Jared Epp from the Saskatchewan Stock Dog Association led that day’s demonstration and drove home four main points: showing leadership is key, the appearance of the dog doesn’t matter, which breed is best for herding stock, and the use of voice commands versus whistles.

He went on to explain how leadership plays into owning a stock dog. The animal has a herding instinct, even an instinct to hunt, and be controlled, he said. They love structure and to be productive, so it is imperative to incorporate that into interactions with them.

The key to leadership, according to Epp, isn’t to scare or upset your dog, but rather approach the animal as an authority figure and someone it can trust.

“Our dogs do understand that they’re worthy, ‘we’re worthy of being listened to’, and then, they start to really embrace listening to us.”

Judging a book by its cover doesn’t exactly work for choosing a good herder or breed, according to Epp. He looks for good genetics by examining the parents of the pups.

In terms of which breed is king in stock herding, there are many different herding breeds and each has its own attributes, but Epp prefers border collies because of their great hunting instict and high intelligence, which allows them to be extremely teachable.

“[The] real important one is their intensity. So, they’re willing to work through discomfort. They’re willing to work through hot weather [and] cold weather, they just want to work so bad.”

Communicating with the dog is essential for herding cattle for a number of reasons and can be done effectively in two different manners: calling and whistling.

Epp says voice commands are most effective for when you’re close to your dog or when noise levels and other distractions are minimal — the reason being that if you have to raise your voice for the dog to hear you properly, the dog may interpret that as anger or aggression, which is not conducive to the process. This is where whistling can prove the best method.

“It’s our opportunity to give the dog a message without a voice, without screaming [or] hollering, and without any emotion attached. A whistle will never sound angry, it’ll sound urgent.”

Jared Epp and his dog perform a demonstration. (Liam O’Connor photo)

Epp also shared a sentiment of many at AiM — that he was glad to be back in front of people — although he also acknowledged the ability to record his stock dog demos with drones and give that angle to people online during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s wonderful to be back. There’s nothing like live interaction with people and the response from people when they can see things right in front of them happening,” he said.

The annual outdoor farm show — held near Langham, Sask., about 40 km northwest of Saskatoon — resumed this year after two years online, drawing 29,954 guests over three days from July 19 to 21. The event is owned and operated by Glacier FarmMedia, the owner of this website.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

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At a presentation on Tuesday, the first day of the show’s 2022 in-person edition, Glacier FarmMedia — which owns the event along with this website and other farm show and farm media brands — announced it has become the sole owner of the property now dubbed Discovery Farm Langham, after buying the original investors’ stakes.

Laurie Bradley, John Mathison and Chad Doerksen were the initial investors who arranged to secure two quarters of land near Langham, Sask., about 40 km northwest of Saskatoon, for the purpose of putting on an event for producers that could replicate the event’s eastern counterpart, Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show at Woodstock, Ont. — except do it bigger and better.

At a short ceremony Tuesday, the three were gifted with lifetime tickets to AiM.

The event, which began in 2015 and is now billed as Western Canada’s largest outdoor farm expo, is today spread out over 100 acres and this year runs July 19-21, hosting over 500 exhibitors.

“All we knew was that we had a captive audience, a million dollars’ worth of land, and we had to finance it somehow because they [Glacier FarmMedia] wanted to lease it,” Bradley said. “This is the most successful piece of dirt I ever bought.”

As a thanks to Glacier FarmMedia, Bradley offered another piece of land as an extension of his gratitude.

Carla Vipond, GFM’s executive vice-president for events and Discovery Farm and Mark Melville, the company’s president of business information, presented the three founders and “visionaries” of AiM and Discovery Farm with a plaque which is to be mounted on the property in their honour.

Rob O’Connor during an interview following the July 19 announcement. (Liam O’Connor photo)

This year’s AiM event is special for organizers including show director Rob O’Connor, who said he’s really pleased that the show is back up and running in person after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

AiM-related events moved mainly online during that hiatus, and O’Connor said he wasn’t sure if the show would be able to get back to where it started — but was happy it was ultimately able to do so.

“We didn’t know the effects of the pandemic, but the team buckled down, we worked with our exhibiting companies and sponsors, and we got it back to where it was,” O’Connor said.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

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At the 2022 Canada’s Farm Show in Regina, Saskatchewan, six teams competed in a 24-hour “Agtech” start-up competition. It emulates shows like Dragon’s Den and entailed each team selecting one member to represent them after having 24 hours to come up with an idea that could revolutionize modern agriculture, and then pitch that idea in front of a panel of judges.

