Grainswest Tech 2021

Tech 2021 grainswest.com 31 and professor of engineering at the University of Manitoba. In addition, he leads research at the Canadian Wheat Board Centre for Grain Storage Research in Winnipeg, MB. The Centre is responsible for producing storage-related solutions that have been applied in Canada and around the world in countries such as China, India and Nigeria. He said in Canada, farmers lose an estimated two to five per cent of their crop each year due to storage-related issues. “The focus is always on increasing the production when we could actually try and save or protect what we’ve already produced,” he said. “If you can make sure it doesn’t get spoiled, then you probably don’t have to focus on increasing so much on production.” His research focuses specifically on post-harvest losses due to suboptimal storage. The answer? Constant and up-to-date monitoring. One of the biggest success stories to come out of his lab was the technology that eventually became known as GrainViz. The system was born out of tumour detection research begun by Joe LeVetri at the University of Manitoba’s Electromagnetics Imaging Lab. Eventually, the technology was adapted to grain monitoring and later commercialized and ultimately sold to AGCO in 2020. At the farm level, it is quite straightforward to use: A farmer installs the monitors, called transceivers, to the inside of a grain bin, turns them on and lets the units measure electrical permittivity of the grain. That is then used to generate a 3D moisture profile of the commodity, which can identify areas of high moisture, the primary precursor to spoilage. “We know from experience, any time stored grain is getting spoiled, there are pockets of high moisture,” he said, adding he believes such technology is vastly superior to traditional cables. “With grain cables, it’s very localized measurements, no matter how many sensors you put on the cables. You can maybe get 10, 15, 20 per cent.” Paliwal said another big problem with cables is that if they stop transponding, there is no way to fix them. This technology and others yet to be developed will prove critical to farmers who may store grain on-farm for nine-plus months. With major Canadian telecoms companies pushing into agriculture, Paliwal believes Canadian agriculture’s critical gap—a lack of connectivity—will finally start to disappear. “That should have happened a decade ago,” he said of the push to connect rural Canada, specifically the Prairies. “We are hopping on that bandwagon a little too late, but better late than never.” Paliwal sees a large-scale consolidation about to take place among monitoring providers simply because farmers “do not want to deal with 10 different apps for 10 different products from different vendors.” Above all, he believes that the biggest challenge for farmers will be to invest in new technology when their current setup has still not paid for itself or is at the end of its lifecycle. “If you’re retrofitting, careful consideration has to be done to see what might be gained by spending that extra dollar,” he said. “If your equipment is done and you’re looking at putting in new infrastructure, the incremental cost of being rigged with sensors is not that great, so I’d say go for it.” Back in Saskatchewan, Rumpf is loving life with his setup, but certainly knows the benefit of hindsight. He believes that if farmers are able, they should complete the process in one smooth motion and not piecemeal over a number of years. “We pieced it together over 25 years, picked away at it, but when you do that it’s hard,” he said plainly. “That was our problem. Nobody thought we’d be where we are today and didn’t think bins would be as big as they are today. Do it in the beginning.” Rumpf recommends farmers make bin yard renovations in one shot if possible rather than piecemeal.