With AdFarm’s Brady Stadnicki serving as moderator, three Alberta producers were questioned on how they’ve innovated on their farms as well as some of the macro issues facing ag today.

The producer participants included Josh Fankhauser, a fifth-generation lamb farmer from Claresholm; Emily Ford, senior agronomist with Quattro Ventures and Bow Island-area producer; and David Benjamin, a first-generation hay and forage farmer in southern Alberta.

Q: When you think about your farm over the next three-to-five years, what do you see on the horizon, whether it’s an opportunity or a challenge or a big decision that you’re looking to make?

Ford promoted a positive perception of AI’s role in agriculture.

A: “There’s so much technology out there right now and there’s a lot coming at us and it’s really fast, but I don’t know if we’re using it to its full potential yet as far as AI and all these sorts of things,” she said.

“So I think in the next three-to-five years, (AI is) going to help us streamline our decision-making process (and) hopefully add clarity to some of the decisions that we make, enable us to use the data that we collect so much of to make actual decisions that can help and reduce some of the noise.”

Q: I’m curious to know what areas you’re managing most on the farm today.

Although Fankhauser enjoys seeing a group of employees evolve into a well-oiled machine, he said getting to that point can be a challenge.

A: “If you can keep the labour part working and you can kind of somehow build a team that makes everything go right, if you can get trustworthy people, then the rest is easy,” he said.

“How to build teams and how to make the teams work together is kind of my biggest challenge. And you always got new ones coming in and old ones leaving and dynamics are constantly changing.

“It’s just something that you don’t think about as a farmer … that you’re an HR manager now, and that’s pretty much my role: HR.”

Q: What tools or technology are you most interested in right now?

Fankhauser is interested in precision spraying technology such as green-on-green and green-on-brown, but is still working out how they would fit into his operation, adding he may skip the new ground spray tech altogether and buy a drone.

A: “Some of this drone AI self-learning tech could be pretty beneficial, especially when you want to do off-the-wall things like spot spray or you just want to spray this plant in this row.”

Benjamin talked about the challenge of separating needs and wants with farm tech.

A: “If you’re looking online at a trade show, there are a lot of cool things on each side of that spectrum. So you take half of that spectrum and say, ‘I’m going to focus on the needs first (and) dream later’.”

Q: Are there some areas in your operation where you wish there was a better solution or something new, maybe something that just isn’t quite developed yet, but would solve a pain point?

The solution to any challenge exists somewhere, said Benjamin, but it may require stepping out of one’s comfort zone.

A: “Agriculture is a fantastic industry that has some of the smartest people working in it, and that solution does exist. It’s knowing where to go and, as an example, when we upgraded our no-till drill, we couldn’t find what we needed within our local dealer circuit.

“So in 2023 we travelled to Agritechnica and crawled under every drill essentially available in the world. So we had to go to Germany … to find some of this information.”

Q: What are one or two things you wish companies understood better about your operation and how you make decisions?

One of Fankhauser’s biggest pet peeves is doing business with people who are unaware of the scale and nature of modern farming.

A: “We’re not Old Macdonald’s farm anymore. There’s very few farms I know that could actually fit that model. Even a small farm (or) what we would consider small is (a) multi-million dollar enterprise.

“We’re the C-suite, right? We’re the CEOs, the CFOs and all those people. And when you come to sell me something or present me something, I will do my homework on you. So … you better do your homework. Send somebody with knowledge.”

Q: Can you think of one small change on your operation that had a bigger impact than you expected?

A: “I can think of one, and it seems simple, but it’s been so effective,” said Ford.

“Every year we send out a survey to our employees (and) ask them … what would make your life easier to come to work every day? What’s something that you need in the shop?

“As a management group, we review the results once a year, and that’s where we drive what we’re going to work on for the coming year. And it’s all based on our employees’ feedback on how to make it a better place to work. And we’ve had great success and improved employee retention and things like that, just by listening and giving them a platform.”

Benjamin also likes to turn to employees for input. Sometimes the question can be as simple as “What do you want to work on?”

A: “Sometimes you’d be surprised at what these people respond with what they want to be involved with on the farm, whether it’s a contractor or an employee.”

The post Alberta farmers get an ‘Ask me anything’ at Crossroads conference appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The fact that in 2025 I can somewhat navigate a few functions on a smartphone in itself is quite amazing. When I started school — I jumped right into higher learning i.e. Grade 1, there was no kindergarten — we learned to write with pencils, and across the rows of desk of that one-room schoolhouse I was deeply envious of the big kids — Grade 5 and up — using ink pens. No ball point pens yet; these were the often messy, but no-fail straight pens with nibs you dipped in an inkwell. I dreamed of someday having my own nib pen, inkwell and blotter.

And eventually I got there. However, the required use of a straight pen in my early learning was short-lived, as Ontario finally allowed the use of the new-fangled ball point pens in 1958. It was those early days, however, that began my fascination with pens which still haunts me today.

On my desk at any given time I have three containers that hold a wide selection of ball point and gel pens, and I usually keep half a dozen favoured pens handy within easy reach beside my note pad. I also still carry and quite often use a couple of fountain pens, and on special occasions, I will drag out a bottle of ink and nib pens when planning to write a message with impact. (I want them to know this message is so important I resorted to using a 200-year old writing instrument.)

Back to my point on technology. About 35 years ago in the early 1990s, I recall talking to early-adopter farmers who were beginning to use yield monitors in their combines. I forget the details of the complications, but while these early monitors were collecting data, producers had to consult technical specialists to understand what that data meant. And I believe the general advice was that farmers would need to collect several years of data before it was of much value. A lot of data, and people weren’t sure what to do with it.

