Financial pain can bring technologies and practices that were peripheral for many into sharp focus.

The rapid rise in fertilizer costs has been marked and could be the difference between profit and loss for some farmers this summer.

I’m curious to see if it will drive changes on farms.

Farmers don’t want to skimp on nitrogen as it is a major driver of yields, so they will err on the side of applying more than less.

A significant amount of money has been spent on fertilizer innovation, particularly in the area of nitrogen, over the past decade. Most of those solutions have a place, but aren’t mainstream.

Soil testing is the starting point

The easiest way to manage fertilizer is to soil test. I’ve heard recent stats that less than 40 per cent of farmers soil test. You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Technologies moving from margins to mainstream

Variable-rate fertilizer is a technology that isn’t new, but it’s likely to gain more usage this year, as farmers think carefully about how better to manage the expensive input. This is a technology that won’t likely save you a lot in fertilizer costs, but it could help bump yield to pay for it.

Encapsulated fertilizer is another option to improve nitrogen use efficiency. Coating urea keeps it in place longer, hopefully so it’s there when the corn plant roots need it. The value is that the nitrogen is released slower and therefore doesn’t leach away and more of it is used by the crop.

Another practice that’s received mixed reviews is the split application of nitrogen. Instead of applying a full season of nutrients at planting, with a spreader and/or planter, 30 to 50 per cent might be applied at planting, then multiple other applications can be made, such as a sidedress at the V4 to V6 stage of corn. Wheat can also be sidedressed. Other farmers leave some of the nutrients to be added, if needed, up until pre-tassel, using high clearance sprayers with tubes that drop the nutrients at the soil level.

This practice is valuable for saving nitrogen, as the corn is usually tissue tested to ensure that the extra fertilizer is actually needed. Some years it will be, and there won’t be savings, but some years there will be.

Programs to support experimentation

There are programs to help with experimentation with nitrogen usage.

Farmers for Climate Solutions is administering an interesting program that helps guarantee a profit if you take the risk of using a second nitrogen application.

With today’s urea price, it’s likely worth the risk of a second N application, later in the season, but a program like this can make experimentation worthwhile.

How are you managing the high cost of nitrogen this year? Are you standing pat, or trying something new?

The post High fertilizer prices may finally push farmers toward application innovation appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Agriculture is a significant player in the economy, but it doesn’t get an equal share of large government or large pension or private growth fund investment.

WHY IT MATTERS: The agriculture and food sectors can help Canada accomplish some of its goal of attracting $1 trillion in investment over five years, but the recent track record of growth funding has been poor.

Growth capital is needed by companies at the stage when they are operational and need to scale to be successful. That’s often when the most funding is needed and is beyond the ability of venture capital funds and smaller funders to provide.

“In the Canadian context, a lot of where that money is coming from would be in the early stage,” says Lisa Ashton, agriculture and nature policy lead with RBC Thought Leadership.

A growing number of incubators and accelerators, such as Emmertech in agriculture and District Ventures in food packaging, are now in place to help earlier in the agriculture technology business development process.

But once funding needs grow past $15 million, to help fund manufacturing or processing or global distribution, most of those groups are out.

Government growth funds don’t distribute money in the agriculture world in proportion to agriculture and food’s standing in the economy, and that’s limiting the sector’s potential as a strategic asset for the country.

Agriculture has received about two per cent of government-backed growth funding and four per cent of total growth funding in the past five years.

The RBC report says that for growth capital in agri-food to align with its contribution to GDP, funding needs to grow by 36 per cent to $13 billion from now to 2030, compared to the past five years.

“There is a mismatch between the framing of Canada’s agri-food sector as a superpower and its strategic advantages with the actual scale and focus of investments domestically,” the report says.

That growth needs ideas and people, but it also needs money, and the money isn’t flowing into agriculture right now.

Traditional funding won’t do it, the sector will need growth money from more generalist funds, says Ashton.

“Navigating that can be quite hard for generalists that don’t have a lot of exposure to agri-food,” she says. “It goes back to the talent challenge we see in agri-food and having more Canadians or people working in Canada who have an understanding of the sector.”

Funding in other countries

Other middle-power countries have better funding of agri-food from growth funds. Ashton says that once companies reach the need for $15 million in funding, the funder options drop off, and that’s a challenge in most countries. However, the drop off is much deeper in Canada than in Japan, the U.K., Netherlands and Germany.

“I wouldn’t say any country has a perfect example,” she says, but most of them outperform Canada in growth funding for agriculture and food.

What could be improved?

The RBC report listed five areas for improvement to help unlock more growth funding.

