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BY STAN BLADE, P.Ag.
FROM LAB
TO FIELD
Enteringtheageof information
agriculture
INNOVATION IS NOT A NEW
concept in agriculture. Ten thousand
years ago, humans discovered raising
crops and livestock in a co-ordinated
manner created greater food security. We
have since had bursts of new technolo-
gy that included irrigation, land tillage,
selection of species (and land races) along
with the development of food preservation
that enhanced the amount and quality of
available food.
Amazing changes in agricultural
technology have occurred in my lifetime.
In the period from 1965 to 2007, global
cereal production more than doubled,
from 874 million tonnes to 2.354 billion
tonnes. This happened for reasons we
know very well. Utilizing (mostly public)
biological research, the disciplines of engi-
neering and marketing created a system of
vastly improved technologies, and further
advances have been made in crop and
animal genetics. Advanced machinery
design has benefited all facets of agri-
cultural production, while the capacity
to take advantage of enhanced fertilizer
products (and water, where needed) has
increased. As well, the benefits of value
chain innovations have justified new capi-
tal investment.
It is tempting to think that, given the
tremendous progress made in agricul-
tural productivity, we have plateaued. In
most systems, after a period of growth, a
“levelling off” period follows because such
improvement (we think) is not sustainable
over a long period of time.
But what if agriculture is just getting
started?
I have been reluctant to write this
column because everyone is jumping on
the “smart agriculture” bandwagon. Every
publication is championing “digital agricul-
ture” with other variants that include pre-
cision farming, intelligent farming, smart
farming and many other permutations.
There is a huge new dictionary of jargon
that includes IoT (internet of things), artifi-
cial intelligence, the cloud and blockchain,
and there are players in the agriculture
space that we haven’t seen before—Google,
Microsoft, IBM and others.
I think about what the outcomes could
look like. The future will once again—just
as in our lifetime—change in response
to new ideas in genetics, equipment,
management systems and markets. The
new piece of this puzzle is access to data.
Soon, we will have the capacity to manage
fields and livestock by square metres and
animals rather than acres and herds. We
will manage a crop by planting multiple
genotypes (with unique traits created
by gene editing) in the same field with
fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, insecti-
cides and other tools deployed over much
smaller polygons than the quarter-section.
All this will be tailored to these small
units of land by using information pro-
vided by yield maps, soil fertility sensors,
drone images (using multispectral cam-
eras) and real-time weather information.
Crops will be marketed using the “shared
and encrypted ledger” blockchain ap-
proach currently being tested in Australia
(through a project called BeefLedger).
This pilot project provides “paddock to the
plate” information on all aspects of beef
production as well as sales history and
disease prevention documentation. Also
incorporated are streamlined payments,
consumer feedback and greatly enhanced
capacity to prevent food fraud—such as a
retailer claiming a product is Australian
when it’s not.
We already use many information tools
on our farms—GPS (autosteer, variable
rate application), real-time weather data,
global market information and more. My
view is that digital agriculture will allow
producers and other players in the agri-
food value chain to use information that
we currently have—and will be able to
capture in the future—in new, integrated
systems. We will be able to harvest and
use information just as we do crops. What
if the world-changing gains of the Green
Revolution of the last generation were just
setting the table for an entire new leap
forward in value and productivity in the
agri-food sector? Get ready for the exciting
new era of “information agriculture.”
Stan Blade, PhD, is dean of the Faculty of
Agricultural, Life and Environmental
Sciences at the University of Alberta.
GENERATINGSUPPORT FOR FARM INNOVATION
Spring
2018
Grains
West
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