Grainswest - Tech 2024

Tech 2024 Grains West 36 WORK IN PROGRESS Formed in 2019 and headquartered in Edmonton, the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network (CAAIN) assists in the development of data-driven farm technologies. These include the use of automation, robotics and AI, which is a component of most CAAIN projects. In its work with small and medium sized tech companies, CAAIN’s goal is to serve farmers, said CEO Darrell Petras. “AI is being applied to decision- making to support three general drivers on the farm: profitability, sustainability and productivity.” Though not risk-averse by nature, multiple challenges such as variable weather and fluctuation of input and commodity prices have stretched the capacity of farmers to employ new technologies, said Petras. CAAIN works to minimize adoption risk and incentivize the use of AI by focusing on highly promising projects. This process includes co-operation with Canadian smart farms. Through field-scale research, these facilities demonstrate and validate new technologies for use in individual geographic regions. Petras admitted positive research results can’t always convince farmers to employ a product. While AI-driven technology development has caught fire, adoption has been slow. Despite some headwind, the power and promise of AI has given its development undeniable momentum. The diversity of CAAIN projects that incorporate AI illustrates the value inherent in the technology, said Petras. It can enable the use of digital data for real-time decision-making in ways the industry may soon take for granted. BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BEE As an industrial design student in Montreal, Marc-André Roberge took up urban beekeeping. “In French they say ‘getting the sting for it’—pun intended. I really fell in love with beekeeping.” He found it tricky to keep the honey producing insects alive and healthy, and discovered his hobby hive experience paralleled that of commercial operations. Large-scale beekeepers face numerous management challenges such as climate change, pests and diseases that lead to annual bee die-offs. To help beekeepers manage their operations more efficiently and profitably, Roberge co-founded Nectar Technologies and set to work building the BeeTrack traceability platform. Working extensively with Canadian and U.S. beekeepers, Nectar refined the tool and launched it commercially in 2020. The company now has a staff of 15 and BeeTrack is used in honey production and pollination services for flowering crops across Canada and the U.S. To further sweeten the prescriptive abilities of the service, BeeTrack is working with CAAIN on an AI component. The project has involved the collection of data from multiple bee operations to train the AI. The beekeeper inputs hive information such as the amount of honey produced and pollination duty schedules. GPS co-ordinates enable hive traceability and are layered upon third-party data that includes satellite imagery. This can be used to determine a hive’s exposure to crops, chemistries and air quality, all of which informs care, feeding and the prediction of winter survival rates. “We build best management practices in a data-driven way,” said Roberge. “The AI doesn’t make decisions for the beekeeper but augments their capability to make the best decisions possible to run a more profitable business.” Nectar Technologies is integrating AI within its BeeTrack software. The app helps beekeepers manage their hive. FEATURE Photo:CourtesyofNectarTechnologies