One of the notable judges who joined the panel was Dragon Den’s own Vikram Vij.

This year’s winners, taking home $4,000 for first place, $2,000 for second, and $1,000 for people’s choice were: Prodyous (first place), ISPI (second place), and Our Side (people’s choice).

The businesses

Prodyous, pronounced produce, was able to capture first place with their pitch to create an app that would help eliminate food insecurity within neighbourhoods. Their idea involves getting young and experienced people into gardening in their backyards, then connecting them to local consumers who will be able to purchase their goods. The idea is essentially Facebook Marketplace, but for fruits and vegetables.

Their co-founder Hannah Tait says “the problem is that the current supply chains are unable to meet consumer needs in terms of price, product and place, supply chains are projected to become even less reliable, affordable, and less accessible.”

In addition, they want to provide advice and suggestions to individual users to help increase their yield and crop health. Their subscription model would bring in an estimated $300,000 per year in revenue.

Prodyous accepts their first place winnings on stage. Photo: Liam O’Connor

The second-place team called ISPI presented their plan to create a business that would remove the subjectivity of land/soil assessments by creating a gold standard database that land would be ranked by accordingly. The website would be aimed at third-party consumers like insurance companies or individual/direct buyers of land who want an objective metric for a land valuation.

“What we are proposing is a soil productivity index, which is a data-driven standard that optimizes land valuation,” says ISPI’s team leader Blake Weiseth. “This is a transparent system that makes land transactions fair, and ultimately, sustainable management practices are rewarded.”

Ultimately, how ISPI’s algorithm will work is by drawing in different data layers and coming up with a single variable gold standard number, which everyone would be able to use as a reference point. A customer would enter in their land coordinates, then their algorithm would determine a land score. If any red flags appear or if it requires further investigation then they would get on the ground and work with partners to facilitate data collection.

Finally, the people’s choice was determined through the audience voting online after the presentations. The vote resulted in Our Side winning. Our Side resonated with the crowd over its plan to eliminate the lack of transparency in the carbon tax market and lack of advocacy for on behalf of farmers.

On their proposed website, individuals or companies would be able to buy and sell carbon tax credits. Our Side would take a percentage of each sale and purchase, similar to stock exchanges and brokerage deals.

The post The next big AgTech ideas presented at Canada’s Farm Show appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Effective water management may be one of the most important factors driving Saskatchewan’s growth in the next 20 years,” Jeremy Cockrill, minister responsible for the WSA said. 

The WSA says that “responsible drainage is an important risk management tool for producers, allowing for improved efficiency and profitability, while managing impacts to water quality, flooding and wetland habitat.”

According to Cockrill, the funding is an attempt to address barriers producers might experience when trying to implement safe and healthy watersheds, as well as protecting infrastructure.

WSA says these barriers producers face can range from costs associated, with technical engineering work, mitigation, rehabilitation works, or technical expertise from professionals. The aim of the program is to offset some of these costs.

“This funding will help many producers across Saskatchewan responsibly manage water challenges and help advance more coordinated agricultural water management projects that will benefit everyone,” Myles Thorpe, Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association president said.

Farmers and ranchers can receive up to $95,000 per project.

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The technology will enable producers to make more appropriate decisions through field data imagery. According to McCain, both high and low-altitude imagery will be provided that will target key metrics that will help producers improve crop development and yield.

McCain’s inclination to use more innovative technology comes at no surprise as they experiment with various technologies at their Farms of the Future site in Florenceville, N.B., where they are working on regenerative farming practices. 

“The acquisition is pivotal to McCain’s innovation agenda and our ambition to use digital technology to transform agriculture,” said Jillian Moffatt, Chief Technology Officer, McCain Foods Limited.

While the aim of the technology is to improve crop productivity by the acre, Moffatt also believes it can happen at all stages of the supply chain to improve yield, cost, and other key outcomes for growers and processors.

McCain says their future goal is to scale this technology beyond just their own Farms of the Future and to external food processors and growers. 

“We hope this technology can support a variety of growers and companies across the sector,” said Moffatt. 

Resson’s team that works on predictive crop intelligence is set to join McCain and become a new business unit within them. Resson as a whole will continue to work and develop other technology for detecting pests, disease, and other crop metrics.

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“If we don’t change the way we farm, feeding the world in 30 years will require an 87 per cent increase in carbon emissions,” McCain CEO Max Koeune said. “The implications of that are bleak.”

Farms of the Future are commercial full-scale, full-rotation, regenerative potato farms that aim to prove both the economic and agronomic business cases for regenerative practices.

