Matt Yanick, owner of My Precision Ag Ltd., says the flare that various space weather monitoring stations detected Oct. 3 doesn’t seem to have too caused many issues at all.

“I think it’s just kind of grazing us,” said Yanick.

“We’re not going to get really hammered by it like the one last spring.”

The springtime solar flare Yanick is referring to was an X8.79 flare that occurred May 14.

According to the spaceweatherlive.com website, the flare generated Oct. 3 was the 15th most-powerful of all time, rated as an X9. An X7.1 flare, ranking 26 of all time, was recorded Oct. 1.

X-class solar flares are the largest, according to NASA. The classification system NASA uses ranges from A-class flares to B, C, M and then X.

“Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output,” says a NASA backgrounder on solar flares.

Spaceweatherlive.com lists the top 50 solar flares of all time, and the largest was an X40+ that occurred Nov. 4, 2003.

“Associated with (that) flare was an ejection of a billion tons or more of gas from the sun’s tenuous outer atmosphere, or corona,” NASA said at the time.

“But because the flare occurred on the limb of the sun, pointing away from the Earth, the charged particles it emits will probably only glance off the Earth.”

A solar flare is a tremendous explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in “twisted” magnetic fields, usually above sunspots, is suddenly released, according to the European Space Agency (ESA) website.

“In a matter of just a few minutes, they heat material to many millions of degrees and produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays and gamma rays,” the ESA says.

It’s a bit of a mystery why this flare hasn’t caused a greater disruption.

Yanick says his reading indicates scientists still have difficulty tracking these flares as they move toward Earth.

It helps that lots of farmers are done harvest by now and those doing fieldwork, like harrowing, don’t require GPS.

“It wasn’t horrendous, nothing really hit until (Sunday) night,” said Yanick.

“The northern lights kind of showcased that.”

Yanick says there’s not a lot producers can do to guard against interference from solar flares.

Running a higher-accuracy system can help, he said. Farmers running those typically fare a lot better. However, had this flare hit us head on, Yanick says it likely would have knocked out everything anyway.

“With the flare that occurred last spring, even the best systems were having issues,” said Yanick.

“There was no way around it.”

Despite the magnitude of this most recent flare, Yanick says he figures we may get lucky this time round.

“There’s going to be some minor interference that started (Sunday) night,” said Yanick.

“There will likely be more, but nothing major — minor to moderate at best.

“For me, that’s a really good thing.”

The post Recent solar flare has little impact on farmers appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Time to freehand the field,” wrote Wawanesa, Man., farmer Simon Ellis in a post on X on Friday. “At least this field isn’t against the highway.”

Responses to his post suggested farmers in Kansas, Central Saskatchewan, and Rivers, Man., were also having issues.

Via text, Ellis said as he switched fields on Friday, he noticed his GPS wasn’t matching up.

“Initially there were large misses or large over lap. Up to half the air seeder width,” he said. “That was with the auto steer engaged.”

Ellis said he uses the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). By Saturday, the issues had mostly smoothed out, he added.

The New York Times reported yesterday that farmers across the American Midwest had also suffered from GPS outages, with some having to halt seeding entirely.

On Friday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put out a media bulletin warning that it was following a series of solar flares and coronal mass ejections that had begun on May 8. It warned that the storm conditions could last throughout the weekend.

Coronal mass ejections are “explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s corona,” NOAA said. “They cause geomagnetic storms when they are directed at Earth. Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations.”

The solar activity also caused brilliant aurora borealis, or “northern lights” to be visible Friday night.

NOAA alerts as late as today suggested the solar activity was ongoing.

Farmers using WAAS may see further interruption to their signal as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which administers the civilian-use GPS network, had plans to switch one of its WAAS satellites into test mode starting yesterday and lasting until June 7. Its other two satellites remain in operation.

The post ‘Solar storm’ knocks out GPS signals over weekend appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

And Brian Tischler, the central Alberta grain farmer who created AgOpenGPS, is fine with that.

“I don’t make a penny and I don’t care. I make OK money farming. I got enough,” said Tischler, who farms near Manville, west of Vermilion.

“And this is just plain fun. I’m a curious guy and am curious about what we can build, what we can contribute.”

AgOpenGPS is based on open source code: publicly available code that runs a given computer application. But Tischler has a simpler explanation.

“Think of source code as a recipe to make chocolate chip cookies. But you might not like chocolate chip cookies. You might just like Smartie cookies,” he said.

“So you change the open source code to include Smarties and exclude chocolate chips. Now you have a ‘fork’ of the original software and you have your own personalized version. But the key is there was the original chocolate chip cookie recipe to start with. So all you had to do was change out the Smarties.”

