“Essentially, what we’re doing is using Mother Nature and creating a soil microbiome through our technology,” said Jamie DePape, co-founder and director of sales for Annelida Soil Solutions Ltd.

“And it might sound primitive, but what Annelida has done differently, and why we’re an ag tech company, is we’ve taken something that’s primitive to commercialization and really put some technology behind it.”

The company was honoured with an Innovation Award at the recent Western Canadian Crop Production Show in Saskatoon.

The company, which started in 2019, is named after the Latin word for segmented worms.

“Not too many people can shake the hand of a worm farmer, so it gets a good laugh right out of the gate, and then we’re able to engage.”

DePape said “nutrient efficiency and regenerative agriculture is the best way to describe what we’re trying to do here.” Regenerative agriculture is a type of farming that seeks to revitalize soil and minimize synthetic inputs by taking advantage of how plants, animals, microbes, soil, water and air naturally work together.

Annelida uses a mix of red wrigglers and Indian blue worms that are native to warmer climates. They are composting rather than burrowing worms and are typically found in places such as the rainforest floor, where they help break down decaying leaf and plant matter, said DePape.

“They don’t do anything to harm a plant. They’re actually in the support infrastructure of plants. That’s why they were chosen for this process, and so they’ll never attack roots or anything like that.”

The company’s 90,000 sq. foot facilities in Nisku contain about 80 million worms, which collectively weigh about 36,000 kilograms. They live in one-metre-deep worm beds that are each about 24 metres long by 2.4 metres wide and are vertically stacked like bunk beds up to several stories high.

The worms are fed about 10 types of organic waste that would otherwise go to landfills, including cardboard, used coffee grounds from restaurants, spent grain from breweries and leftover produce from grocery stores. These materials are mixed and turned into an optimized food for the worms, which is spread on the worm beds using automated gantries consisting of battery-operated wireless robots.

About 11,300 kg of waste per day are digested by the worms, which excrete about 75 per cent as castings or poop, said DePape. “We’re essentially feeding on the top storey and cutting from the bottom, and creating a soil microbiome that from the time you feed it to the time it comes out the bottom, it’s 45 to 60 days, resulting in an extremely high functioning stimulant and biology for the soil.”

Although the worms are the stars of the show, the composting process involves an enormous number of beneficial organisms, said co-founder and general manager Michael Launer.

“It’s the enzymes within the gut lining of the worms that create all those beneficial microbes and bacteria, “he said.

“And you know what? We know about as much of soil health and biology as we do about deep space or deep ocean exploration. We’re just learning so much more all the time because in one tablespoon of worm castings, there’s more organisms and bacteria than there are people on Earth.”

Scientists are slowly identifying different strains of bacteria and how they interact through the soil with plants, said Launer as he explained the difference between Annelida’s products and traditional chemical fertilizers.

“We’re actually not feeding the plant, we’re feeding the soil. We’re putting biology back into the soil, and the soil then feeds the plant.”

The worm castings are screened to remove impurities, after which a range of products are created, said DePape. He likened it to a dairy farm where milk is turned into products ranging from ice cream to yogurt.

“We just take the end product, being the casting or the vermicast, and then we take that and extract microbes and bacteria for different purposes and different products.”

They range from shelf-stable liquids to granulated pellets, which can be used for soil amendments that can be applied by conventional farm equipment, said DePape.

The result is a kind of superfood for the soil’s microbiome, which is a complex community of organisms ranging from worms, insects and fungi to bacteria that are responsible for much of the productivity of healthy soil, he said.

“We use the casting extract or the castings in a dry form to basically stimulate the microbiome.”

He described the effect on soil as similar to the motion of a flywheel.

“Once you get the wheel turning, we’ve got the weight of the flywheel so now it’s moving, and if we can give it a little bit more momentum, it helps carry that momentum.”

Subsequent treatments are adjusted to where the soil needs to go, said DePape.

“And then we further spin the flywheel, and we’re seeing year-over-year buildup of the microbiome and getting further efficiencies as well as drought resiliency, disease suppression and all of that by allowing Mother Nature to start filling those gaps.”

Launer said there is no single magic bullet because there is no single soil condition.

“There are several different products that we will pair with our biology to give farmers different results,” he said.

“Maybe they’ve got a really sandy soil, or maybe they’ve got a soil that’s alkalinic because with the overuse of conventional fertilizers, they’re salt based. And so, you get the salinity patches where the salt is actually killing the biology of the soil, and you get these patches that grow every year that not even weeds will grow on.”

He talked about a farmer who had been unable to raise crops within such a patch for about four years.

