. Such software is inexpensive and can provide better results by overwriting the entire hard drive so that the files are no longer recoverable.

As is typical with legal guidance, the above practices may seem like overkill, and in some cases it is. However, just like insurance, having the above precautions in place can provide peace of mind to both you and your growers, and can help reduce your business’s potential legal liability if there is ever a privacy breach.

As the agriculture industry continues to adopt new technologies, and as data security becomes a major theme in all industries, the protection of personal information and farm data will continue to become increasingly important.

The post What are you doing with my information? appeared first on Grainews.

When the company decided to redesign its web portal and mobile app for New Holland’s PLM Connect and Case IH’s AFS Connect telematics, software engineers and designers sought out diverse input before nailing down a plan.

“We took inspiration from a wide variety of sources, from the auto industry as well as the farming simulators and video games,” he says.

And, of course, farmers.

“The mobile app itself is a built-from-scratch application,” he continues. “We started work in December of 2022. It started as a handful of Post-it notes on a white board, as a hypothesis of what we thought our customers would want to be able to do. Before we started writing any code we went straight to the customer and dealer channel and started asking questions.”

That led to the creation of CNH’s newly designed FieldOps, which replaces the previous AFS Connect and PLM Connect websites, offering a whole new interface with a new look and an almost-identical appearance for the new companion mobile app.

Screen images and navigation icons will now look the same on a laptop, tablet or smartphone, and will be in similar places. The new interface also combines real-time machine data with all the agronomic information a farm manager uses, putting all the farm management tools together in one place.

“We bucket-listed three underlying themes our users asked for: where are my machines, what are they doing and how much time do they have remaining in that task?” Maurer says. “Those are consistent themes we’re always seeing pop up.

“The biggest thing we heard was ‘I don’t want to have to download a separate application to interact with my machine. I want it all embedded. I want to see my machines, where they’re going, what they’re doing, and I want to be able to remote into my display.’”

“Historically we had both a web version and a mobile version,” CNH’s precision segment lead for North America, Kendal Quandahl, says. “We had an app, but those two things had different user interfaces, they had a different feature set. Some of those really critical on-the-go features weren’t available in the mobile app. So we redesigned the entire FieldOps.”

Once the initial FieldOps version was developed, designers tried it out with a very large sampling of producers during the beta R&D phase.

“We (previously) had about 20 end users that were part of our beta program,” says Maurer. “We increased that tenfold to where we now have about 200 to 250 test users in our beta environment for our web and mobile apps, which showed us a lot of new ideas.”

Since going live on Aug. 20, FieldOps is now a single online location for both Case IH and New Holland telematics. It’s compatible with any Case IH machine with a Pro 1200 monitor, as well as any New Holland machine with their equivalent.

The app will look the same for both brands, but users can switch between displayed icon images of red or blue machines, whatever their preference.

“The web interface is essentially the next evolution, the next version of the current web interface we have,” Maurer says. “It’s essentially an overhaul or refresh of the user experience. We’ve changed where the icons live. Really, the biggest thing we’ve added is real-time functionality that will be available on our tractors.”

The upload time intervals of information coming from machines has been shortened significantly, from 60 seconds to just three to five. Detailed machine route paths now appear on screen along with speed, fuel use and engine r.p.m.

All the other machine data that was previously available will continue to be accessible. But now its location and priority can be customized to suit any preference and any machine type.

“We’ve adopted some of the feature set from our Raven partners, where they show kind of breadcrumb trails by duty status,” Maurer says. “It’s not really information we thought we’d ever really need to know until we started looking at it and learned a lot about how our customers utilize the machines.

“You can look at multiple fields at the exact same time. Everything is meant to bring current activities, machines, cropping systems, field conditions to the surface.”

Farmers already using the previous CNH brand-specific web portals will be able to sign in to the new site the same way and be redirected to the new page. All bookmarks, preferences and passwords remain unchanged.

To access the mobile site, users will have to download a new app from the Google Play or Apple Stores. It’s free and anyone can get it; there is no subscription fee for it either. Any costs will be linked to the telematics package on each machine, not the web interface.

“If they want to use the mobile app and currently have the old one, they will have to download a brand-new one,” says Maurer. “They don’t have to download it right away. But once they do, they use the same credentials they used before and it logs them right in. They can use existing Case IH or New Holland credentials to log into either the Case IH or New Holland app. And they don’t have to choose a brand preference either way. Today it’s all-inclusive.