1. Improve intellectual property and academic incentives to increase commercialization of research, especially from universities.
2. Create an AI-driven concierge, housed within a national organization, that provides one-stop information to help manage the support drop off that happens when a startup company outgrows incubators or accelerators.
3. Have agri-food experts translate industry knowledge for generalist investors.
4. Align government growth, investment and infrastructure funds to better fit with national strategic priorities, especially agri-food.
5. Help mitigate revenue uncertainty for companies creating value-added products in agriculture and food.

The goal is to grow global leaders in agriculture and food, to create ‘unicorn’ level companies with at least $1 billion in revenue. Ashton says these are rare in agriculture, but Canada has none, whereas most other major agriculture producing countries have produced some.

The post Growth capital hard to find for Canadian agri-food appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The Americans’ real anger is that they didn’t negotiate well regarding tariff rate quotas (TRQs) for new access to the Canadian dairy market during the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), said Andrea van Vugt, with Wellington Advisory, which advises Dairy Farmers of Ontario.

That means there’s likely room to negotiate on dairy with the U.S.

WHY IT MATTERS: The loss of supply management would have a significant impact on rural communities, particularly in Ontario and Quebec.

“I think the easy win is on TRQ administration,” said Stephen de Boer, who is on Wellington Advisory’s strategic advisory board and was previously part of the federal government advising on areas like defence. He also served as an ambassador, including to the World Trade Organization.

De Boer and van Vugt were part of a discussion at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s 2026 annual meeting in Toronto, held Jan. 13-15.

There’s a route to allowing the Americans a new way to administer TRQs, “and call it a day”, said de Boer.

When Canada negotiated its most recent trade agreements, including CUSMA and the Comprehensive Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), it did not spell out how we would administer the TRQs, and that allowed Canada to give the TRQs to Canadian processors, not directly to retailers.

New Zealand also didn’t like that this method of TRQ allocation was the same in the CPTPP.

“It’s not what they expected, but it is what we negotiated,” said de Boer.

Van Vugt and de Boer also agreed that the negotiations would likely mean more access to the Canadian market for American products.

However, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of appetite for eliminating supply management for poultry and dairy.

“When I’ve talked to U.S. officials, and when I say U.S. officials, I mean certain U.S. officials who may live in Canada, representing U.S. interests in Canada,” they are concerned about the U.S. dairy sector facing competition from Canadian farmers, because they know that will happen, said van Vugt.

That doesn’t mean that Trump couldn’t make a larger, unexpected request, she said, as that’s in character for Trump, and he has prioritized dairy as an irritant.

De Boer said the Americans also understand that they use some supply management techniques to manage dairy production, too.

He added he expects chicken negotiations not to be arduous. “Our negotiators are excellent, particularly in negotiating in this space.”

Why the CUSMA review is toothless

The inclusion of a review clause in the CUSMA agreement was a step up from the previous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) because there was no such clause.

However, the clause has little power, said van Vugt.

“The review clause really is just, we’re going to get together, we’re going to talk if we disagree about things, we’re going to get together again in a few years and talk again. That’s it,” she said.

The review clause has become the “pointy end of a stick” that Trump is using, said de Boer, and it could lead to greater pressure tactics like the Americans threatening to leave the agreement.

He said he expects at minimum that CUSMA countries will be into yearly reviews, until renegotiation.

Trump operates by trying to gain leverage in anything he does, so it makes sense he will try the same game around CUSMA.

“I understand why he’s doing it, but I don’t think he has as much leverage as he thinks he has,” said de Boer, adding that Trump could take many actions, including adding new tariffs or blocking the border to access to some Canadian products.

Negotiators still to be determined

Van Vugt and de Boer both expressed their dismay that Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States and a skilled trade negotiator, has resigned her role. New negotiators in the federal government are being vetted and should be revealed soon. Van Vugt said it won’t be the new ambassador to the U.S. Mark Wiseman. Ambassadors usually don’t negotiate trade deals.

Van Vugt called Hillman “an incredible representative of Canada” and “an incredible advocate with incredible knowledge of the supply management industry.”

The post U.S. unlikely to ask to dismantle supply management: trade experts appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

They included mowers and small sprayers at one end of the spectrum to numerous units that do everything from tillage to sensing of high-value crops to row-crop units with more than 200 horsepower.

WHY IT MATTERS: The glut of options and innovation in autonomy feel like a tipping point and over the next few years the most valuable uses of autonomy will be sorted out.

Then there are the big players, who continue to work towards autonomous operation of their largest cabbed equipment.

The largest companies, such as John Deere, Claas and Amazone were clear that each year they announce something new, it’s a step in the continuum to autonomy.

All the major companies are working on autonomy, but a common question is if the implements will be ready to help the power units make the decisions needed to fully replace a human.

The market leaders

AgXeed reportedly has more than 100 units in the field, SwarmFarm 150 and FarmDroid has sold close to 1,000 of its solar-powered, slow-moving vegetable planting, weeding and tilling machines.