“And we treated it and at the end of the first season, after two treatments, his crop on that patch was within 65 per cent of what the rest of his crops were doing. It’s not 100 per cent… It takes time to build that biology back up.”

Launer said another benefit is that by reducing the use of chemical inputs such as fertilizers, farmers can lower their carbon footprint as well as their expenses.

The federal government set a voluntary national target of 2030 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer by 30 per cent.

Although Annelida has served customers ranging from greenhouses and turf companies to garden centres, it is seeking to expand its reach among producers, said DePape. It currently serves more than 60 farms, including growers of wheat and canola, that are mostly within Alberta and Saskatchewan, he said.

“Last year, I believe we hit about 70,000 acres. Our goal is to see upwards of half a million acres this year.”

– Doug Ferguson is a reporter for The Western Producer.

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“It’s unbelievable the amount of cases that have come through our organization in the last year and a half,” said Jonathan Neutens, head of agriculture at ATB Financial and one of the speakers at the CrossRoads Crop Conference in Calgary earlier this year. “I don’t know what the percentage would be, but it’s large.”

From phishing emails to cheque fraud to AI voice cloning, criminals are finding more creative and sophisticated ways to steal money and personal information.

Neutens said the issue involves “all of the banking world.” Financial institutions are introducing tougher safeguards, he noted, pointing to measures like two-factor authentication that requires two separate, distinct forms of identification to prevent thieves from gaining access to online banking accounts.

In response, criminals are getting more creative. They’re going beyond phishing emails and smishing text message scams, both of which impersonate legitimate sources to trick people into revealing sensitive data such as passwords or credit card numbers.

“We’ve had (cases) that occur where someone does a Google search for ATB, clicks on the top link, and the top link happens to be a fraudulent website that looks exactly like ATB’s. And you put in your information, you log in and they’ve got you, and then all they have to do is log into your account and change contact information so they get the two-factor authentication versus you, and then they can start firing up electronic payments.”

Tips

People should double check the source of emails and texts, said Neutens.

“Sometimes the email address or the website address, it might only have one letter that’s different.”

One good practice is to directly type the correct URL for your financial institution into the address bar on your browser to conduct online banking, he said. It is also wise to be wary of emails and texts claiming to be from legitimate sources.

That may mean making an independent phone call to the source to confirm the legitimacy of the message if there are any doubts. Phishing emails can look exactly like those of someone familiar, such as a supplier, which could be due to the supplier’s email being hacked, said Neutens.

“And if their email is hacked, (criminals) watch for the conversation style or what have you, and eventually they send you an email and they say, ‘oh, by the way, you need to change payment to this account, and click on this to make the payment.’”

Clicking that link allows the scammer to watch as people go through the motions of online banking and two-factor authentication. That information is now theirs.

ATB is working to improve its ability to detect fraudulent transactions more quickly by increasing the number of staff devoted to the problem, said Neutens. But if someone gets login information and changes a two-factor authentication, “there’s really nothing we can do about that, because they’ve got it from you in some way, shape or form.

“We can’t stop that because that’s outside of our systems and outside of our control. And then they come in and they log in like it’s you. How is the banking system going to know the difference?”

Cheques are risky business

The biggest source of fraud is cheques, Neutens said, and it’s a growing problem. One of the more interesting scams targets people who send cheques through the mail.

“They’ve written a cheque to someone like John Deere or whatever, like to a supplier, and that cheque gets stolen … a new cheque is done up basically using that bank account information with the same dollar amount, but to a different payee, so when the cheque clears, the customer sees the cheque clear and thinks it’s cleared until the supplier calls him and says, ‘hey, when are you going to pay me?’”

Such crimes have cost some producers tens of thousands of dollars, said Neutens.

“It’s pretty often that farmers can cut a cheque to someone for $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000, and so yeah, we’ve had that.”

Modernizing the funding and payment system by moving away from cheques would be the easiest part of the solution to implement, and producers should stop using cheques if possible, Neutens said.

“They’re just too risky these days, so if you move away from cheques, do that and get into your online and EFTs (electronic fund transfers) and all that kind of stuff with two-factor authentication.”

He also pointed producers to resources on offer from financial organizations to help train clients in recognizing scams and avoid getting caught in one.