“Case IH’s tag line is ‘Built by farmers.’ This application, at its heart, is truly built by our customer base. So we’re very excited about it.”

The post CNH’s app, web portal upgrades based on farmer input appeared first on Grainews.

“This is something we’re really excited about,” CNH’s chief digital and information officer Marc Kermish says. “We realize more and more farmers are on the go and need to manage their farm operations from anywhere they’re at.

“So we spent the last number of months rethinking how we can offer access to all the data and systems in the vehicles that are running at any given time. We really invested in our online platforms and launched a new native mobile app for both iOS and Android.

“We call it FieldOps. It’s not branded to Case IH or New Holland per se. It’s the same system no matter what tractor you’re running with us.”

RELATED: Improved connectivity coming soon from CNH

The platform allows real-time monitoring of vehicle display views, including telematics data; farmers can see as-planted maps and define field boundaries. They can also do path planning and interact with service manuals and other data sets provided by CNH, all while on the go.

The platform will allow direct data input from any compatible source, which will allow users to integrate all their on-farm data.

“It has simplified navigation, easy-to-use buttons, ability for light and dark modes, being able to use it with a gloved hand, et cetera,” Kermish says.

“We’ve been in beta this past winter and through the spring. Beta will run right up to mid- to late summer. We’ll open it up to the general public as soon as we feel we’ve worked out all the kinks.”

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Early this year John Deere announced it was partnering with SpaceX’s Starlink service to eventually ensure machines have uninterrupted service via satellite where cellular systems are weak.

In late April, the CNH brands, Case IH and New Holland, followed suit. The company announced it has partnered with Intelsat to provide uninterrupted connectivity via satellite.

Like Deere, CNH will begin by offering the satellite link for its equipment in Brazil where cellular service covers only a small fraction of the country.

“It will start in Brazil in the third quarter of this year,” CNH’s chief digital and information officer Marc Kermish says. “It will then move into North America, select countries in Europe and Asia in the first quarter of next year. And then a worldwide rollout in Q3.

“Ubiquitous connectivity is hard to come by in farming operations. The intent of satellite is to address those markets that are not served well by cellular. The key component is to enable precision farming abilities.”

RELATED: FieldOps: A new digital platform from CNH

Neither Deere nor CNH expect the satellite link to make cellular redundant; rather, it will be a compliment to it in those areas where service is poor, allowing for uninterrupted data transfer.

“The satellite is not meant to replace cellular communication,” Kermish says. “It’s really meant as an option. At the end of the day, cellular communication is still your most cost-effective way to connect.

“In hilly areas you have drops, so in those areas I can see them (farmers) using satellite to help smooth that out. The way we’ve thought about connectivity is, they can pick the solution they want. They could have cellular and satellite and roam between the two, whichever has the strongest signal.”

The service could also be used to do more than just connect machines to the cloud; it could be set up to offer farm-wide Wi-Fi for general connectivity to the internet.

“They could beam a mesh Wi-Fi network across their farm and our connectivity could work with that. They could have a satellite dish on the combine and through Wi-Fi connect to the tractor for the grain cart. So they don’t have to buy a dish for every single vehicle in paired operations. We’ll learn how they want to put it to use and what works best.

“With Intelsat we get access to three different layers of geo-satellite connectivity. You have a deep space layer, which is where telecommunications work and it has the broadest coverage but some of the slowest speeds. You have a middle Earth-orbit layer, which is where we’ll start with Intelsat. This is where you’re going to get two-MB backhaul speed, which is more than enough to take agronomic and telematics data from the vehicles back to the cloud.

“Then as they (Intelsat) grow their low-Earth orbit, we can start to leverage that for real-time video streaming and other activities related to managing an autonomous farm mission.”

That video capability will be critical for use on fully autonomous equipment. It will allow farmers to see, remotely in real time, the environment around working equipment.

“For us, we’re going to have between eight and 10 cameras on an autonomous vehicle,” Kermish adds. “As we’ve talked with our farmers, they were like, ‘Hey, we want to see what’s going on, not just from the display or remote tracking from the vehicle. I want to be able to log in and see what the tractor sees.’

