Terry Sydoryk, chief executive officer of Calgary-founded Cellar Insights, says the company is working to change how growers and processors manage that critical window.

WHY IT MATTERS: Alberta is Canada’s largest producer of potatoes, accounting for more than 27 per cent of national production.

“Cellar Insights helps potato growers, processors and storage operators minimize loss and detect early signs of spoilage, excess shrink and poor fry colour,” Sydoryk said during a presentation at the Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR) showcase in Edmonton.

Breaking down post-harvest losses

Co-founder Ross Culbertson, a sixth-generation potato grower from Florenceville, N.B., saw heavy investment on the crop side to boost yields — but noticed a gap once potatoes went into storage.

Even in a good facility, about four per cent of yield is lost to respiration. Factor in rot, quality and disease issues, and losses climb substantially.

“We thought there was an opportunity there. Hence, Cellar Insights was born. We’re looking to empower growers and processors to reduce post-harvest losses, strengthen food security and boost resource efficiency through actionable insights. Our objective is to maximize the value for the grower, reduce the risk of the supply chain losses for the processor, and ultimately run storage as a competitive advantage,” said Sydoryk.

Global post-harvest losses exceed US$100 billion across multiple crops.

Bigger potato industry in Alberta

Alberta’s potato industry is growing, and the province now leads the country in production.

“The combination of Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island make up 78 per cent of the production in Canada,” said Sydoryk.

About 60 per cent of Alberta’s potatoes end up processed — french fries account for 60 per cent of that, with another 20 per cent going to chips.

Storage quality matters because processors need a precise balance of sugars, taste and colour.

“McDonald’s is adamant that a bouquet of french fries has got to look special,” he said.

Storage facilities around Lethbridge and Taber, many about 20 years old, line the highways. Potatoes are loaded into dome-shaped bins, filled to within five or six feet of the top, with dirt floors and culverts laid down for airflow.

What happens inside a storage bin

A typical bin is about 200 feet by 50 feet and 18 feet deep. Large fans on one side push air through floor slots, while a cooling wall on the opposite side lets growers reduce temperature. A humidification wall introduces moisture. A mezzanine lets growers walk the pile for visual checks.

“Ultimately, the age-old process of checking on the bin is walking it daily and checking if a pile is depleted. When I look at it from the top, if I look at the cross connect or cross tubes for air flow, do I see any sort of liquid coming out of the pile?”

A smell test remains one of the simplest ways to detect rot.

Potatoes need to be stored long-term to supply factories that run year-round. They should be at or below 13 C coming out of the ground — warmer harvest temperatures in southern Alberta can accelerate rot risk.

After loading, potatoes go through drying, pre-cooling and treatment stages to bring temperatures down. Ideal storage temperature sits at eight to 10 C, or lower for seed potatoes, pushing them into dormancy.

Three factors are monitored throughout:

• humidity,
• carbon dioxide, and
• temperature.

All affect quality, and growers need to maintain conditions over months to meet the needs of chip and french fry processors.

How Cellar Insights works

The company’s platform monitors temperature and humidity against thresholds set by the grower, issuing proactive alerts if conditions — including carbon dioxide levels — are exceeded.

“Early detection tracking abroad is something we’re focused on now, and lastly, we’ve introduced trending reports within the platform, so you can see things that happen over time, whether it’s the last 24 hours, last seven days, last 30 days, compared across the various units,” he said.

Cellar Insights uses low-cost, wireless, battery-operated sensors placed directly into storage bins. A sensor hub in the facility backhaults data via cellular signal to the cloud, giving growers remote visibility. External temperatures are also measured.

Predicting rot with machine learning

Some newer facilities already have built-in sensors. Cellar Insights is layering machine learning and artificial intelligence on top to predict early rot and spoilage.

RDAR funding will support an expansion of the rot-sensing work the company began a year ago.

“Our objective is to put 100 bins in play with sensors and another 20 or 15 bins with additional gas and volatile sensor measurements,” he said.