The top threats you might face online 

Criminals use a variety of methods to steal or corrupt personal or financial information stored online. These include:

Phishing: One of the most common types of cyber fraud. Hackers use fake emails or text messages that trick users into sharing personal information such as bank details. 
Malware: Malicious software such as a virus that can destroy, damage or exploit computers or computer systems.
Worms: Malicious software that replicates itself and spreads from computer to computer. Unlike viruses, worms do not need to be attached to a computer program to do damage. They work silently and infect the device without the user’s knowledge.
Ransomware: Cyber criminals use this to lock a device or steal information. They then demand a ransom to restore access or return the information. Payment is usually demanded as a crypto currency such as Bitcoin.
Spyware: Spyware is malicious software that infiltrates a device and monitors activity. Criminals can then steal logins, passwords and credit card information.
Trojan horse viruses: Code or software that looks legitimate but can take control of a computer.
Distributed denial of service attacks: Occurs when hackers attempt to make a website or computer unavailable by flooding it with internet traffic.
(Source: The Productivity Group)

– This article was originally published at the Manitoba Co-operator.

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Surveys have shown many Canadians don’t understand AI, and how it can provide a leg up for industries such as agriculture, said John Weigelt, national technology officer for Microsoft Canada.

“And so, in a sense, it’s the monster under the bed. We don’t know what’s there, we don’t know what it is, but we’re scared of it.”

He spoke at the recent GrowCanada conference in Calgary as part of the Agriculture 4.0 panel, attended by several hundred people. The annual conference, which alternates each year between Calgary and Ottawa, included leaders ranging from farm commodity organizations to life science, seed and data companies, as well as the banking and finance sectors.

When panel moderator Shaun Haney asked about who in the room was excited about AI, many people in the audience raised their hands. However, a fair number also raised their hands when he asked if they were “bloody terrified.”

Weigelt described AI as the ability to reason over a set of data.

“I think that’s the simplest way to put it, and so that data might be an image, that data might be audio, that data might be just statistics that you have. And so, I lean in a little bit on this idea of data really changing the nature of how agriculture does its business.”

As someone who is accountable for responsible AI within Microsoft Canada, Weigelt said Canadians lag in the adoption of AI tools, “so, we need to scratch the surface. We need to understand that AI depends on data, there’s math involved with it, and then there are tools like responsible AI to make sure that, hey, there’s no bias, that you can trust it, it’s reliable, secure, that it’s inclusive, transparent and all those things so that you have the confidence that these things are deciding correctly — that they’re doing what you expect them to do.”

He pointed to the recent brief removal and reinstatement of Sam Altman as chief executive officer of OpenAI. As the leader of one of the most powerful players in AI, Altman was at the centre of a dispute by the company’s board of directors about the power and future of the technology.

A new era of AI began after ChatGPT was launched last year by OpenAI, reaching about 100 million subscribers only two months later, “the fastest adoption of any tool set ever before,” said Weigelt. People can now use computing resources as easily as they might talk to their sister or neighbour, he said.

“That’s the allure of this, that you can have that interaction and use computing resources that quickly and easily. Now, we can’t get them to do everything, just like you can’t get your neighbour to do everything, so we have to find those spots to be able to do that.”

Weigelt has worked with a wide range of Canadian industries, including agriculture, to try to determine where the latest cutting-edge technologies are heading. They include advances such as synthetic biology to develop organic computers, “so think of using DNA to do computations,” he said.

“(We’re) talking about quantum computing, and how quantum computing can address things like climate change, address things like cracking the nitrogen cycle so that we can feed more people. And looking at older technologies like cloud computing and helping Canadian organizations move forward with some of these new paradigms.”

Cloud computing has allowed companies to do things over a weekend that used to take months, allowing them to adopt a mindset of innovation that operates on a much faster timescale, said Weigelt. However, although Oct. 27 marked the 15th anniversary of cloud computing, adoption remains low in Canada, he said.

“And so now, when we see these things coming together — we see the drones. We see the Internet of Things, we see that coming into the supply chain, so we have end-to-end visibility from production through to consumption. We see that in the AI becoming involved as well. These things are all accelerating the change.”

Such technologies could allow the agriculture industry to address problems ranging from climate change and drought to labour shortages by promoting innovation through productivity, said Weigelt.

“And if we as Canadians aren’t adopting these tools and using these tools, then we are not going to be able to take advantage of that change. We’re not going to be able to seize that prosperity and see the benefits that were mentioned earlier around addressing the crises that face us.”

Weigelt was Microsoft Canada’s representative in the development of the federal Global Innovation Superclusters. The billion-dollar initiative was launched in 2017 to bring together companies, academic institutions and not-for-profit organizations to boost growth and innovation in five key sectors.

They include the Prairies-based Protein Industries Cluster, which aims to increase the value of key crops such as canola, wheat and pulses. It also strives to better serve markets for plant-based meat alternatives and new food products in North America, Asia and Europe, said a federal website.

