Today, AI and its corollary of machine learning have recently become buzzwords everywhere, including agriculture. The implementation of both requires data. It is readily available but, in the area of harvest data, sorely lacks veracity.
An innovative new Prairie program gives skilled, mid-career professionals the opportunity to refresh their occupational journey and injects much-needed talent into the agri-business field.
Established by the Government of Alberta in 1973 to help farmers protect their rights in dealings with the booming oil and gas industry of the day, the Farmers’ Advocate Office (FAO) has been greatly expanded from its original mandate. The office later merged with the Property Rights Advocate office and is now known as the Farmers’ and Property Rights Advocate Offices (FPRAO). Its modest team supports farmers and ranchers as they navigate a range of regulatory, environmental and legal issues.
The market, defined here as the elements that converge to establish the price for any given commodity or service, has always been hard to discern. Its inscrutable nature promotes the dream of building a “black box” technology that removes human fallibility and emotion from the equation.
The Prairie Provinces encompass nearly 85 per cent of Canada’s total farmland. Given the massive scale of Western Canadian agriculture, several of the world’s leading precision agriculture companies have established headquarters here. These businesses naturally need to hire many precision ag specialists said Angela Bedard-Haughn, dean of the University of Saskatchewan College of Agriculture and Bioresources. Ag research facilities also require
digitally skilled employees, and there is high demand among students for educational opportunities in this area. USask has even identified interest among students from non-agricultural areas of study.
A recent Ipsos Five survey revealed a significant decline in wheat consumption among millennials as compared to baby boomers. While boomers consume wheat-based products more than 10 times per week, millennials do so just once or twice. “Wheat foods have many short- and long-term health benefits and based on the survey, there are gaps for millennials in understanding the nutritional benefits of wheat,” said Elaine Sopiwnyk, vice-president of technical services for Cereals Canada. Sopiwnyk also sits on the Canadian Wheat Nutrition Initiative (CWNI) leadership team.
The use of drones has become commonplace in agriculture. The Olds College Centre for Innovation (OCCI)uses them in applied research activities. In the 2023 growing season, more than 10 such projects required drone flights to capture high resolution images and create datasets using cameras and sensors.
Big Bud 747 is a giant, 1,100-horsepower tractor built by the Northern Manufacturing Company in Havre, Montana, in 1977. The tractor’s massive Canadian connection is that is was outfitted with eight-foot-tall tires manufactured by the now-defunct United Tire of Ontario.
To protect the midge tolerance gene and ensure it continues to do its job, tolerant wheat must be sown as a varietal blend, 10 per cent of which is susceptible to midge. This limited sacrifice to the insect ensures it does not evolve countermeasures. Breeding these all-but-identical pairings is a tricky task, but they are needed now more than ever.
In recent years, the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre (CMBTC) has worked with major malting and brewing customers in China to facilitate commercial malting and brewing trials. This is the final stage in the roughly three-step process to secure new variety acceptance by end-users.