The company is testing combinations of sensor types. Early detection of deterioration lets producers choose mitigation strategies — such as reducing humidity — to protect more of the crop.

The next step is applying existing collected data to a machine learning model that can predict rot risk potential in any given storage facility.

Cellar Insights was founded in 2023 through Carrot Ventures, a Calgary-based venture studio for agtech, and has secured grants from RDAR and other organizations.

“We’ve raised a substantial amount of money that we can take this business forward with a specific focus on long term storage,” said Sydoryk.

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Wilkie grew up in Calgary, where he lives today.

“Like many young men in Canada, I had a dream of becoming an NHL hockey player, and that’s where I focussed all my efforts and energy. I was fortunate to have some success at an early age, and get really close to living my dream,” he said.

At 17 years old, Wilkie moved to the Prairies for hockey. He lived in rural Saskatchewan and played for the Western Hockey League’s Swift Current Broncos. As a young man growing up on the Prairies in the 1970s and 1980s, he was never taught to express his feelings.

For the last 20 years, Wilkie worked with I Got Mind, which helps people understand what happens to them after trauma, or when they are dealing with mental stressors.

On Dec. 30, 1986, the Swift Current Broncos were on their bus on the way to Regina. About five minutes out of Swift Current, the bus hit a patch of black ice and went off the road. The bus flipped over. Four Swift Current Broncos perished that night.

“For those of you who were around at the time, and those of us who’ve read about it since, we know a traumatic event like that can have real impact,” said Massie. “I think your story resonates even more strongly again nowadays, because we have a slightly more recent (Humboldt) Broncos tragedy,” she said.

Wilkie said none of the surviving players knew what to do after losing their teammates.

“We didn’t know how to talk about it. It was a very difficult time. It’s very dark. Nightmares, reliving the trauma, having to get back on the bus 10 days later. All those things were extremely difficult for all of us, not just the players, but the coaches, the fans and the billets,” he said. “It impacted everybody.”

“I think that’s what I’ve learned about trauma, is that it may have happened to me, but it still can affect you, and until we understand that it’s hard to create those connections with people. What we went through in Swift Current, it taught us a lot about the darkness and where it could take us, but most importantly, how can we feel better in these moments?”

Wilkie found it difficult to continue after the accident.

“The darkness, being alone at the night was really tumultuous,” he said. “In one minute, I could feel so excited about the path and the direction and what I was learning, and then in the next, fear and worry if I could pull it off.”

Love helped Wilkie along his path of healing. He met his wife and had a daughter.

“When I knew I was going to be a father, that’s when I knew I had to work hard to get my life together, because if I was going to be a role model and responsible for raising this young life, I needed to do better.”

He began to find ways to rebuild, through conversations, books, seminars and training.

By starting to help people, he learned many people do not have a healthy perspective of what they have.

He practiced the attitude of gratitude and would write down three things he was grateful for every day when he woke up.

“Was it easy?” he said. “It was just different. I try and tell people not to look at it as difficult because it’s not. It’s just different. When we can adopt that, it’s easier to take those steps forward in the moments they are presented to you.”

Wilkie said reflecting in the morning helped him see the good things in his life, including relationships, opportunities, how he felt, and the places he got to go and see.

It changed his mindset and helped him when days were challenging.

Culture change

Massie asked Wilkie what it was like to cultivate a culture of wellbeing.

“It takes a commitment of everybody you know trying to be the best version of themselves. If we’re truly going to change the culture, then we need to understand and we each need to do our part. The only way healthy communities are built is people working hard at being healthy themselves,” he said.

Some people want to help others but are not in a good space to help.

“If we’re going to build a healthy culture, then we have to do the work ourselves, and when we do that, it’s amazing the impact that it starts to have on other people,” he said.

Wilkie played hockey for 14 years and was 30 when he retired. He had no other training.

“I tried a couple of things, and it was really when I was coaching young hockey kids that I started to see where my trauma started, and the disappointment and the struggle. I started working with these kids and having different conversations about their attitudes and their mindsets and how they communicated. I started to see a significant change,” he said.