AgXeed and SwarmFarm are power units, similar to conventional tractors, which pull implements similar to those now used in the field, whereas FarmDroid is an all-in-one system.

SwarmFarm, an Australian company, works directly with implement makers, especially in the spraying and spreading areas to build an ecosystem in which the implements are designed for autonomy.

AgXeed, a Dutch company, is closely tied to German agriculture equipment leaders Claas and Amazone in a partnership called 3A, and it’s no surprise to see AgXeed autonomous units running the field with Amazone implements.

Slow and deliberate steps

Jahmy Hindman, John Deere’s senior vice-president and chief technology officer, said at Agritechnica that John Deere’s work over the past 30 years has been a pathway to autonomy, from the beginnings of GPS tracking with the company’s acquisition of NavCom in the 1990s.

Since then, parallel tracking, AutoTrack, section control, AutoTrack turning control and AutoPath, planning software for autonomy, have been steps towards autonomous operation of farm equipment.

John Deere has made acquisitions where it could more easily purchase technology than create it, such as Bear Flag Robotics, GUSS automation and AI visioning company Light.

John Deere is working to automate its largest tractors, with the 9R and 8R tractors the first with in-field autonomy in limited production.

Hindman spoke to media in front of an autonomy-enabled 9R tractor at Agritechnica. Cameras and sensors sprouted from the top of the machine, which also includes significant in-field processing capabilities.

Claas’ s new Axion 9 tractor includes autonomous operation options, as long as the operator is in the seat. The routing can be pre-planned. That means it’s a Level 2 autonomous vehicle.

The tractor includes Claas’s Auto Load Anticipation, which helps the tractor learn when more engine power and RPMs will be needed. The tractor automatically adjusts for those situations, such as when implements are about to be lowered after turning on a headland.

It also has some autonomous guidance features, created with the co-operation of AgXeed.

However, a Claas spokesperson, during an international press tour, said full autonomy is another leap for large tractors, including the need for specialized braking systems and more sensors on board.

“Level two is the next step for many farmers, from the current system with automation like asset management to the next step here with task management,” he said.

John Deere’s 8R and 9R tractors are at Level 4 and can be used without an operator in the seat.

The operator would get the tractor ready in the field to pull a tillage tool, unfold the tillage tool, leave the tractor cab and from the ground start up the autonomous operation that’s been preplanned in John Deere’s Operation Centre, said Hindman.

“When it’s done, it will notify the operator that the operation is done and will come and park itself in a location,” he said.

Sixteen cameras cover 360 degrees around the tractor. The automation software recognizes vehicles, humans and fences and learns what it should do to manage around those objects, said Hindman.

John Deere runs Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) with Nvidia chips, running at about 80 watts of processing power to interpret all the information coming from the cameras.

Kubota is taking a difference approach, becoming an investor, supporter and dealer for some autonomous solutions. A Kubota-orange Robotti unit was on display in the Kubota booth, as the Robotti are now available through European Kubota dealerships. Earlier in the development process, with Kubota as a partner, is the Kitler robot from Norway, which does autonomous spot spraying of high-value crops.

Kubota also had a cabless orchard sprayer and an M7004 conventional tractor set up for autonomy on display at the show.

Getting implements ready

Amazone, the large German manufacturer of fertilizer spreaders and sprayers, also highlighted its march to autonomy at Agritechnica.

The company has won awards at the past nine Agritechnicas for its increasing automation, including a silver award in 2025 for its AutoSpread technology, which detects fertilizer spread and makes adjustments so the optimal spread is achieved.

“All the research in there is optimized for a perfect pattern in the field,” said Markus Strobel-Froschle, the head of Amazone’s spreader application service.

He’s spent years with the company refining spreader technology to get to the AutoSpread level, including other innovations that manage wind, headlands and edge of field automatically.

A fertilizer spreader with AutoSpread is equipped with radar which monitors the spread of the fertilizer and automatically adjusts it for uniformity. The spreader software knows the usual spreading range of many kinds of fertilizer, so it will tell the operator to check to type of fertilizer if there’s been a mistake.

Who wasn’t there?

It’s worth noting that two of the companies with the most-developed autonomous products at Agritechnica 2023 were not exhibiting at the 2025 show because of financial difficulties.

Naio, which makes several autonomous tools for farms — the Ted and the Oz were the ones most seen in the Canadian market — looks like it is emerging from court supervision in France, but wasn’t at Agritechnica.

And Monarch tractors, one of the most mature electric and autonomous tractors in the global marketplace, has also laid off staff and has stopped manufacturing tractors. Its tractor assembly partner, Foxconn, sold its Ohio plant, and it’s becoming a data centre.

The company is also being sued by a dealer claiming that the tractor did not function autonomously as claimed.

Looking ahead

The next few years will be fascinating in the autonomy space with the current rate of innovation.