Then a few years later, John Deere was one of the first on the market in the mid-1990s with tractors equipped with GPS guidance systems. Farmers could ride the tractor all day and not have to pay attention — it steered itself. This certainly sounded like a holiday for field workers.

Now we jump forward a few more decades and the world is learning to understand, manage and adopt AI. Is everyone ready? I don’t think we have a choice. I haven’t done a lot with artificial intelligence myself, although my wife would argue that some days I haven’t done much with natural intelligence either. We’ll just ignore her.

But AI is already very much a part of everyday living. If I use Siri or Alexa on my smartphone to find music or answer a text message, that’s AI. If I’m on hold with the bank or some other service and I receive the option to “chat” through text messages with Robert of Melissa (or whatever name), that’s all AI-generated information, which usually doesn’t address my specific need, but they try.

AI involves collecting and analyzing huge amounts of data on any particular procedure, activity or topic, which is then used to develop algorithms. And an algorithm is essentially a set of step-by-step instructions for solving a problem or completing a task.

The algorithms can be used in programming a computer telling it exactly what to do and how to get the final result. Computers use algorithms to help them make decisions, process data or perform actions automatically. They can be very simple, like sorting a list of numbers, or very complex like operating robotics, autonomous vehicles and drones.

For farmers and the agriculture industry, AI has become intrinsic and mostly helpful in transforming daily activities through tools such as precision farming and automated machinery. It wasn’t long ago I was talking to a young dairy farmer from New Brunswick, who had installed robotic milkers. It didn’t necessarily reduce the workload, but it freed up his time from one chore to concentrate on something else that couldn’t be automated. Ultimately, the goal is to provide information and guidance to improve efficiency, sustainability and all kinds of yields for both crops and livestock production.

There are newer high-end terms such as data-driven decisions and predictive analytics. In my simple world I might say nine out of 10 times this or that is likely to happen, whereas AI collects enormous amounts of data on a particular thing to say 900 billion times out of a trillion this is likely what will happen.

AI can analyze vast amounts of information captured by sensors, drones and satellites and provide a pretty educated guess on monitoring crop health and how to manage pests and diseases, for example.

AI becomes the brain power to direct robotic weeders and harvesters and AI-guided tractors. By analyzing a wide range of data, AI can predicts risks like weather events or pest outbreaks, helping to address labor shortages and even environmental impacts.

So there can be many potential benefits to agriculture that can lead to increased efficiency, improved productivity and improved sustainability.

On the downside, however, the new AI technology isn’t cheap. You already have a line of conventional machinery, do you scrap that and go to robotics and autonomous equipment? How do you transition? Maybe you need to keep both?

And to develop all the “brains” for this new technology, the amount of energy needed to power computers at AI data centres is staggering, not to mention a huge environmental cost.

In 2022, for example, it was estimated the power needed globally to operate AI data centres was about 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy, which is roughly equivalent to the total annual electricity consumption of an entire country such as France or Japan. And energy demand from AI is projected to increase by 165 per cent by 2030. Projections suggest data centres could consume more than four per cent of global electricity by 2035.

That’s going to require more hydroelectric projects, more coal-fired power plants, more wind turbine farms, maybe even more projects collecting methane from manure, and/or more solar farms. Or this is where we look at more nuclear power plants, and the new concept of hydrogen-fueled power generation projects?

Unless it is a green energy source, generating power for these AI date centres will likely contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. And these data centres need to be cooled, which means increased water consumption. And we all know that water is usually a finite resource.

I also read there is concern surrounding AI about the long-term impact of relying too heavily on machines for essential farming tasks. However, I think that genie was out of the bottle when John Froelich built the first gasoline-powered tractor in 1892.

While technologies like electricity or the telephone took decades to achieve wide spread adoption, social media on the other hand reached global scale in about five years, and AI achieved mass adoption in just two to three years.

And let’s face it, it is big business. The market for AI exploded from $16 billion in 2017 to over $224 billion in 2024. Generative AI, a technology that barely existed in a practical form in 2021, reached a market value of nearly $44 billion by 2024, representing the fastest adoption of any technology in recorded history.

AI is obviously a train that’s not going to be stopped, and perhaps there is no need for it to be stopped. I’m no techie, but I think it is important to understand the technology as best I can and even make use of it when it provides me a convenience. Beyond that, I will let smarter, younger minds make sure AI stays within society’s moral and ethical guardrails.

I am quite content to fiddle around with my pen collection and try to get these ink stains off my hands. I believe there is even a manual typewriter in the storage room somewhere. Now there was an inspired piece of technology with only a million moving parts. Maybe I can press it back into service just in case AI implodes and my computer locks up. Much like a cultivator overgrown with weeds in the fenceline, it’s important to have a backup.

The post I wrote this column myself — or did I? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The new tool, called Root, is a free generative AI tool created by FCC.

Root can close information gaps and provide users with fast and reliable support any time, at any place. The tool can assist farmers to be more productive and help them make better decisions on the farm.

The collaboration between RDAR and FCC will enhance Root’s capabilities and improve it so it can better serve Canada’s agriculture and food industries.

The partnership will connect Root to relevant data sources and support testing efforts, so the tool continues to meet the changing needs of Canadian producers.

Root is intended to bridge gaps in extension services by delivering accessible guidance to producers within requiring complex data inputs. The tool will translate decades of research, field experience and practices, into advice producers can use immediately. Root will simplify decision-making, accelerate productivity, reduce trial and error, and empower Canadian producers to adopt better practices with less risk, using their smart phones.

Future additions of Root could offer additional functions to support producers, as well as agri-food and agribusiness operations. There’s no sign-up or registration required.

Root can be found at: https://www.fcc-fac.ca/en/resources/root-ai#5j88r7e=0,1

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