Wilkie trained as a life coach and travelled across North America, speaking to a variety of audiences about mental wellness.

Wilkie eventually assembled a team of 15 which includes of psychologists, mental health clinicians, and training facilitators to join I Got Mind.

“These are experienced people, whether they are retired hockey coaches, or teachers or business leaders. We have young athletes coming back in to work with the even younger athletes,” he said.

“It’s been a real evolution in being able to support people who need different things,” he said.

Wilkie said his sessions with groups start with being vulnerable and sharing stories and experiences. This attitude is practiced with anyone from youth sport teams to community leaders.

“It’s the vulnerability that starts different conversations, giving people permission to talk about what they struggle with and how it affects them,” he said. I Got Mind was actively visiting teams after the Humboldt Broncos crash, touring communities and talking about mental health. The pandemic put an end to that.

I Got Mind worked with Trilight Entertainment to make a documentary accident. The documentary, which is based on a book of the same name is “Sideways; a story of trauma, resilience and healing.”

“It helps us even more in the community and starts conversations that need to happen,” said Wilkie

He hopes people are inspired by the story, which shows what the players went through, but also how they were able to be resilient and become Memorial Cup Champions two years later.

“Trauma happens to all of us. We live in a chaotic world,” he said. “When we see people do amazing things and overcome great things, we want to listen to them, because we’d like to do that ourselves,” he said.

“I think that people need to understand that you don’t ever fully recover from things that happen to you,” he said.

I Got Mind has shown the documentary in various communities and have gotten great reactions. They’ve done a showing with the Drumheller Dragons hockey team and other organizations that want to bring them in.

“When communities find out, and they think they could benefit, they just reach out to us at igotmind.ca and then we work together to get people out to watch the story,” he said. People can check the website to find out how they can watch the documentary online, available November 4.

“When we are connected, we can communicate and when we can communicate, we can solve problems, and those are three of the most important things we need to do,” he said.

I Got Mind has created four special scholarships to remember the boys who perished in the Swift Current Broncos accident. One of them is an agricultural scholarship, to honour player Brent Ruff, who grew up in Wetaskiwin and whose family was heavily involved in agriculture. More information on the scholarships can be found online.

I Got Mind has also created an online community on their website, and can be followed on social media at Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Organizations who wish to book a visit from Wilkie can book him through the organization’s web site.

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The case centres on events that occurred in November 2023.

RCMP say that sheep and goats were purchased at market and transported to rural properties in Mountain View County, Rocky View County and Wheatland County. Upon arrival, these animals were unlawfully slaughtered and meat was delivered to stores and residences in Calgary.

Cattle were also slaughtered, but the resulting beef was seized by investigators prior to arriving in Calgary.

Inspections were completed at the farm and store locations. Seven grocery stores were closed and two on-farm slaughter licences were revoked as a result. Four Calgary residents have been charged.

Raed Aljnar, 48, has been charged with failure to have animals inspected prior to slaughter, as well as selling, offering to sell, transporting and delivering uninspected meat, both charges under the Meat Inspection Act Provincial. He also faces charges of dealing livestock without being a licenced livestock dealer, contrary to the Livestock Identification and Commerce Act.

Waeel Alhamawi, 35, has been charged with failure to have animals inspected prior to slaughter, selling, offering for sale, transport and delivering uninspected meat, and dealing without being a licenced livestock dealer.

Amer Alhamawi, 35, has been charged with failure to have animals inspected prior to slaughter, selling, offering for sale, transporting and delivering uninspected meat, and dealing in livestock without being a licenced livestock dealer.

Tareq Alhamawi, 41, has been charged with selling, offering for sale, transporting of delivering uninspected meat.

The four are scheduled to appear in the Alberta Court of Justice in Strathmore on June 24, 2024.

To buy and livestock and livestock products within 30 days, a dealer’s licence is required.

