“The planter/seeder debate is an interesting one. Essentially, it’s a cost/benefit analysis,” said Darren Bond, farm management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.

Of course, buying a shiny new piece of farm equipment brings financing costs — but that’s only the beginning.

“The biggest thing is the cost, but cost is always the easy part of the cost-benefit analysis,” said Bond. “So we have to look from a broader perspective.”

On the other side of the balance sheet is seed savings.

“One of the big selling points of using a planter is being able to reduce the seed rate. Seed is very expensive,” he said. “In our 2025 cost of production guide, canola is $82.50 an acre. If we can halve that seed cost, there’s some pretty big savings there.”

Fendt’s Momentum planter in the spotlight

That cost-conscious mood was on display at Ag in Motion 2025 near Langham, Sask., where AGCO featured its Fendt Momentum planter.

The Momentum is AGCO’s flagship planter, and Don Green, product specialist with Fendt, said it brings new capabilities. With a 130-bushel seed tank and a 1,000-gallon liquid tank, it sits at the high-capacity end of the market.

Green said canola is proving to be a viable fit for the planter. Fendt recently sponsored some research that was done at Olds College in Alberta.

“They did a side-by-side comparison with a competitive air drill, and it showed that we could produce more plants per acre with a lowered seeding rate,” he said. “So, there’s automatically a seed savings in there.”

The Olds trial also showed a two-bushels-per-acre yield advantage, but Green said that yield boost isn’t a guarantee, as those kinds of results are variable.

“I wouldn’t count on that as part of the economics, but the one thing you can count on is that this planter will establish your crop for a lower seed cost per acre,” he said. “That is consistent across all of the work that we’ve done.”

Between yield and seed savings, researchers found a $50 per acre net benefit for planted canola compared to canola seeded with an air drill.

Looking beyond canola

Green said he is also excited by pulse crop potential. They are in the midst of side-by-side trials in Saskatchewan looking at the benefits of running chickpeas and lentils through a planter. Beyond the seed savings expected to mirror the canola trials, he said they’re hoping that because of the better seed placement and spacing the planter offers, there might be some disease benefits.

“I’m not making promises, but we’re sure watching to see what the results are,” he said, adding that early results are expected later this fall.

Agronomic case still taking shape

Ken Coles, CEO of Farming Smarter, also said the idea of planters for pulses makes sense, and that there could indeed be disease benefits.

“I wouldn’t disagree that sometimes a wider row spacing might allow for more airflow. That might be a good thing for disease management,” he said.

Farming Smarter is a southern Alberta non-profit that runs agronomic research trials and shares practical, science-based best practices with farmers.

The group co-authored a 2021 study in the Canadian Journal of Plant Science that compared precision planters and air drills across 12 site-years in Alberta. The work found planters could cut seed use and, under irrigated conditions, boost canola yields by about 10 per cent, though results were mixed under dryland conditions.

Coles noted that planters first made their mark in canola through the seed industry. Hybrid seed producers once relied on old box drills to keep male and female seed rows separate, but precision planters offered a simpler and more accurate way to do the job. Many seed growers adopted them early on because they were already using planters for crops like dry beans or sugar beets.

That early adoption set the stage for broader, on-farm interest. And for regular canola growers, Coles said planters bring clear advantages in seed placement.

“Honestly, they’re designed to do a better job than our traditional air seeders,” he said. “They will do a better job in every setting. Does that mean you can just jump straight into using them? No, there’s a lot more to the story.”

That story includes crop type and environment. Coles points out that you could plant anything and expect better seed placement, but the reason that canola is a better candidate than, say, wheat is because of what he described as the crop’s plasticity.

“Canola has an amazing ability to branch and take advantage of the space that it has,” he explained.

He pointed to Australia, where farmers began using planters sooner than here in North America. However, they were using comparatively wide row spacings under quite different environmental conditions. That approach didn’t translate well to Prairie conditions.

“When we tried using a planter on 30-inch rows here, it just didn’t do well,” Coles said. “When we moved it down to about a 15-inch row spacing, then we found that it was pretty competitive.”

Results across years and conditions have been mixed. Under irrigation, Coles found the narrower rows were better, but with dryland farming, moisture became the critical factor.

“So sometimes it was better, sometimes it wasn’t. It was a little inconclusive,” he said.

That uncertainty highlights why Prairie growers are cautious.

Not built for zero till

One of the downsides to planters is that they were not designed for zero-till systems.

“That’s where having row cleaners is important, and the appropriate down pressure, so that if you want to take it into a zero-till system, it will still do a good job,” said Coles.

Despite the challenges, he said he sees potential growth for the technology, though he doesn’t expect air seeders to disappear. He noted that companies are already incorporating planter features such as parallel linkage, seed firmers and seed singulation into their drills.