The overexuberance can’t last and there will be a rationalizing of the companies who will be around to supply autonomy in the long term.

There will be some surprises, but there will also be tough times for some companies, as the fortunes of once-market-leaders Naio and Monarch illustrate.

For farmers, this will mean a clearer choice about how autonomy will fit on their farm.

The post The long march to autonomy appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

WHY IT MATTERS: Calves are worth much more money than they were five years ago, so taking extra care of calves is not only an animal welfare imperative, but a financial one as well.

Dave Renaud, an associate professor at the University of Guelph, told the recent Dairy at Guelph research day that diarrhea costs an average dairy farm $28,000 per year, and that of 100 calves that contract diarrhea, five to 29 of those will die.

Renaud went through several best practices for calves when they are seen to have diarrhea.

Don’t worry about which pathogen caused the diarrhea. Olivia Gibson, a masters student in Renaud’s lab looked at coronavirus, cryptosporidium and rotavirus and found that resolution happens at the same rate. Salmonella cases take a big longer, but not longer enough to warrant special treatment. Similarly, treatment doesn’t change if the calf is affected by multiple pathogens.

Fluids are critical

“We really need to give this calf fluid, because it’s losing a lot of fluid every single day,” says Renaud. Risk of mortality is reduced significantly.

Research in Guelph professor Mike Steele’s lab showed that a 50 kg calf can be losing two litres of fluid per day due to diarrhea.

A challenge for farmers yet is that there’s little known about what the best electrolyte solution is for calves. Be cautious of electrolytes that are hypertonic as these can exacerbate problems with dehydration, but creating osmotic pressure pulling fluids into the rumen and make diarrhea problems worse, he says.

Calves need intravenous (IV) fluids when their eyes are recessed and they can’t stand. Don’t give up on calves, he says, as IV fluids can have a quick and powerful effect.

Alleviate pain and inflammation

There’s good research that supports treating calves with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory at the onset of diarrhea, says Renaud. Research shows that calves get better faster, and also improves their ability to consume grain and water when treated with Meloxicam.

Antibiotics as a last resort

Research has shown that not all calves need antibiotics to recover from diarrhea. In fact, “There’s very few cases of diarrhea that truly need it,” says Renaud. About 30 per cent of calves have levels of bacteria in their bloodstream that says they need antibiotics.

If the calves are bright and alert, Renaud says they don’t need antibiotics. However, if the calf is dull and inactive, then it’s more likely that they’ll need antibiotics. It’s a bit of an unknown whether calves with fever and blood in their stools need antibiotics.

Recent research has shown that an treatment based on an evidence-based algorithm showed that targeting calves with antibiotics meant they recovered quicker than calves that had been all treated with antibiotics.

“We need to be really smart and strategic about when we’re providing antibiotics to ensure we’re doing at the right time.”

Colostrum therapy could be an alternative

Research in Renaud’s lab by Havie Carter looked at feed colostrum to calves with diarrhea. Her study included a control group, a colostrum fed group and a group fed half colostrum, half milk replacer. There were also calves that were feed four feedings of colostrum and some fed eight.

Calves fed the larger amount of colostrum recovered two days earlier and weighed more than the control group at 56 days after onset of diarrhea. The control group also had 14 per cent mortality, while the colostrum-fed calves had none.

The post Best tactics for dairy calf diarrhea appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Zoomlion, a Chinese company that manufactures construction and farm machinery, had a lot of people talking when it displayed its entire tractor and combine lineup powered by diesel-electric hybrid drives.

Category-busting one-power-unit company Nexat also drives its machine using electric motors.

WHY IT MATTERS: Farms are pressured to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and are look to save money through fuel efficiency, which has resulted in more engine options than ever before.

Diesel-electric drives are used in locomotives and in construction equipment and have been slow to find their way into agriculture. They are based on the theory that systems can be made simpler and more energy efficient if the power is applied by electric motors at the points in the equipment where the power is needed.

A diesel engine is usually fitted with a generator off the back of the engine and the generator distributes power where it’s needed.

The major producers of engines for agriculture have shown some concepts powered by diesel-electric systems, but there are few on the market.

John Deere has a generator option for its 8R tractors, the eAutoPowr electronic variable transmission, which provides power for implements from a generator powered by the diesel engine, but it isn’t a full diesel-electric system.

Why are there more agricultural engine options?

However, the major machinery providers are building flexibility into their new engines, making them ready with some modifications to burn various types of fuels, ranging from ethanol to biodiesel and hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO), popular in Europe as a completely renewable fuel.

That means farmers should be ready for engines that can burn most of the fuels they can lay their hands on, with some modification.

Agco Power unveiled the largest of its new Core engine lineup at Agritechnica, the 80, which is an eight-litre engine. It will end up in the Fendt 800 lineup, said Jarno Ratia, director, sales and marketing and project management for Agco Power.