For information on dealer licences, refer to Livestock Identification Services Ltd. Inquiries regarding slaughter and meat inspect can be directed to Alberta Agriculture’s Inspection and Investigation Section.

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About 65,000 square feet of former second-floor office space at the Calgary Tower Centre is being converted into a vertical farming operation that will grow strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, leafy greens and melons.

“The produce we’re really interested in growing is the fruit and berry varieties that we are playing with right now because those are largely not grown here at all,” said Dan Houston, president of Agriplay Ventures, a Calgary company that aims to convert “under-utilized commercial real estate” into vertical farms.

“But ultimately what we are trying to do is basically supplement everything that we can grow that isn’t being grown locally to stabilize our local food supply.”

Aeroponic farming doesn’t use a growth medium like other forms of hydroponics, said Houston. Roots are left exposed and are continually misted with nutrient-rich water.

The key advantage of indoor farming is the ability to grow continuously in a controlled environment, he said.

“Imagine the most amazing farmer who knows everything — like she almost has a psychic connection to what she is growing,” he said. “Much of what makes a good crop is completely out of her control because it’s entirely under the control of the environment. When we separate ourselves from the environment, that stability is maintained. I never have to worry about a bad crop because all the inputs are controlled.”

Indoor farming also allows for creativity, particularly with lighting and temperature, said Houston, adding it’s possible to make plants grow faster with high yields compared to conventional farming. Aeroponics can produce three to five times more crop in about one-tenth of the space with a 98 per cent reduction in water use, he said.

“The other side is we don’t need to spray. We don’t need anything else because if you eliminate the soil, and provide nutrients based on the actual nutrient solution, you’ve got a sterile medium, and our rooms are basically treated as clean rooms. There’s really no vector for the transmission of any pests. That’s one of the ways to control your stability.”

Agriplay’s technology is highly automated, and flexibility is the name of the game — nutrients are controlled depending on what’s being grown at any given time.

“You don’t need to be a 20-year veteran of horticulture to be able to plan this,” said Houston, a veteran of the commercial real estate sector. “You can basically come off the street (and run it). Our largest expense is probably going to be people, then our automation practices will kick in probably by the end of Q1 next year. That allows us to augment the labour so we can grow more food with the same amount of people.”

Houston said downtown Calgary’s office vacancy rate is as high as 50 to 60 per cent — not the frequently used figure of 35 per cent — and converting that space is cheaper than building a major commercial facility. Since the technology his company uses is modular, it can be installed in a variety of settings and locations, he said.

“You can take advantage of existing infrastructure that you don’t have to pay for, and then effectively retrofit it so that every local community can grow what they need, and specifically for farmers in the area, you’re not coming in and taking over something they are already trying to grow.”

Indoor farming typically has high start-up and operating costs but it also has advantages, said Robert Spencer, a horticulture instructor at Olds College.

“The benefits are you can fine-tune everything,” said Spencer. “And you can maximize productivity in a small area and multiply that productivity in terms of multiple crops and multiple layers. But the cons are the costs.”

The key to indoor farming success is finding the sweet spot between crop needs and available space, he said.

“Typically, in an indoor farming space you are looking at short, rapid maturing crops where you can pound out a lot of crops at once or you can have multiple harvests and they don’t take up a huge amount of space,” he said. “It’s highly water efficient and can be very productive.

“We are going to continue to see indoor farming evolve because we’ve got all this empty urban space.”

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Provincial chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw tweeted Friday that “there are five cases linked to Cargill Case Ready Meats in #YYC.”

Provincial health officials “have visited the plant and are making sure necessary measures are in place to reduce transmission and protect workers,” she added, noting “widespread” testing is underway.

Cargill’s three case-ready plants in Canada — also including facilities at Guelph, Ont., and Chambly, Que. — provide packaged beef, pork, poultry, sausage and/or ground beef for retail sale, both in Canada and elsewhere.

The Calgary case-ready plant is separate from the company’s beef cattle slaughter and packing plant at High River, about 70 km south.