“Is it going to be the element of every operation? Probably not. It’s a pretty expensive way to seed certain things,” he said.

Fertilizer adds a wrinkle

Another consideration is fertility.

“You still have to figure out how to get your fertilizer down,” said Coles. “That’s a systemic, on-farm logistics issue when your traditional seeders are set up well to do that.”

Bond agreed and said fertilizer application should be top of mind for farmers considering shifting to a planter. He noted that when farmers switch from a seeder that applies fertilizer during seeding to a planter, they must find another way to put that fertilizer down.

“Is that going to be an extra pass? And if we have that extra pass, then are we essentially giving up the advantages that we’re getting with the planter?”

How a farmer addresses this is critical. Poor timing or placement can lead to environmental losses that aren’t obvious right away but can drag yields down over several years.

Bond noted that moving fertilizer to a separate pass means farmers must weigh trade-offs: spring applications reduce losses but add workload at a busy time and risk drying out the seedbed, while fall banding can be efficient if soils are cool, with the added benefit of often cheaper fertilizer prices.

He stressed that the key is finding an alternative system that matches the efficiency of an air drill. Otherwise, the economics of switching to a planter may not hold.

Fertilizer prices make the issue sharper.

“Phosphorus is very expensive. Our market rates in Manitoba are close to $1,300 a tonne,” Bond said. “Because we’re widening our seed rows, we can’t put quite as much in the seed row as starter fertilizer due to seedling toxicity and fertilizer toxicity.”

That means phosphorus often must be placed elsewhere, adding cost and complexity.

Weeds complicate the picture

Weed control is another factor farmers need to examine.

Bond pointed out that farmers moving to a wider row spacing with canola need to be diligent when it comes to weed control.

“The wider your row spacing, the longer it takes for that canopy to close, the more opportunity there is for weeds like kochia and the redroot pigweeds and lamb’s quarters to really take off,” he said.

Where planters fit

Despite the challenges, Bond sees scenarios where planters make sense.

One is on farms where the air drill is maxed out. A planter can add seeding capacity, allowing some canola to be seeded earlier rather than at the tail end of the window, potentially improving yields.

“It just alleviates that pressure,” said Bond.

Another is on farms already growing corn or soybeans, where a planter is in the yard for those crops. In those cases, shifting some canola acres makes sense without overhauling the system. Bond said most of his clients don’t seed all their canola with planters, but allocating a portion of acres can be a good fit.

“To look at it from a whole farm perspective is very beneficial,” he said.

A constructive debate

Bond said the fact that farmers are talking about planters at all is a positive sign.

“This debate has been going on for a good 10-15 years,” he said. “Some producers just love using planters with canola because they’re able to save $30 or $40 an acre on seed costs, and they feel that pretty much pays for the planter in their situation.”

At the same time, other farmers remain skeptical.

However, Bond says more important than any single answer is the debate itself. He sees the discussion as a good thing because it has farmers talking about reducing costs without reducing yield.

“That’s the only way that producers are going to get through tight margin years.”

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

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

A proven but underused tool

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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Geringhoff’s TruFlex Razor Draper header offers some unique features that help reduce kernel loss and improve material flow, including the Integrated Air System (IAS).

In that system, a fan mounted on the rear of the header forces air up from the cutter bar toward the rear of the belts to prevent kernel loss at the front of the header over the cutter bar.

“Nobody else has that,” Haas says. “It’s something unique. We started here in Western Canada in 2020 and tested it and improved it. We now have about 140 headers out (in Canada) and 80 per cent of them have the air system on it.

“We started testing at Olds College. In Europe we’ve tested with different varieties of canola. Here when we tested it (against) a header without (IAS); it’s over a bushel, about one and a half (in loss savings). When you have a head without the air system, (loss) went to two, to two and half bushels sometimes. With ours, it reduced it to 0.5 bushel.

“Farmers can see the cutter bar is way cleaner. In cereal there’s a benefit. If it (the crop) is really short, in dry years or where it’s dried out, it feeds better. So you don’t need the reel so much. But the big difference is in canola, lentils, lighter crops.”

A narrow four-inch side panel also helps reduce loss in canola when fitted with a vertical cutter bar.

The TruFlex Razor headers use a three-section design that allows for each wing to flex 26.5 to 36 inches, depending on the working width. Each wing can pivot four degrees up and five degrees down.

Models equipped with the flexible cutter bar option get another six inches of flex there, for a total 42 inches of ground contouring on the 45-foot model.

The cutter bar height is controlled hydraulically and can be set to automatically contour to the terrain, causing the combine to raise or lower the feeder house to maintain a consistent cutting height.