“You’re going to get errors that the tractor is going to throw and it’s going to stop. So you can see what’s around that tractor to determine if you can remote-start it or if you’re going to have to drive out and remove an obstacle.”

The necessary Intelsat hardware will be available from CNH dealers when the service begins in Canada.

“We’ll start as an aftermarket offering so they can put it on their existing fleet. They can move it between vehicles if they buy a second wiring harness. We want to make sure there’s portability. You don’t need 10 satellites for 10 tractors.

“We’re still finalizing pricing. There’ll be a cost for the antenna and there’ll be a monthly pricing model. I would say it will be similar to what you see with cable internet connectivity if you have high-speed cable, on a monthly basis.”

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It’s an idea that Scherman says arose from the same philosophy as the ScherGain Solutions System he previously co-founded with his father. That system involves the use of a drop pan to better gauge how many bushels per acre are lost behind the combine.

Combinesettings.com is a web-based platform and app in which farmers create a profile, add their combine and settings to their profile and then receive and provide feedback with farmers across the world.

“Peer-to-peer isn’t a new thing, but it’s now the old thing that’s now on the internet,” Scherman said.

“You have your own combine settings, so when you log in, you post that you have a John Deere 9660 or whatever,” said Madden. “Here’s all my settings, my concave, fan speed, et cetera. Then people can comment on it, say, ‘Oh, have you tried this concave? Have you done this?'”

Described as a Reddit-type web forum, the site allows comments and questions under certain topics, and uses an up- or down-voting system to show which advice has merit.

The website launched earlier in July, with the app released Wednesday. Madden and Sherman said the traffic coming through their booth at Ag in Motion has been a welcome surprise.

“It’s been live for a while, and we’ve been slowly launching it to some farmers that we know asking for feedback,” said Madden.

“I felt bad for the development team. We were chatting with people and they’ll say, ‘Does it do this?’ and we’re like, ‘Yep,’ then go to the trailer and email the guys that we need to do this.”

AG IN MOTION VIDEO: Ag innovation winners unveiled

On Tuesday, the product won the Ag in Motion Innovations Award for Business Solutions at this year’s event, which came as a surprise to Scherman and Madden.

“We didn’t expect it at all,” said Scherman. “We applied for it, went to it and was like, ‘What, we just won?'”

Winning the award certainly helped the brand garner some recognition, as it does for most innovations award winners.

“We had a lot of people stop by and they said, ‘oh, I saw a bunch of social media about it afterwards,’ or ‘I saw you guys won this award.’ So, it was a good little kick-start for us,” said Scherman.

“People have been really excited about it.”

Farmers weren’t the only interested parties to visit the booth — retailers and corporations across the combine industry came by as well.

“We’ve had companies that have come to us, after-market companies for combine products, say, ‘I want all my customers on your site,’ ” said Scherman.

“Some of those people have 200, 500 customers. We said on Tuesday we’re going to gather our thoughts and have a call because a lot has happened in the past few days.”

With the website only being up for a short time, they are hoping to take the feedback they’ve received, implement it in their site and take it to ag shows across the world to grab the global market while they can and find new ways to keep expanding and improving.

“It’s really professional, we’ve put a lot of money into development and that’s not slowing down anytime soon,” said Madden. “We’re making it global as quick as we can.”

The two are planning on attending trade shows in Australia, Germany, Ukraine and elsewhere in the next couple of years.

The post At Ag in Motion: Combine settings app makes the world your neighbour appeared first on Grainews.

The urgency driving such transactions may cause ranchers, farmers and farm workers to make purchases “without taking time to properly verify or research production sources,” Alberta RCMP’s financial crimes team said in a release Thursday.

So far this year across Alberta’s Mountie-policed jurisdictions, various actors have scammed victims out of about $64,000, RCMP said, and “with many cases potentially not being reported, this figure could be higher.”

Recently, the Mounties said, fraudsters have been setting up listings for hay on social media and buy-and-sell platforms — and are “requesting immediate payment before buyers have the opportunity to research the producer, see the product, or receive delivery.”

Evansburg and Grande Prairie RCMP this summer each received similar reports of transactions on the Facebook Marketplace platform, in which “a quantity of money” was sent via e-transfer but no hay was delivered and the funds were lost.