The High River plant underwent a two-week shutdown in late April as COVID-19 infected nearly half the plant’s work force of about 2,000 people, in an outbreak causing the deaths of two workers and the father of a plant worker.

The case-ready plant at Chambly, a South Shore suburb of Montreal, also temporarily shut down in May for all employees to be tested when its COVID case count hit 64. The case-ready plant at Guelph reported a few cases of COVID in May.

More details on the Calgary outbreak are available at the Canadian Cattlemen website. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The partial closure follows a positive COVID-19 test by a worker at U.S. chicken company Sanderson Farms announced this week.

The spread of COVID-19 has led to consumer hoarding of staple groceries, making meat processing more lucrative.

Alberta’s health department notified Harmony on Thursday that a worker who had not been on the job for days had tested positive, Harmony spokesman Crosbie Cotton said. The company then sent the other workers in his part of the slaughter area home for 14 days, even though they did not display symptoms.

In a statement, CFIA confirmed it did not provide inspection services on Friday after it learned that a Harmony employee had tested positive for COVID-19.

Federally regulated slaughter plants are not allowed to operate without inspectors present.

The plant at Balzac, just north of Calgary, can process 750 head of cattle per day, much less than bigger Alberta plants owned by Cargill and JBS. While slaughter has halted at Harmony, it is still carrying out other types of processing, Cotton said.

Harmony, owned by the Vesta family, hopes to fully reopen on Monday pending talks with CFIA, he said.

Alberta produces more beef than any other Canadian province.

Meat production is so profitable currently that Cargill and JBS have added Saturday shifts, said Kevin Grier, a meat and livestock analyst.

Meat plants have gone to great lengths to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including assembly of tents and trailers to create greater distance among workers, Grier said.

Harmony screens every worker daily for symptoms and increased cleaning in the plant weeks ago, Cotton said.

CFIA told meat processing plants last week it would reduce the agency’s staffed hours at domestic plants because of capacity constraints.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg.

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Saskatoon-based Federated Co-op announced Monday it will consolidate its production of bulk and bagged cattle, horse, sheep and poultry feed into three of its existing plants, at Calgary, Saskatoon and Moosomin, Sask.

That means winding down operations and shuttering Co-op Feeds’ plants at Melfort, Sask. in August and at Brandon, Man. in October. Media outlets in Manitoba and Saskatchewan on Monday quoted Federated Co-op officials as saying those two closures will affect a total of 10 jobs.

The sixth Co-op Feeds plant, at Edmonton, and its operations are to be transferred to Wetaskiwin, Alta.-based Country Junction Feeds, a division of Wetaskiwin Co-op, at the end of September.

Federated Co-op said Monday it will make “significant capital investments” to modernize Co-op Feeds’ three remaining plants, including new bagging equipment to support “better stitched, open-mouth bags.”

“While we don’t make these decisions lightly, by consolidating manufacturing and taking measures to refocus our resources in the livestock sector, we’re better able to serve our local co-ops and their producer customers across Western Canada well into the future,” Ron Healey, Federated Co-op’s vice-president for ag and consumer business, said in a release.

Federated Co-op said it undertook a “full review” of its feed business — and its decisions to close facilities and make capital investments at others are meant to “address unprecedented competitor consolidation and a changing market in the feed sector.”

The parent co-operative said it’s “making these changes to help ensure that it can continue providing Co-op feed products and services in the long term.”

Shelley Revering, Federated Co-op’s director for feed, said the move “results from industry challenges and in no way reflects the substantial efforts of our plant teams.”

For its part, Country Junction Feeds said in a separate release Tuesday its acquisition of the Edmonton feed milling plant will provide “significant feed mill capacity directed at serving northern Alberta and beyond.”

Combined with its current operation, the company said, the Edmonton plant will allow it to deliver a “wide range of feed and solutions to fit all major livestock and equine species and production approaches, including tailored solutions for different stages of life and both conventional and niche market opportunities.”