“It has hydraulic gauge wheels,” Haas says. “So if you calibrate this header on your combine it will talk. Our header tells the combine what to do, lift the feeder house up, down, raise it (the header wings) left, right. If you drive in ditches or in sloughs you will have a constantly perfect height on your cutter bar — so it doesn’t dig into the dirt. On headlands you can manually lift one wing up (to clear ground obstacles).”

All hydraulic systems on the header are self-contained. The header only requires the standard PTO drive from the combine to operate its systems.

“The hydraulic pump and oil tank, everything is on the header,” he adds. “The gearbox is a high-end build. Everything is hydraulic on this header, so if the cutter bar hits something, it doesn’t break. It stops. If something gets blocked, the relief block for the oil will open and not break or damage anything. It will just stop.”

READ MORE: Geringhoff partners with Agco

The TruFlex Razor header is available in 35-, 40- and 45-foot widths, but Haas says other models are now in field trials that will eventually offer more cutting width choices. And Geringhoff headers are compatible with all combine brands.

“We can put this header on all varieties of combines,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s green, yellow, red or black, whatever.”

Geringhoff headers come with a standard two-year factory warranty, but a longer five-year warranty option is available. The company now has a warehouse in Saskatoon to supply Western Canada.

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While VRT is gaining popularity in Western Canada, many producers remain concerned about the cost of adopting the practice.

Olds College of Agriculture and Technology in Olds, Alta., is helping to address this through ongoing research aimed at providing farmers with a better understanding on the return on investment of variable rate fertilizer applications.

“The objective is to apply the right amount of fertilizer in relationship to the projected yield for that field,” says Herman Simons, manager of Smart Ag Applied Research at Olds College. “We’re trying to help producers more easily quantify the value of VRT on their farms by expressing it in monetary value.”

The Centre for Innovation at the college is assessing the economic viability of variable rate fertilizer as part of a partnership with Telus Agriculture that’s aimed at testing and developing innovative ag tech that enhances yields, efficiency and sustainability on Prairie farms.

The research started in 2022 and continues this year on Steckler Farm, a 2,000-acre farm within the Olds College Smart Farm system that contains fields with five different soil zones.

Last year, Simons and his team conducted a break-even analysis, which factored in crop rotations and yields, production inputs and field variability. An economic model was used to help determine what level of field variability was required to make VRT investment worthwhile.

Costs associated with variable rate fertilizer applications, such as soil sampling, labour and professional fees for agrologists and precision ag providers, were weighed against the benefits, which included lower fertilizer requirements, higher yields and the potential environmental value in reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The model did not factor in capital costs needed to implement VRT.

Early results

Simons says early results suggest incorporating variable rate fertilizer in normal farming operations can help producers reduce their environmental footprint while staying productive, especially if they can capitalize on carbon credit programs that VRT would qualify them for.

He adds results also indicate a focus on boosting yields by determining where in fields fertilizer is most needed and applying it to those locations would likely drive bigger economic returns for farmers than if they focus on savings achieved by reduced fertilizer use. This is based on early 2022 fertilizer prices compared with 2021.

Simons says the research is being expanded to consider different crop types and variable rate options as well as capital cost investment. Researchers are also increasing the level of detail on field variability in the model to make it more farm and field specific.

“If we can use this technology to become more competitive, then I think it will become a no-brainer. The problem is proving how VRT impacts different farms because every farm is different,” says Simons.

“Each producer needs to look at their own scenario on their own farm before making a decision on whether variable rate technology will work, and that’s where the thinking behind this model came from.”

Simons says studies show the price tag for implementing variable rate fertilizer is only one consideration for western Canadian farmers.

Other factors that influence adoption include whether VRT is backed up by data, whether producers have seen it work on other farms in their area, and how easily the technology can be integrated into existing farm operations.

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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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This fuzzy photo of a kid riding a milk cow is the first livestock tracking system my dad had on the farm. The rider would be with the cow all day and report back on how long and what she ate and how long she chewed her cud and compare that data to milk production records. A great management tool! Or not.

Okay, so I sort of made that last part up. It never happened. That’s just a photo of me perhaps in the late 1950s riding a smaller, quieter Holstein I called Blackie. It is the closest I ever got to the rodeo circuit. Me and Blackie never went anywhere except around the yard and one of the few things I remember from those days was the ridge of her bony backbone was hard on my butt.

A few things come to mind from that photo. First is, I should have hired a better photographer. That photo was probably taken by my mother with an old Kodak box camera. One roll of film with 12 frames that stored images of everything from Christmas to Easter, to a picnic by the St. Lawrence River, to a group shot of cousins who visited from New York State — all on that one roll, a year’s worth of memories. Taking one photo of each event was lots. (Compare that with the 1,100 photos I have on my cellphone today, and I’m not even close to being a selfie fanatic. Time and technology change.)