In reported cases, lost individual deposits ranged from a minimum of $1,000 to over $5,000.

RCMP in Saskatchewan issued a warning earlier this summer about similar scams, in which several farmers sent funds in advance for hay that never materialized.

It’s worth noting, RCMP said Thursday, that the potential buyers who were able to avoid being scammed are those who “refused to give deposits in advance, insisted upon speaking on the phone, and had paid cash upon delivery of goods.”

Among the “key indicators” of a potential hay scam on an online platform, RCMP said:

• sellers will typically only communicate through text messaging and avoid phone conversations;
• while sellers can be located anywhere in the world, they get the attention of buyers by showing a specific or specialized knowledge of hay products;
• the stated price will be “attractively low” and “consistent with the previous year’s market price;” and
• the seller will often insist on a deposit of about 50 per cent, but once that deposit is received, excuses about delayed delivery may follow, “and then communication stops.”

On a more positive note, the need for hay in drought-damaged regions of the West also led to the launch this summer of several initiatives to ship donated hay from Eastern Canada.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s Hay West 2021 program on Tuesday picked up a $25,000 contribution from Farm Credit Canada to help cover shipping costs for westbound feed. FCC also said it will put up another $25,000 in matching funds if the CFA is able to secure another $25,000 contribution.

Information about Hay West 2021 for farmers looking to supply or purchase hay is available online. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Research work formally published in refereed scientific journals has a very long life and is, for the most part, easy to access online. However, there exists much useful information housed in various annual reports and meetings that often dies on shelves and is eventually tossed out.

The annual Saskatchewan Soils and Crops Workshop and pre-cursor Soil Fertility Workshop started around the mid-1960s. The Soil Science Department also published an annual “Soil Plant Nutrient Research Report” as far back as 1960. About 10 years ago, it was decided to have those and other reports scanned to preserve the information and provide access online.

The University of Saskatchewan harvest site

Thanks to the folks at our University of Saskatchewan Library, the Harvest portal has been built and provides a searchable format to find specific data. Visit the site at harvest.usask.ca. You can search by subject or author in the complete Harvest database or go to the College of Agriculture and Bioresources for more specific information.

Search by subject, a few examples

A search of “anhydrous ammonia” brought up an extensive literature review by Henry, J.L., T.J. Hogg and E. A. Paul called, The Effect of Anhydrous Ammonia on Soil, Soil Fertility Workshop, 1979, pages 34-57. That would be a good place to start for anyone with questions about anhydrous ammonia.

A 1995 piece dealt with the first side banding of NH3 by A. Johnston, G. Lafond, J. Harapiak and K. Head called, Response of Wheat and Canola to Side Banded Anhydrous Ammonia, Soils and Crops Workshop, 1995, pages 81-101.

Soil salinity, acid soils, crop rotation and countless other topics will lead you to many sources. Often these sources will have a reference list that will lead you to peer-reviewed journal articles.

Search by author

I am often looking for work done by a specific author, but do not know where it was published. John Harapiak supervised many, very good, fertility projects across all of Western Canada while at Westco.

He did the original work on deep banding of nitrogen (N) fertilizer. I can still see John standing at the front of the room and saying, “The difference between deep banding and broadcast is enough to pay for the fertilizer.” He also made sure his company realized, “What is good for the farmer is good for Westco.”

John also had 30 years of continuous soil fertility plots on forage crops, mostly bromegrass, on black soil north of Calgary. The work included large N rates that provided good data on the effects of NH3 on soil pH. I will be using that data in a future column.

For the benefit of young agros, Westco was a fertilizer company owned by Federated Co-op and the three Prairie wheat pools. It was “Western Co-op Fertilizers Ltd.,” shortened to Westco. John Harapiak and Norm Flore from Westco were in the forefront when the CCA (Certified Crop Advisor) program was started.

S.S. Malhi (affectionately known as “Molly”) did good soil fertility work with federal ag research stations at Lacombe, Alta., and Melfort, Sask. We were delighted to have him at Melfort. He did not stick to the main research station, which had few soil fertility problems, but went where the problems were.

A classic example of the work is found in the 2008 Soils and Crops program by S. S. Malhi and D. Leach called, Effectiveness of Seed-soaked Cu, Fall- Versus Spring-applied Cu, and Cu-coated P Fertilizer on Seed Yield of Wheat on a Cu-deficient Soil.