Country Junction today bills its Wetaskiwin plant, built in 1973, as the “only full-line feed mill producing organic feeds in Alberta.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The crop protection arm of the German chemical company said Wednesday it wants to move the Canadian head office “closer to customers” after closing its deals last year to buy a “range of businesses and assets” in the sector from Bayer CropScience.

The move is to include “reorganization of several roles” within the head office, the company said.

“The strategic decision to move our headquarters west will amplify our ability to walk alongside Canadian farmers as they look to deliver sustainable agricultural solutions both today and, in the future,” Jonathan Sweat, BASF Ag Solutions’ vice-president for business management in Canada, said in a release.

That said, the company will “maintain its presence” in both Western and Eastern Canada.

BASF’s canola, cereals and pulse business will operate out of the new headquarters in Calgary, while its corn, soy, horticulture, and specialty products portfolio “will continue to be run from the east.”

BASF Ag Solutions’ leadership team will also “continue to span the country” with “key roles” in Calgary and Mississauga as well as in Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg.

In the wake of its takeover last year of U.S. seed and ag chem firm Monsanto, Bayer sold off several major assets to BASF including its traits and breeding for soybeans, cotton and canola.

Significantly for the Canadian market, that included the Liberty (glufosinate ammonium) herbicide business and LibertyLink and InVigor traits, a seed processing facility in Lethbridge, chemical formulation and distribution facilities in Regina and a seed breeding centre in Saskatoon. Those deals alone saw about 300 Bayer employees working in commercial R+D, breeding and production in Canada transfer to BASF.

BASF also bought Bayer’s Poncho, ILeVO, VOTiVO and COPeO seed treatments, its Nunhems global vegetable seeds business, its research and development platform for hybrid wheat, its canola-quality juncea research and its Xarvio digital farming platform.

BASF also reached a deal earlier this year to sell its Clearfield herbicide-tolerant canola system and imazamox/imazapyr herbicides to DowDuPont’s Corteva Agriscience.

Canada’s Competition Bureau had ordered BASF to find a buyer for the Clearfield business, as a condition of its approval for BASF to pick up the LibertyLink system. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The partner companies had made various promises at the time and many in Western Canada were cautious, hoping for the best but not fully knowing what to expect.

A year later, Nutrien has begun to settle into its new role in the agriculture world — and according to retailers and producers it hasn’t really shaken things up all that much.

However, a few aspects of the merger still have many in Western Canada cautiously watching.

“I don’t want to pretend to call it a non-event because there’s always a concern about consolidation and all I can say at the moment is it doesn’t have any obvious impact,” said Ray Redfern of Redfern Farm Services in southwestern Manitoba.

Before the merger, Redfern, an independent crop input retailer, sold both Agrium and PotashCorp products. Most Agrium products were bought directly from the company, while PotashCorp products were bought through a middleman, Agrico.

Since the merger, those purchases have continued as before. Redfern estimated, though, that an increasing portion of purchases are now being bought directly through Nutrien.

On the producer side, the merger remains a wait-and-see game as many of the new company’s changes are still ongoing, according to Todd Lewis, president of the Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS).

“There were some concerns, I know, in some areas with the amalgamations that there was going to be lost capacity, as far as delivery opportunities and picking up fertilizer,” he said.

In July, Nutrien rebranded Agrium’s Crop Production Services retailers as Nutrien Ag Solutions and invested money in upgrades to the retailers.

Lewis expected producers will find out this spring when they go to pick up fertilizer if the changes helped to improve wait times for pickups.

Out of office

There is concern from producers, though, if Nutrien will follow through with all of the promises it made before the merger, according to Lewis.

“A lot (of the news) about (Nutrien) in the media is about the head office here in Saskatchewan. I think Saskatchewan producers see that and kind of wonder about some of the promises that were made, if that wasn’t being kept, are some of the other ones at risk as well.”