The engines are highly efficient, he said.

“It revs at 1,700 (revolutions per minute), which is matched with the tractor power train perfectly,” he said.

The tuning of the continuously variable transmission with the engine means the engine can hit top speed at 1,400 r.p.m.

The Core engines are set up to use other sources of fuel, such as biodiesel, hydrogen and methane, depending on which fuel the farmer can source.

The bottom line is that none of them are better than the power that can be produced from a litre of diesel.

Hydrogen, for example, results in a drop of about 30 per cent in the power output of an engine.

There are supply chain and structural limits to hydrogen at this point, including being able to store it on farms and on tractors in enough volume to prevent frequent refilling.

JCB is betting heavily on hydrogen and has a working model that it sells to companies looking to reduce their emissions.

To help offset the power loss of hydrogen, Agco has added a hybrid system to its hydrogen energy.

However, Ratia says hybrids are a step, not a permanent solution. There were numerous tractors and combines with concept hybrid-battery boosters at Agritechnica 2023. There were few in 2025.

“Earlier, the whole industry thought that hybrid would be the first step to go full electric, but now we think a little bit different. So we know that adding hybrid is adding complexity and cost, but end of the day, not really giving too much benefit for the vehicle.”

The idea that farmers could produce their own fuel is also being discussed.

Jahmy Hindman, senior vice-president and chief technology officer at John Deere, pitched the idea that farmers could produce their own fuel on the farm, taking up a limited amount of a previous-year’s crop to produce the next and completing an energy cycle on the farm.

John Deere’s Justin Rose, president of the company’s Worldwide Agriculture and Turf division said at a media event at Agritechnica that the company will continue to produce options that farmers look for around powertrains.

New Holland showcased its T7 methane-powered tractor at Agritechnica, including the fact that it has made commercial sales. It would epitomize the ideal of energy circularity on the farm, using methane produced by manure to power the tractor.

Battery technology

There continues to be evolution in battery technology, too, and at Agritechnica John Deere showcased its 130 h.p. equivalent tractor and numerous autonomous systems that run on electricity, while Agco presented a new stackable battery concept.

Both are scalable so that the amount of working time needed for the tractor can be matched by its battery cost.

With current technology, 120 to 130 h.p. will be about as large as battery-only tractors will get before weight and charging capacity become limited.

Autonomous vehicles also are being powered by a soup mix of power types that range from a battery at the smaller end to diesel engines used in tractors for the largest. In between, there are options such as the New Holland R4, an autonomous concept vehicle that runs on diesel-electric hybrid power.

The Nexat is powered by two 550 h.p. engines, but the wheels are driven by electric drives, which helps make the unique concept work.

Diesel electric helps Nexat distribute power more flexibly throughout its system.

At Agritechnica, the Zoomlion combines and tractors were attracting lots of visitors and opinions.

The company’s combine has a diesel engine that powers a generator, which distributes power to 12 motors to drive the wheels, the feeder housing and header, grain augers, dual rotor threshing system and the straw chopper. The combine is rated at 480 h.p. The system also includes a battery to help manage the power flow.

That means fewer belts, says Kevin Song, technical manager for the combine. It means a simpler unit with fewer moving parts.

The company says using electric drives will reduce the linkages — chains and sprockets and belts and pulleys — by 70 per cent compared to a conventional combine. That means fewer breakage points, although sorting out an electrical problem can also be challenging.

The motors can all reverse, which means easier cleaning out of plugged headers and feeder housing, said Song.

Zoomlion’s tractors are rated at 160 to more than 700 h.p. in a tractor that was just announced but wasn’t at Agritechnica. Company spokespeople at the show said diesel-electric drives can improve fuel efficiency by 15 per cent.

The company also demonstrated an autonomous tractor in a live video demonstration from a site in China.

Zoomlion’s tractors and combine aren’t yet available in North America but are working in Australia and South America.

Fuel efficiency and reducing particulate and greenhouse gas emissions continue to drive evolution in powertrains and are resulting in more options for farmers but also more complexity in the engines and fuel-supply systems.

The post At Agritechnica, farm power options get more diverse appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

WHY IT MATTERS: There are numerous ways to precisely apply nutrients, but there’s still a gap in knowledge about when fertilizers don’t work.

“We had hoped to have this scenario where, okay, I know all the places within that pasture where nutrients aren’t going to work, surely I can get a maximized yield, reduced input and reduced environmental impacts. It just was not really possible,” says Andrew MacDougall, a professor in the department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph.

He was one of more than 40 authors who contributed to the study, published in April in the journal Scientific Reports. Oliver Carroll was the lead author while he was doing post-doctoral work for Food for Thought at the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute. The team of authors is affiliated with the global Nutrient Network.