Those experiments were located on a very copper-deficient, sandy grey-black soil near Porcupine Plain, Sask. Check yields were 10 bushels per acre of wheat. Copper seed-soaking raised that to 30 bushels per acre and two foliar applications to 45 bushels per acre.

Malhi also did good work on various elemental sulphur (S) products. A poster at the 1999 Soils and Crops Workshop dealt with rescue measures to correct sulphur deficiency in canola during the growing season.

Ukrainetz (Harry) did decades of good soil fertility work at Scott, Sask. He was doing work on liming acid soils when most of us thought there were no acid soils in Saskatchewan. Now that acid soils are in the limelight, his work of long ago is relevant.

By 1983, he had 19 years of data from Scott showing that one large application of lime would maintain soil pH at a suitable level for that long. Liming is an investment in the land. Entering “Ukrainetz” into the Harvest search engine will bring up enough reading to keep you busy for a while.

As for your Grainews columnist Henry, J.L., my first entry was in the 1966 Soil Plant Nutrient Research Report, and it dealt with soil tests on individual soil types within a field — precision ag before its time. More recent are soil and crops PowerPoint presentations on Soil Salinity Management (2010), Earthworms (2016) and Weather and Climate, Actual Data (2020).

The 2020 Soils and Crops meetings in Saskatoon were March 10-11, just ahead of the big shutdown that came on March 13.

Metadata

These days, we hear a lot about metadata, which summarizes many studies to boil it down to something useful. Metadata was the norm in the early days of soil fertility work in Western Canada.

The first main N soil test correlation work in Saskatchewan in the 1960s to 1970s involved 302 wheat and 136 barley field experiments with N fertilizer rates and soil test N data recorded. The data came from the U of S Soil Science Department, federal research stations, substations and off-stations as well as industry. Westco, Sherritt Gordon Mines Ltd. and Cominco Ltd. had field fertility programs and all data was made available.

What about Alberta?

Fortunately, the Alberta Soil Science Workshops (ASSW) have also been scanned and can be accessed by year from 1962 to 2015 at sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/archivesassw/.

Unfortunately, the 1982 entry is missing, but by huge luck I have chased it down — Elston Solberg, are you listening? I was looking for a Ukrainetz paper from that year and Elston found a copy of the 1982 ASSW in his collection.

I have not spent much time on the ASSW website. Some entries are abstracts only, but there were many themed events with a concise assembly of papers from across the three Prairie provinces.

The 1980 entry is the Western Canada Phosphate Symposium, which was a three-province meeting. That book held sway until 2019, when the new phosphate story is told with the meetings held as part of Saskatchewan Soils and Crops, but the work was mainly by Don Flaten and Cindy Grant of Manitoba.

The 1981 ASSW theme was soil degradation. The paper of great current interest was by Paul Hoyt, Marvin Nyborg and Harry Ukrainetz called, Degradation by Acidification, 1981, ASSW Pages 41-71. The 30-page document and 32 references listed made that a great metadata project.

What about Manitoba?

The Manitoba Soil Science Society (visit mbsoils.ca) is holding its 64th MSSS Annual General Meeting virtually on February 4-5, 2021. The MSSS meetings were formerly held in December and an annual trip to Winnipeg in December was a must for me. The MSSS annual meeting proceedings were published in books with yellow covers. They were an important part of our department library at U of S.

The MSSS proceedings have yet to be scanned and made available online. Don Flaten is now officially retired (but not yet tired), so I expect he will work on that project.

I did make sure to check with Don before I made another fumble. In a previous column, I had erroneously stated that Manitoba did not have the soil survey information online. Readers quickly corrected me and the site agrimaps.gov.mb.ca/agrimaps is now on my bookmarks and used frequently. Thanks, Readers! It is excellent and even this old fossil has mastered it, so no trouble for the kids. My next Grainews column will make extensive use of that online information.

Fair warning

It is my hope that many readers will run straight to harvest.usask.ca or sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/archivesassw. But, fair warning — it can be a very deep rathole (i.e. hugely addictive).

In gathering info for this piece, I ended up with over half a day just following my nose to more and more papers. As often happens, you can end up finding “stuff” you thought was lost. In the pH file, I have a clear memory of Bill Janzen (federal soil survey lab) standing at the front of the Soil Science seminar room presenting data assembled on methods of determining pH. I thought that never saw print — but I found it on Harvest.