Before the merger Nutrien had promised Saskatchewan it would keep Saskatoon, the home city for PotashCorp’s headquarters, as its head office location. PotashCorp was originally a provincial Crown corporation and when it was privatized in 1989, legislation required PotashCorp and any successors to maintain a head office in Saskatchewan.

Since the merger, though, almost all of Nutrien’s executives have been based out of the company’s Calgary office.

One unexpected change made by Nutrien was the company’s decision in February to shut down phosphate production at its facility near Redwater, Alta., northeast of Edmonton.

The Redwater plant, owned by Agrium before the merger, was the only phosphate manufacturer in Canada, while PotashCorp had phosphate facilities in the United States. For cost savings, Nutrien decided to move all of its phosphate production to the U.S.

Independent retailers have been warned by Nutrien they will have to ship phosphate in themselves, Redfern said.

However, for retailers in Manitoba such as Redfern Farm Services, Nutrien has said it will still distribute phosphate product from its facility near Portage la Prairie.

The shift to U.S.-made phosphate products has provided an incentive for more competition in the market. Before the merger, Agrium had the advantage of being the only retailer of Canadian phosphate products.

However, now that all phosphate products will be coming from outside of Canada, other retailers have started to expand their physical presence in Canada.

“(We’re hoping) that added competition here will bring fertilizer prices down, (or) at least keep (them) throttled a little bit anyway because we need good competition to make sure we’re paying a fair price,” Lewis said, adding Nutrien has assured farmers they won’t end up paying more for phosphate because of the closure.

— Ashley Robinson writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Glacier FarmMedia company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting. Follow her at @AshleyMR1993 on Twitter.

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Glacier FarmMedia announced Monday it has acquired and will assume management of the Farm Forum Event, an annual professional development event for farmers, starting with its 20th anniversary show in December in Calgary.

The event, launched in 1999 by agronomic consulting company Agri-Trend Inc., has been hosted by California-based GPS technology firm Trimble since it bought Agri-Trend in 2016.

Financial terms of the agreement with Glacier won’t be disclosed. Trimble remains a “presenting sponsor” for the 20th anniversary event, running Dec. 4-6 at Calgary’s Telus Convention Centre, while GFM handles operations.

The three-day event offers TED Talk-style information sessions, industry panels and a trade show, updating farmers on new innovations and research in nutrients, crop management, finances, markets and equipment, GFM said.

“This event is an excellent fit with Glacier FarmMedia’s strong connections to farmers and crop advisors and compliments our outdoor farm shows and media properties,” GFM president Bob Willcox said Monday in a release.

GFM, an arm of Vancouver-based business information firm Glacier Media and publisher of Canadian farm journals and newspapers including the Western Producer, Country Guide, Grainews, Canadian Cattlemen and others — and operator of this website — is no stranger to ag event planning, having owned and operated Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show at Woodstock, Ont. since 2011.

The company also launched a new annual Prairie outdoor farm show, Ag in Motion, near Langham, Sask. in 2015.

For 2018, the Farm Forum Event is scheduled to include FutureCast panels of experts from academia and industry discussing autonomous machinery and advances in agronomy; a review of three years’ results from the Agri-Prize Canola 100 competition; a new series of breakfast table talks; and breakout learning sessions on topics including on-farm storage, farm equipment, markets, agronomy, soil health and precision agriculture.

Speakers scheduled to appear at the 2018 event include U.S. farmer and blogger Jolene Brown, U.S. farm policy reporter Sara Wyant, market and weather analyst Bruce Burnett of MarketsFarm.com, market analyst Mike Jubinville of ProFarmer Canada, Prairie ag journalists Mike Raine and Ed White and Trimble global business development lead Rob Saik, founder of the Agri-Prize Canola 100 competition.

“This unique event has attracted the industry’s smartest and most entrepreneurial farmers and crop advisors — those who want to be at the cutting edge of new technologies and agronomic strategies that promise to drive productivity,” Darren Howie, director of worldwide sales for Trimble Ag Business Solutions, said in Monday’s release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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