The study added fertilizer to grasslands at 61 sites, and the biomass increase was measured to gauge the response to the fertilizer.

Study results

The researchers found that fertilization of the grasslands showed widely variable responses. Fertilization increased average yield by 43 per cent, but in 26 per cent of cases, there was no improvement in biomass.

All of the sites showed some response to fertilizer at least once, but only four of the 61 plots showed an increase in biomass in all years and all plots.

“The truth is, if you’re just interested in yield, it’s always safer just to add nutrients everywhere, because you just don’t know, wet years, dry years, there’s all sorts of variation that are really, really hard to predict, even if you’ve got pretty good information beforehand,” says MacDougall.

The researchers used grasslands for the study as they would not have had the fertilization history of cropland, so it made it easier to compare biomass results across plots in diverse ecosystems.

“We needed to work in grasslands versus cropland, because we didn’t want the contamination from previous nutrient additions and phosphorus in particular, of course, is quite sticky,” says MacDougall.

The sites were highly variable in environment and soil, including plots in Canada and the United States, but also reindeer grazing land in tundra in Finland, dry pastures in Africa and highly diverse species pastures in China.

Those results show that qualifying when to precisely apply fertilizer is a challenge, says MacDougall.

“There are always spots where the nutrients don’t work as well,” says MacDougall. “What if we could anticipate where we don’t have to add nutrients? How much money would we save? We show you could, in theory, save a lot. It’s just hard to predict.”

MacDougall worked on another study about 10 years ago that showed that 25 per cent of the time that nutrients were applied, they didn’t affect yield.

“When we look deeper, it’s clear that there are a lot of circumstances where nutrients are not the limiting factor, and typically it’s moisture,” he says.

There are other limiters, including acidity of the soil, but moisture is the largest influence.

“If you’ve got a drought in Australia or Africa or the Canadian west or Colorado, you can add all the nutrients you want. Plants are not going to get bigger.”

Better fertilizer plans

The question MacDougall wanted to answer with the larger study was whether they could pinpoint when not to apply nutrients — when they wouldn’t work — to save farmers money and lower the amount of nutrients added to the environment.

If they know that nutrients don’t work 25 per cent of the time, what are the factors that lead to that 25 per cent?

It turns out that’s pretty difficult, if you’re chasing top yield. However, MacDougall says that if you’re willing to sacrifice a bit of yield, there’s money to be saved and more profit for the farm.

Environmental impact could also be reduced.

Precision fertilizer application can still make sense, especially as the cost of fertilizer continues to rise and the limits of non-renewal fertilizers like nitrogen from fossil fuels, and phosphorus which is mined, get closer.

The continued development of tools such as microdosing of fertilizers and using tissue analysis to monitor crop needs are tools that will continue to help understand where fertilizer should be applied.

MacDougall says the results of the study show that these tools will be more important into the future.

“I thought for sure we’d see the golden path forward. But all it did was reinforce that this is hard to predict, and the safest thing is just add (fertilizer) everywhere. But as costs go up, we just clearly aren’t going to be able to keep doing that.”

The post Still hard to predict precise fertilizer payback appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The technology isn’t quite there yet, but it’s close, and an app recently released by Dalhousie University researchers can help train farmers and workers on what’s actually in a moo.

WHY IT MATTERS: Artificial intelligence is helping to process large volumes of data, creating resources that farmers have never had access to before.

The MooLogue app is one of two apps recently released by professor Suresh Neethirajan and his Mooanalytica research team at Dalhousie University.

The other app, called DairyAir Canada, quickly allows a farmer to assess the methane production on their farm over the past 15 years.

Both apps give a sense of the powerful tools that can be developed due to the advanced processing capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Neethirajan said MooLogue can give someone who hasn’t worked in agriculture before, or who may have worked on a livestock farm such as swine or poultry and is interested in working with cows, an early understanding of what they’ll hear in a dairy barn.

Developing the data behind the MooLogue app involved old-school research, however, as students installed sensors and recording devices at about 13 farms, at eight or nine locations on the farms — from calving and milking areas, to stalls and dry cow areas.

They collected many hours of vocalizations, then used artificial intelligence to compare the audio and the video that went with it, to connect the sound to what was happening in the barn, said Neethirajan, who has a joint appointment in the faculty of computer science and the faculty of agriculture.

The researchers connected the frequency of the moo and duration with events in a cow’s day.

When a mother cow is bonding with her calf, she will moo at about 120 to 280 Hz, low-frequency murmurs that last up to 2.5 seconds.

When a cow is in distress, its calls will be more urgent, at 600 to 1,200 Hz and will exceed three seconds in duration.

The researchers can now tell when cows are about to be fed, and when the cows are greeting each other. They can also tell when they are in heat.