Happy reading and be sure to learn lots. Hopefully access to all that “old stuff” will prevent folks from rediscovering the moon.

The post Les Henry: Harvest, not crops with a combine but information online appeared first on Grainews.

The report’s fifth edition, 2020 Public Trust Research Report: Trends in Trust and the Path Forward, was released last November by the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity (CCFI). In the report, farmers were rated No. 1 for food safety, overall trust and providing information about food when compared with other food system stakeholders (see table at top).

The survey indicated confidence in Canada’s food system is at an all-time high. And the proportion of Canadians who feel our food system is headed in the right direction reached a five-year high with a significant 12-point increase compared with 2019. All of this during the COVID-19 pandemic, when our food system was under unprecedented pressure and public scrutiny.

According to the report, the sector remained strong, resulting in Canadians feeling optimistic about their food supply. Specifically, the food system’s response to the pandemic is highly praised by Canadians — nearly nine in 10, or 87 per cent, trust the food system will ensure the availability of healthy food for Canadians.

Your voice matters

As the most trusted voice in the food system, your stories about food production are important. And due to the recent confidence boost in our food system, now is a great time to build on this momentum.

There are a lot of great ag stories out there to tell. Related to this, and equally important, is to dispel myths and misinformation surrounding agriculture.

Timothy Caulfield, author and Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta, also believes farmers are well placed to battle misinformation because they’re viewed as both experts and trusted voices.

During his keynote presentation, “Infodemics: Food, Fear and Agriculture,” at the Farming Smarter 2020 Conference and Trade Show last month, Caulfield said it is becoming increasingly important to debunk misinformation.

We all have a tendency to shy away from countering misinformation, whether the source is social media, the news, the public or even among friends and family. I am often amazed by the misinformation I hear about farming practices and food production. Even my family, who hears about crop production and agriculture on a daily basis, will repeat to me something entirely false they’ve read on social media or by Googling a topic.

Caulfield urged conference attendees to become part of the “debunking army,” and to expose fallacies around ag. For example, he cited studies that showed debunking misinformation about GMOs can change people’s perceptions about the issue.

He also offered nine effective debunking tools. These are a great place to start if you want to share your stories with others.

Timothy Caulfield’s Debunking Tools

1. Provide the science about the issue you’re addressing.
2. Use clear and shareable content. For example, what will that content look like on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram?
3. Use trustworthy and independent sources of science.
4. Provide the scientific consensus on the topic, also noting science is a process and scientific consensus is going to evolve.
5. Be nice, authentic, empathetic and humble. You’ll be viewed as more credible if this is your approach. To be authentic, don’t just concentrate on data, talk about your life and how the topic is relevant to your work on the farm.
6. To push misinformation, people use narratives and anecdotes. Misinformation is often embedded in a narrative or anecdote. Use the same kinds of stories, narratives or anecdotes to push good science — and creativity wins.
7. Highlight gaps in logic and rhetorical tricks.
8. Make the fact what people remember (and not the misinformation).
9. Remember the general public is the audience, not the hardcore deniers.

I realize many of you are very modest about the work you do; however, non-farmers are truly interested in and engaged with agriculture and how food is produced right now due to the pandemic. What an enormous opportunity this presents to share your good news stories about the food you grow for your fellow Canadians.

Do you have a story to tell? Will you join the debunk army? Email me at kbelanger@farmmedia.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Stay well,

Kari

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday launched a three-year, $10 billion infrastructure plan aimed at five different sectors, including agriculture. The $1.5 billion is expected to result in 700,000 acres of irrigated land.

Federal Liberals said the investment, to be funnelled through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, will create 60,000 jobs.

The $1.5 billion for agriculture is to target major irrigation projects, and the “lion’s share” of that will go to the Prairies and the West, Bibeau said, a region where she sees “opportunities for investment in this sector.”

The bank, she said, “has already started significant discussions with the provinces, the municipalities, the private sector to see how we could move forward.”

Bibeau didn’t mention specific projects, but Saskatchewan’s $4 billion, 10-year Lake Diefenbaker irrigation project is a top candidate to receive federal support.