Jess Newman, senior director of agriculture and sustainability for McCain, says the need for new regenerative practices and sustainable agriculture is because of climate change and the existential threat it poses to the potato industry.

“We know that [climate change] is devastating to the grower’s bottom line, and all the way through the McCain supply chain to our consumers,” said Newman. “So, our investments in regenerative agriculture are about investments in building soils, which we ultimately know build on-farm resilience.”

McCain laid out a framework for its regenerative farms which entails armouring soils, minimizing soil disturbance, enhancing crop and ecosystem diversity, reducing agrochemical impact and optimizing water use.

According to Newman, by implementing these practices, they can “de-risk” them and provide a data set for producers.

“Where we have a regenerative practice in a certain region where we’re not sure about the economic return or the impact on soils, that’s where McCain wants to come forward and provide funding and help de-risk that practice,” Newman said.

Looking at the data

On over 160 acres, the New Brunswick Farm of the Future planted 28 crop species in different fields to improve biodiversity and regenerate soils. The multispecies cover crops that were planted ranged from faba beans to brome grass and oats among others.

The benefits noted include: improved water infiltration, decreased water runoff and soil erosion, using different root types to increase nutrients, removing soil compaction, and lowering the risk of soil-borne pests and diseases.

Another practice that saw success was fall bedding and seeding cover crops. Farms of the Future was able to reduce tillage and successfully establish cover crops prior to winter arriving.

The most challenging practices, according to McCain, were livestock integration, rotational grazing and the controlled-traffic farming system.

The Farms of the Future 2021 Growers report said it experimented with livestock on the farm for the purpose of incorporating manure without having to transport or spread it.

“We implemented strip grazing — a type of rotational grazing that involves confining livestock to a strip with fresh pasture for short periods of time (one to three days). Strip grazing allows managing pastures by alternatively grazing and resting to allow regrowth of the grasses. At the Farm of the Future Canada, a movable fence in a linear orientation controlled the grazing area available to cattle.”

What the farm concluded about the performance of its potatoes was that its yields were about the same as the New Brunswick average, about 411 hundredweight per acre. The use of fertilizer in all its potato crops was 16.7 per cent compared to farms of similar size.

McCain is now looking to open its next Farm of the Future in South Africa.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

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The two institutions have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which entails both schools working together for five years on various programs, notably Olds College’s Smart Farm operation.

The partnership comes as a result of an 800-acre donation west of Craik, Sask., about 85 km north of Moose Jaw, from Margery Steckler and late husband George Steckler to Olds College. It’s the largest such donation the institution has ever received.

The aim of the Smart Farm with the new partnership is to train students and give them opportunities in the technologically advancing agriculture sector, such as with drones and autonomous farming equipment.

“I mean, that’s where farming is going,” Saskatchewan Polytechnic CEO Dr. Larry Rosia said at the two schools’ announcement on Monday last week at that school’s ag equipment technician shop in Saskatoon.

“That’s another example of what we could bring to the partnership as we do a lot of drone training. We have a fleet of drones, and our drones are collecting data. We could share that data with Olds College.”

Smart Farm has over 100 different partners that range from a variety of agriculture companies. Olds College president Stuart Cullum said he believes this will be another valuable asset for students, besides getting to work with another school — namely, to learn how to work with industry, as they will be converging with them in the program.

“There’s a lot of complementary programming. This programming that we don’t have at Olds because we’re very industry-focused on agriculture,” said Cullum. “There’s some things that we do in a real deep way that we can offer to Saskatchewan Polytechnic.”

Rosia noted there’s also the possibility of students and instructors being able to crossover between the two institutions.

“It’s too early to say, but the sky’s the limit as to the opportunity for student exchanges and instructor exchanges,” said Rosia.

Saskatchewan Polytechnic academic chair Deanna Herman sees the partnership as a great opportunity because it upgrades the students from a small-scale operation to a much larger one, giving them the ability to train on tasks they couldn’t before, such as irrigation.

“Our students will have hands-on training and setting up irrigation systems and timing and all those kinds of things.”

Plans are still in the beginning stages for the two institutions, but their focus is to now work together and not compete.

“The past was all about competing, the future is all about partnering and collaborating,” Rosia said.

The MOU will be governed by a joint committee of representatives from both institutions.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

Olds College president Stuart Cullum (l) and Saskatchewan Polytechnic president Dr. Larry Rosia (r) shake hands after signing the MOU. (Liam O’Connor photo)

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“After touring multiple farms around the province to hear from farmers and meeting this morning with farmer Tim Marsh at the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, I am acting to help farmers struggling with rising diesel costs,” provincial Agriculture Minister Greg Morrow said in a release May 25.