Most experienced farmers can also combine the auditory signals from cows with what they observe in the barn to come up with similar conclusions about the state of a cow. Indeed, the team validated the sounds and results with experienced farmers.

However, with increasing numbers of farm employees coming from off the farm, these sounds can be used for training, as the app is currently set up to do.

“They can play with the app to better understand,” said Neethirajan. “This is a hunger call. This is frustration. She is going through heat.

“If there is a veterinary student, if they want to handle the cow without going and touching them, handling that animal, they can play with the app as a preliminary step.”

Future products could include what Neethirajan referred to as a “black box” that could sit in the barn and record sounds, process those sounds and provide a report to the farmer remotely or when she is back in the barn.

One of his doctoral students is working on a cow translator, using natural language processing, figuring out how to turn a moo into something that accurately fits human languages.

When cow frustration was measured in 300 different contexts, “we were able to see patterns, specific letters and specific words started emerging, constantly coming in that particular context.”

Another step is to see what other breeds have to say. Holsteins were used as they account for most of the animals on Canadian dairy farms, but there’s some work being done on beef cattle. It’s more challenging however, because beef breeds and other cattle in other parts of the world aren’t housed indoors.

Monitoring methane

Methane released by cow burps after digestion and manure pits is one of the leading concerns around climate change related to livestock farming, but there have been few tools to measure and monitor individual farm methane output.

Neethirajan’s Mooanalytica lab has released the DairyAir Canada app, which can show each dairy farm in the country their methane release trends from Jan. 1, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2024. The methane is not tracked in real time.

The research team used data from three different satellites, including NASA’s Terra, Europe’s Sentinel-5P and Japan’s GOSAT. The data was then parsed and smoothed, so that each farm had a rating.

The app isn’t just a snapshot, it also allows farmers to compare their data to others within a 50 to 100 kilometre radius, their own provincial average and a national distribution of methane emissions. They can do analysis based on seasons and can download reports.

Across the country, the results could be different based on management, climate and building design.

Neethirajan said this creates a benchmark for farmers. They can then take action, depending on what they learn.

Overall, Neethirajan said methane emissions have continued to increase on dairy farms across the country over the past 15 years. Some years Ontario was the leader, but other years Quebec had the largest emissions.

The research for the apps was supported by Dairy Farmers of Canada and government funding programs for agriculture.

Both MooLogue and DairyAir Canada are available for Apple and, as of Oct. 14, for Google devices.

The post Moo translator and methane measures: There’s an app for that appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Why it matters: Canadian manufacturing needs to diversify from so much reliance on the United States, and agriculture manufacturers are taking steps to do that.

Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada had its first display at the biannual Agritechnica show in Hanover, Germany, said chief executive officer Donna Boyd. Global marketing has always been part of the organization’s mandate, but a new export development strategy has added extra impetus.

Read: More Agritechnica 2025 coverage with the Western Producer

That meant a new AMC display at the world’s largest machinery show.

“The pressures on ag and on manufacturing are immense,” said Boyd during an interview after the official opening of the Canada Pavilion.

“We have gone through fits and spirts for our members, but this one is a particularly challenging one.”

Prices have declined across major North American commodity crops, and tariffs and threats from the United States have made it more difficult to get products into that major market for Canadian equipment makers.

With a challenging trade environment can also come opportunities, said Chris Lane, president and CEO of the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership, which had the display with the largest grouping of Canadian companies at the show.

“Canadian products are being embraced by other markets like they never have been before,” he said.

Companies are having conversations with individuals and finding new distribution routes, said Lane.

There were three areas at Agritechnica featuring Canadian companies: the STEP display, the AMC display and another smaller one featuring Manitoba companies. There are also companies that have their own displays independent of the three Canadian-branded areas.

Networking opportunities

The potential to make connections at Agritechnica brought numerous Canadian companies to the show for the first time.

One is Horst Welding, which owns a diverse number of farm manufacturing brands, including loader attachments, snow moving equipment, seeding equipment and hay handling equipment from its base in Ontario.

Horst Welding’s Gary Bouwers said the company is looking at new markets it hasn’t pursued before for exports, including Europe. It has historically sent most of its exports to the U.S. or Australia.

It’s not just access to the European market that brings people to Agritechnica, says Paul Latham with Horst Welding, it’s the international attendees at the show.

“Canadian manufacturers have a good reputation worldwide.”

At the STEP pavilion, which included 21 companies, Steve Rogoshewsky was hoping for new connections for his Adaptive Agriculture Solutions company, based in Saskatchewan.

Rogoshewsky’s company provides in-bin heating and a scalable bin monitoring solution.

“We’re excited to be here and expand our markets to Europe. Our product is perfected now in the harsh conditions of Canadian winter and it’s ready for expansion across the world.”