However, Weigelt said he encountered obstacles when he started to have conversations about data for the cluster.

“Well, the first thing was they didn’t let me in the room. I wasn’t from around here, so that was kind of awkward for me.”

It also turned out there were what he called a “bunch of silos” preventing people from accessing data.

“Soybean people didn’t talk to wheat people didn’t talk to corn people, and yet it’s the same soil that they’re using.”

Although Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada wanted to create projects that would float all boats for proteins-based innovation, it wasn’t able “to get that data so that you can reason over the data and make sense of it,” said Weigelt.

“And so, we really need to overcome some of those hurdles to be able to start sharing the data, making sense of the data, so that you can reuse that data across other places. There needs to be a governance model, and the governance models are coming into play so that the owner-operator can then own that data or monetize that data.”

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“We’re very proud that our team received that award,” said John Basarab, head of beef cattle operations at Livestock Gentec. “We’re hoping that it is recognized by producers and funders, and the industry and other researchers, and what we hope that will do is allow us to do a lot of good things for the livestock industry in Canada.”

The Best in Agriculture Sector Award recognizes the discovery, development and commercialization of new technologies or processes that significantly benefit ag. Livestock Gentec was selected from among five candidates.

As a centre for applied research and commercialization based at the University of Alberta, Livestock Gentec was co-founded in 2010 by Basarab and current chief executive officer Graham Plastow.

The goal is to help beef producers improve profitability and sustainability, Basarab said.

“The study of genomics is the study of DNA, and essentially what we do is look for the relationships between the variability that occurs within the DNA and traits that are important for agricultural production,” he said.

“For beef cattle, it’s things like growth, carcass characteristics, meat quality, fertility, feed efficiency, even methane emissions.”

Researchers at the centre aim to eliminate much of the guesswork faced by beef producers when they select cattle for preferred traits, he added. However, the beef industry has been slower to adopt the technology compared to the dairy industry.

“Essentially, in 2009, the Canadian dairy industry started to incorporate genomic evaluation in their genetic selection at a very high level, and as a result of that, really made tremendous progress in their milk profitability index,” Basarab said.

Part of that comes down to fewer breed options in dairy. That sector mostly revolves around two cattle breeds, compared to more than 20 in the beef industry, Basarab said, adding that “when you’ve got many different breeds, your industry becomes fragmented.”

The information transfer from packing plants to cow-calf producers and breeders is also limited in the beef sector due to compartmentalization, he said.

“In other words, it’s lost. And so, the industry is what we would call not vertically integrated and, of course, there are exceptions, but basically the industry is less co-operative and less vertically integrated just purely because of how it’s fragmented.”

That’s changing in a number of big cattle operations in Alberta, he noted, purely through the selection of bulls.

“For example, when these producers buy beef bulls, they immediately will be looking at their, what we call, breeding values. In the beef industry, they’re called expected progeny differences, but their breeding values are there … Breed associations, all of them, use genomic technology. They all use lots of genotyping in the production of their breeding values to increase their accuracy.”

Genomics technology is essential to ensuring Alberta has a thriving beef industry, said David Chalack, chair of the provincial Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR) agency.

“In the face of challenging economic conditions and drought, genomic advancements will enable our producers to compete globally. That is why genetics are a major focus of RDAR,” he said in a statement.

RDAR has provided more than $3.5 million over the last three years for projects at Livestock Gentec, including research to enhance meat quality. Other projects include boosting resilience to diseases and extreme temperatures, along with increasing production sustainability while reducing the environmental footprint.

Livestock Gentec has been working with different vendors and partners in the beef industry to create genomics tools for cow-calf producers, said Basarab, who is also an RDAR research professor in livestock genetics at the University of Alberta. He pointed to the Replacement Heifer Profit Index, which was developed from nearly 10,000 mating opportunities involving commercial cows.

It aims to improve the ability of cow-calf producers to reliably pick replacement heifers “that are going to conceive and then calve, and then stay in the herd for quite a while, and that index has been successful,” he said.

“If you got rid of those bottom-indexing cows and, instead of having 30 open, you had 23 open, essentially you’ve got seven more calves … Right now, a weaned calf is worth $1,800, so [it’s] a lot of income.”

Fertility traits are about 10 times more important than carcass traits in terms of improving profitability for cow-calf producers, and five times more important than growth traits, he added.

Livestock Gentec would also like to work on new and novel traits, such as finding a breeding value for reducing methane from beef cattle, “which is a socially important thing to do,” Basarab said. “And so, that’s probably one of the things that we would be looking at next.”

– Doug Ferguson is a reporter with The Western Producer.

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