The other point that comes to mind is just how simple those farming days were in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Fast-forward to 2022 and I dare you to keep up with technology.

Earlier this month, I spent a few hours along with other Alberta farm writers touring some of the new features, the new technology at Olds College in south-central Alberta. A lot of this technology is stuff you read about or you may see in a booth at a farm show, but a few hours at the college and here it all is. So many aspects of new technology, in focus, out of the box and all being applied to so many facets of crop and livestock production on the college’s 3,600-acre Smart Farm.

A lineup of autonomous seeding, fertilizing and spraying equipment, precision farming technology, regenerative agriculture practices, sensors to sense things you didn’t know you could sense, a fleet of drones that could outmanoeuver the Star Wars Imperial Army, floating islands that can keep dugouts and ponds free of algae, $12,000 on-farm weather stations that can make it rain (I made the rain part up too), a real livestock tracking and traceability system — and you may never need to buy another roll of fencing wire again. And that’s just some of the stuff I remember.

The college is trying it all. They’re not saying it all will have value or application in day-to-day farming operations, but that’s the point. They’ve got more than 95 applied research projects on the go having a look at what works and what doesn’t. And it is all woven into teaching and learning experiences for several hundred students learning about crop and livestock production and management, and using the new technology to produce grains and protein.

The students aren’t just sitting back watching. They are out in the field or the barn learning how to use and evaluate this technology on a daily basis. It makes you wonder who’s running the asylum? Doesn’t matter — so far as it is working pretty good.

And this new era of farming technology isn’t just happening at Olds College. Lakeland College in Vermilion and Lethbridge College in southern Alberta are also dialed in and applying new technology in their programs too. I need to get there and have a look.

I also learned that concerns Olds College might be wasting its time with an on-campus microbrewery program appear to be unfounded. Sounds like quite a few people are interested in seeing what happens when you put water and Alberta-grown barley and hops together in the same kettle. Apparently great things happen, and in a wide range of flavours.

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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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“I’m a third-generation farmer and our family just received the century award for 100 years in the business,” says Derek.

As a self-described “typical farm kid,” Derek took a two-year Farm and Ranch Management program at Olds College and went home to work the farm in Minton, Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, Tannis studied education at the University of Regina with a biology major that “turned out to be quite helpful.” In the midst of it all, the pair found time to get married in 2002.

“It was business as usual for us until 2006 when we decided to buy a disc drill to reduce disturbance and increase moisture savings,” says Derek.

Since the local machinery dealer had no interest in bringing one in, the couple wound up in Gettysburg, South Dakota, where they bought their drill and had a life-changing encounter in the process.

It was there that they met Dwayne Beck, the research manager at Dakota Lakes Research Farm in Pierre, South Dakota. And it was there that Derrick says everything changed for the couple.

“Dr. Beck was one of the first guys to push no till, low disturbance farming with high diversity rotations. His approach involved little or no herbicides or fungicides, and he was the first we had heard talking about cover crops,” says Derek. “When we saw the good yields he was producing and the huge improvements in soil under dry land and irrigation, we were hooked.”

When the Axtens headed home to run Derek’s family farm with daughter Kate (now 13), son Brock (now 11) and Derek’s father, they did so with the confidence to try these practices for themselves, and they haven’t looked back.

“Since then we have significantly reduced the amount of synthetic fertilizer we use and haven’t employed insecticides in six years,” he says. “We’ve gone from being focused solely on the plants to really addressing the soil and what it needs. If you take care of the soil, it will take care of your plants.”

The Axten’s tell their children that it’s OK to try new things and be different from others, and have taken this to heart in their farming operation. With cost of production and the soil’s health as their key focus, they have now incorporated intercrops (seeding one or more crops together), cover crops, controlled traffic farming (using same track for all operations), compost extract and compost teas into their operation. It has been a real change in mindset for the Saskatchewan farmers.

What resonates most for them, however, is that farming is fun again.

“Before it felt like just a job and a lot of number crunching,” says Derek.

And those numbers weren’t good, as the Axtens found themselves making little money while costs continued to rise. As Derek put it, “something had to change.” And change it did, as their new farming practices led to improved yields and significantly reduced input costs. Even their accountant was impressed, to the extent that he nominated them for the OYF award. The Axtens will be among seven regional finalists from across Canada competing for national OYF honours in Penticton later in November.

“We were shocked and pleasantly surprised to win because what we do isn’t typical,” says Tannis. “It’s not organic or conventional, so sometimes we think we may sound crazy. This award gives us a platform to share what we do and hopefully inspire others to follow suit.”

While they have no plans for big changes in what they do, they want to start using short perennial sequences and try to get their cover crops established sooner so they make the most of every minute.

And of course, they’ll keep on daring to be different. Hey, if they can do it while enriching their soul and their bank account at the same time, who can blame them?

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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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