The government is adding $200,000 to LTAP, bringing its total funding for the program to $550,000. Farmers have to apply to the program online and provide receipts in order to be reimbursed, for up to $32,000 per year per applicant.

Limestone is an essential component for most farmers in the Maritime provinces because the soil’s acidity is naturally higher, so it must be amended to counteract and neutralize that low soil pH.

Also, NSAF president Marsh notes, growers in the region receive more acid rain.

While Marsh is happy more money is being put into LTAP, he’s still concerned with cash flow for farmers.

“My biggest concern is firm cash flow because farmers still have to go and buy the stuff to begin with,” he said. “And I’m hearing stories that guys are cutting back on their inputs because they just don’t have the cash flow to buy everything they should have, and so, that makes me worried.”

In 2021, 143 farmers applied for assistance from LTAP.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

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The changes, which took effect May 11, come at the request of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture (NSFA) — which has said that owners of small farm-level processing facilities shouldn’t be treated the same as multi-million-dollar processing plants, in terms of the required fees and regulatory approvals based on larger volumes of waste to manage.

The smaller operations will now be regulated through standard wastewater approval requirements, the province said.

The province said its Office of Regulatory Affairs and Service Effectiveness estimates the changes will save each on-farm business $308 per year.

“These changes reduce red tape while ensuring that environmental standards are met,” Environment Minister Timothy Halman said in a release. “With input from industry, we are better aligning regulatory approvals to environmental and business needs.”

These activities include construction, operation or reclamation at sites “associated with small farm operations” involving:

• poultry, red meat, inland fish, dairy or dairy products, vegetable, or fruit processing plants;
• distilleries or wineries;
• breweries that produce 150,000 litres or more of alcoholic beverages per year;
• fish meal plants; and
• food additive or supplement manufacturing plants.

Regulatory changes such as these are occurring across the country to better align with smaller farm processing facilities, the ministry said via email.

“Other Canadian jurisdictions are, or are in the process of, moving to a model of regulation for these industries that better align regulatory approvals to the environmental risks,” ministry spokesperson Tracy Baron said.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

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“In our meetings with industry and the P.E.I. Potato Board, the need for additional supports for our seed sector were identified, specifically so that those growers can assess and address alternative crops as they deal with ongoing trade suspensions,” provincial Agriculture Minister Bloyce Thompson said last week in a release.

Eligible seed potato growers who put land into soil-building crops or extended perennial crops under the program can qualify for $1,000 per acre of land established into those crops. Acres eligible for the payment are limited to a grower’s reduction in seed potato area only.

The program, called the “Soil Building for Seed Producers Project,” aims to help seed potato producers in beneficial management practices (BMPs) until decisions are made about ongoing trade suspensions.

Eligible BMPs involve incorporating soil-building crops into rotations and/or extending rotations with soil-building perennial crops.

Approved soil-building crops newly incorporated into rotations under the program can include annual as well as perennial crops — and must also have at least a three-star ranking for building soil organic matter, as ranked by the Cover Crop Tool for Eastern Canada.

For the BMP in which a grower extends rotations with soil-building perennial crops, an existing soil-building perennial crop must remain growing for a second full rotation year.

That is, fields are eligible only if the extended perennial crop in question — such as timothy, clover or alfalfa — had already been established the previous rotation year, so the perennial crop can’t be terminated until the spring of 2023.

The field’s rotation must otherwise include annual crops within it and must not be a long-term forage field, pasture or fallow land.

The P.E.I. Potato Board “is very pleased to work with the province on the development of this project, as our seed growers still face a lot of uncertainty and challenges for 2022 and beyond,” board chairman John Visser said in the same release.

P.E.I. has over 83,000 acres of land dedicated to the production of potatoes and is Canada’s No. 1 potato producer, according to a study on the economic impact of potatoes in Canada.

Both table stock potatoes and seed potatoes from P.E.I. were banned from export to the mainland U.S. in November last year following a few new cases of potato wart confirmed in fields in the province. The ban on table stock potato exports was lifted April 1 this year but seed potato exports remain blocked.

According to Statistics Canada, P.E.I. seed potato exports to the U.S. were valued at $2.79 million in 2020, down from just over $3.1 million in 2018 and 2019. The province’s total seed potato exports worldwide in 2020 were valued at $5.29 million, up from $4.5 million in 2019 and $4.97 million in 2018.

— Liam O’Connor reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Saskatoon.

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