The ability for STEP to bring together companies from multiple provinces and making it easy for them to get to Agritechnica — handling bookings and shipping and logistics — has helped increase the numbers at the show, said Lane.

The organization has been bringing western Canadian agriculture technology companies to the show for 20 years.

“At Agritechnica, it’s hard to be small, so the bigger footprint you have, the more attention you can get collectively for our companies here,” he said.

“The Canada brand means a lot in Europe, so I think that helps, too.”

Thunderstruck Ag, a Saskatchewan manufacturer known for its concaves and other products for harvest and combine efficiency, is at its second Agritechnica.

President Jeremy Matuszewski said in one day at Agritechnica he talked to farmers from Croatia, Hungary and Denmark, along with some from Canada.

Canadians need to be exposed to the rest of the world, he said.

The country thinks it’s the best, he added, but the past year has shown that “there are a lot of places around the world, Brazil, Europe, where they’re using technology that we’re not looking at.”

The front half of the AMC Canada Pavilion was dominated by the distinctive orange and red of Versatile tractors making their way back to Agritechnica — and the European market.

Canada’s only tractor manufacturer was hit by COVID-19 supply chain issues and knocked out of the market, said Grant Adolph, chair of the Buhler Group of Companies, which include Versatile and Farm King.

The company was also owned by Russian Rostelmash, which became a liability during the global backlash against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

Versatile was sold to the Basak Tractor division of OSKO Holding, a Turkish company, and that’s given it the opportunity to increase its global reach again.

Adolph said Versatile is looking to expand its dealer network in Europe and to bring its Genesis tractor to the continent. It will take about a year to meet regulations, but until then the company will have its large Delta Track and small four-wheel-drive tractors, which were already European Union approved, to sell in the market.

He also expected to see the Versatile line expand in North America with smaller tractors in the Basak Tractor lineup.

“Today, with uncertainty of our friends to the south, it’s probably the perfect time to be diversified.”

He called on Canadian governments to understand the importance of agriculture equipment to the country’s manufacturing exports and to support it.

The arrival of many new Canadian companies to Agritechnica should help make that case.

The post More Canadian companies at Agritechnica 2025 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Why it matters: The failure of some agriculture startup companies is tied to their inability to understand problems that farmers need to be solved.

Three companies with close connections to the agriculture sector answered questions about how they made sure their products met the needs of farmers during the AgTech Breakfast at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025.

Jesse Wiebe of Startup TNT, an organization that brings together investors in agriculture technology, hosted the panel discussion.

Colin Yates, who co-founded VETSon, a virtual veterinary app for farm animals, with his father, veterinarian Glen Yates, had a built-in connection to his major clients. Glen had years of experience in veterinary practice, so he understood the needs of animal healthcare providers.

“We didn’t have to go find a partner. We didn’t have to go find a business willing to do it,” said Colin Yates.

“It’s about having those relationships. And luckily, my relationship was with my father, who’s already had those 50 years of experience that we could develop and build upon that.”

Finding farmers to test and use VETSon’s service was easy, as a shortage of veterinarians created an unmet need for virtual veterinarians.

In fact, Yates found that farmers were pushing veterinarians to adopt the virtual veterinary technology.

“The farmers wanted this technology, the farmers wanted access and were willing to adopt it.”

Cattlytics founder Shari van de Pol invested time figuring out what help dairy farmers needed as she developed the numerous dairy data and programming services her company provides.

The computer engineer and large animal veterinarian developed trust with farmers, who then allowed her to analyze their dairy farm data. A revelation about a drop in milk production when cows were fed unfermented corn silage harvested in October was the first step, but the really valuable data showed the months it took for the cows to recover.

“That was the moment where I’m like, we can do so much here, we can do so much in such an interesting, complicated system,” she said.

Van de Pol developed trust with farmers with her technical expertise as a veterinarian, but she’s also a fiddler and played during dairy farmer gatherings, creating another level of connection to her future customers.

Matt Stevens of Finite Farms found another way to connect directly with farm-level demand and information for the apple thinning and harvesting machine — he bought an orchard.

Stevens called the orchard a “fixer-upper” based near Simcoe, Ont., but it enabled him to become a commercial apple grower. The investment in the game helped create relationships with other apple growers, including one of the leading apple growers in Ontario. That apple grower insisted that Stevens use their farms to test his machine, which he’s been developing through numerous iterations quickly.

The robot evolved from a first-generation idea to a functioning unit by the end of this past summer.

Wiebe said that the ability of company founders to have problems of their own to solve, such as Stevens needing more automation to run his orchard, is a test for those companies.

“If you’re a farmer here, and you’re looking for those technology companies that you may want to use on a farm, ask them, ‘are they from the industry?’”

For more coverage of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, visit Farmtario’s landing page.

The post Ag tech success potential improved with farmer connections appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.