Network supports agricultural technology testing, adoption
REGINA — A new collaborative network will test and validate agricultural technology in real-world conditions so farmers can have confidence in the innovations they are being asked to adopt.
Farm Credit Canada, EMILI and Wabash Heartland Innovation Network (WHIN) launched the Agriculture Innovation, Validation and Adoption Network (AIVA) May 12.
AIVA assesses early-stage innovation through a validation model and then, with farmer members, pilots market-ready technology with a view to adoption.
Graeme Millen, FCC vice-president of strategic finance and business development, said there is “an outrageously large opportunity” for Canadian farmers and the sector overall to deliver on global food demand through productivity increases.
A recent RBC report said 90 per cent of the increased demand will be met through productivity gains. Technology is the key to those gains, Millen said, but the Canadian market has lagged in adoption.
“We know that we are fundamentally here to help increase the probability of success of farmers, and one of the things that we know is critically important is for farmers to, as effectively, as efficiently and in as trusted a way as possible, adopt technology that can drive those positive outcomes,” he said.
AIVA provides a pathway for an idea from the early stage all the way to a commercially viable solution, he said.
Why it Matters: New technologies for farmers are always in the works, but it can be difficult to know which work best. Field scale testing is a key component.
EMILI is a Manitoba-based non-profit with two Innovation Farms: 5,500 acres in Grosse Isle and a 10,000-acre farm at MacGregor, which includes potato production.
Chief executive officer Jacqueline Keena said the farms test, at scale, about 30 technologies each season.
“We’re able to provide information back to innovators about how that technology performs on a real farm setting,” she said.
EMILI also works with Olds College in Alberta, Innovation Farms in Ontario and Area X.O in Ottawa. Keena said AIVA will build and grow the validation work and give more innovators the chance to test their products.
This year, there are nine national multi-site projects with companies such as Geco Weed Management, Corteva, Picketa, Miraterra and FarmerTitan trialing technology such as spray drones, remote sensors and farm management software.
EMILI has already worked with Geco for the last three years. Its technology predicts weed patterns. Originally, the technology used drones but has now moved on to using satellites.
Testing at EMILI allowed founder Greg Stewart to refine the technology, and now through AIVA, he will be able to learn more about its application across different agricultural regions.
“It’s unprecedented how valuable that information is going to be for innovators,” Stewart said.
“When we got started with him, he was working with only three fields in all of the Prairies. Now he’s on more than 100 farms across the Prairies and a number of other countries,” Keena said.
Twenty-five farmer members on nearly 300,000 acres in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have signed up to pilot market-ready technology.
Jason Tennenhouse, vice-president of strategy and design at Wabash Heartland Innovation Network, said WHIN is a non-profit established about eight years ago in Indiana to accelerate tech adoption.
“We realized that in order for (farmers) to take a little bit bigger risk and to try new things, they needed to have things vetted down for them a little bit more,” he said.
There are lots of options and promises from tech companies that don’t necessarily understand farming, and WHIN helps close the gap, he said.
“We’ve gone out in the world and we find the best technologies that we can that are in that kind of early commercial space and then we vet those technologies down through a long 12- to 18-month process,” he said.
This includes working with everyone in the chain, including a farmer network, to endorse the adoption of particular technologies. Farmers pay an annual fee to participate.
“What took us about three years to establish in Indiana, in terms of acreage through our farmer network, took us about 30 days to establish in Canada,” he said.
“I think it shows the Canadian farmers are progressive and they’re excited for something like this.”
Keena said 23 organizations are also part of AIVA.
“AIVA is not exclusive,” she said.
“It’s not meant to be new and competitive to anything else. It’s the opposite. It’s complementary. It’s a single place for farmers and entrepreneurs to meet.”
FCC is supporting the network right now, but Millen said the partners hope it will be financially self-sustaining at some point.
“We know that these pieces all work independently, but it’s new pulling them all together in this collaborative forum. We’re very excited about where this can go,” he said.