The province in early July announced plans for a project expected to allow farmers to irrigate 500,000 acres.

Western Economic Diversification Canada, a federal department, last month recommended Ottawa help fund the Diefenbaker irrigation project, contending the completed project would add $85 billion to Canada’s GDP and $20 billion in tax returns back to government.

While targeted to the agriculture sector, the project is also expected to be beneficial for the potash industry.

Adding to the likelihood of federal support is the role former Liberal cabinet minister and Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale continues to play within party circles. A long-time advocate for the project, Goodale remains a highly respected voice in the party.

Scott Moe, currently running to continue serving as Saskatchewan’s premier, said he was given a heads-up on the announcement.

“I hope this is positive news. There is some money earmarked for the irrigation project, irrigation projects,” he told reporters in Regina. “We have a significant irrigation investment that will be coming here in the province of Saskatchewan.

“We will be looking at the details of this very soon,” he said, adding he hopes it is an investment rather than a loan through the infrastructure bank.

Ottawa’s announcement also contained a $2 billion commitment to expanding high-speed broadband access. In its Sept. 23 throne speech, the government said it wanted to improve internet access in rural and remote communities.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture said in a release Thursday it’s “encouraged” by the infrastructure funding announcement, noting rural broadband has been a long-standing issue for farmers and rural communities.

“With the arrival of COVID-19, many services pivoted to become entirely online, highlighting the fact farmers’ lack of high-speed connectivity puts us at a significant business disadvantage,” CFA president Mary Robinson said in a statement.

“Rural broadband is not only necessary for today’s farmers to conduct business and take advantage of cutting-edge technology, it is also critical to attracting new, young farmers into the industry. We know younger generations see high-speed connectivity as essential to everyday living and business.”

The infrastructure bank will be rolling out these investments over the next 24-36 months, Robinson said, and the CFA “anticipates these investments will help accelerate the government’s promised timeline of connecting all of Canada by 2030.”

As for the irrigation funding, she said, “these types of investments will have positive impacts for years to come, helping mitigate the impacts of erratic weather events.”

Increased irrigation, she said, can help farmers grow higher-value crops and more crops per acre, while also making water usage more efficient.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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In an ambitious throne speech delivered Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party committed itself to implementing universal child care and extending or enhancing many of the economic measures put in place to curb the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But it’s a commitment to enhancing rural broadband that farmers will likely find most intriguing.

“In the last six months, many more people have worked from home, done classes from the kitchen table, shopped online, and accessed government services remotely. So it has become more important than ever that all Canadians have access to the internet,” read the throne speech, delivered by Gov. Gen. Julie Payette.

“The government will accelerate the connectivity timelines and ambitions of the Universal Broadband Fund to ensure that all Canadians, no matter where they live, have access to high-speed internet.”

The Universal Broadband Fund was launched in 2019 and, according to the government, is meant to “support projects to build or upgrade access and transport infrastructure to provide fixed and mobile wireless broadband Internet access services in eligible underserved areas of Canada.”

Efforts to expand access to health care were also highlighted in the speech.

“The Government will ensure that everyone – including in rural and remote areas – has access to a family doctor or primary care team. COVID-19 has also shown that our system needs to be more flexible and able to reach people at home. The government will continue to expand capacity to deliver virtual health care,” read the text of the speech.

Canada’s government also plans to legislate the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change.

The speech specifically mentioned the need for the “know-how of the energy sector” to be involved in such an effort.

Two key priorities were listed: supporting existing manufacturing and natural resource sectors “transform to meet a net zero future, creating good-paying and long-lasting jobs” as well as “recognize farmers, foresters, and ranchers as key partners in the fight against climate change, supporting their efforts to reduce emissions and build resilience.”

Trudeau’s government also plans to create a new way of managing Canadian waters. Citing the closure of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), the speech commits the federal government to create a “Canada Water Agency to keep our water safe, clean and well-managed.”

“The government will also need to identify opportunities to build more resilient water and irrigation infrastructure,” Payette said.

The speech said Canada will also continue to fight for free trade and reform at the World Trade Organization.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the existing trends toward a more fragmented global order. It remains in Canada’s interest to create and maintain bilateral and multilateral relationships to advance peace and economic prosperity.”

Details of the legislative plans highlighted in the speech are expected to emerge in the coming days and weeks.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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