Most commercially available tractors are like boxed cookies, said Tischler. Owners don’t have access to the recipe. Companies often withhold key details of computer-based components and only licensed technicians are allowed to adjust or fix them. Most farmers are OK with that, Tischler said.

“Tractors already come with GPS. They come with a loaded system for controlling your air seeder. It’s a package unit. So why would you want to putz around with AgOpenGPS?”

One reason might be that technical support is frequently just a forum post away, thanks to growing global interest in open source farming.

“Any user anywhere in the world can post ‘well, I had this problem. I had this error.’ Within 10 minutes the version on GitHub is updated. That’s happened a million times.” (GitHub is the online repository where the AgOpenGPS code is stored.)

Tischler created AgOpenGPS six years ago when frustration met insufficient funds.

He couldn’t track his seeding history with his existing GPS equipment and section control was prohibitively expensive.

“We had an RTK system — it was an old Outback system. To add on section control was pretty costly. I would have had to update the RTK system and the GPS and the Autosteer.”

Being a techie already (he has electronics and engineering degrees from NAIT), Tischler scoured the internet for source code that might help. He didn’t have any luck.

“There was nothing in open source to do with any sort of precision agriculture: zero,” he said. “It was all a big secret. Everything had to be researched from theoretical theses written by PhD students, Masters and engineering students.”

So he scrabbled together open source code from the aviation and autonomous car industries, using his own code as the agricultural connective tissue. The result was a system that enabled sectional control, kept his tractor in a straight line, and kept a record of where he seeded and where he didn’t.

AgOpenGPS has come a long way since then, to the point where Tischler says it can do “anything.” He developed a since-abandoned fully autonomous tractor with open source code. It can be seen in action here.

But today AgOpenGPS also offers the ability to virtually ‘create’ a field and forge guidance maps using software just about anyone can access.

“You can create a field using imported tiles from Bing Maps. You can either draw it online on the internet, picking points around the outside of a field, for example, or you can drive the field,” Tischler said.

“Then you have a boundary. You know where that field is in the world.”

At that point the user can generate guidance lines based on that boundary.

“It’ll turn the equipment or application off and on with section control. It will also do hydraulic lift. So basically once you have that boundary and you get started in the field, you don’t have to touch the tractor until you’re done.”

AgOpenGPS can also create variable rate maps using software such as Microsoft Paint (packaged with all versions of Windows) and Google Earth. This can be a real time-saver, said Tischler.

“As a farmer, you know your field. You know where you want to put more or less fertilizer. You know where it tends to lodge and so you might cut back a little bit where it does lodge or maybe add a little bit more where it needs a little more and then just let AgOpenGPS control it.

“And so we get 95 per cent of the outcome with five per cent of the work instead of endlessly sending away yield maps. You just use some basic farmer knowledge, create that variable rate map and then just go fertilize.”

Although North American farmers have largely chosen “the boxed cookie” when it comes to their ag equipment, AgOpenGPS is proving more popular globally, particularly in Europe.

A core development team of about 20 people from around the world decides what to add or adjust in the central AgOpenGPS project.

“It’s really a collaboration of many different ideas coming together and that’s where innovation happens. You compare that to a big company where you know anyone’s kind of afraid to come forward with an idea.”

But even though the core project is guided by a team, it doesn’t stop anyone from downloading the code and adjusting it to their own needs. (That’s the “fork” Tischler referred to in his cookie analogy).

He cited an example of a producer who uses a modified version of AgOpenGPS to perform a unique and delicate operation.

“There’s one guy on Twitter using AgOpenGPS to roll pumpkins gently into a windrow using a rock rake. There’s a tractor driving right beside this row of pumpkins, like two centimetres away, and he’s zipping along.”

That’s all great, but say you’re a producer with basic computer literacy. You may not even know what source code is, let alone how to modify it. No problem, said Tischler.

“You download the software and run the exe file just like you would with any other program. It’s just like downloading Minesweeper.”

Sourcing and installing the hardware is trickier, however. A printed circuit board is needed — usually made in China — and mounted with all the components to interface with the tractor and tell it to, for example, steer left or right.

“One of the biggest challenges we face today is parts shortage,” said Tischler. “Say you spark your board. You can’t get this chip. You can’t get this capacitor. You can’t get this connector. That’s been just mind-bogglingly difficult.”

An all-in-one module would fix the problem and make it easier for farmers to use, he said, but that’s a challenge. It’s easier to just ship and receive parts throughout the world.

“I keep thinking it should be easier for the farmer to use the (full) system but I keep butting my head against European regulations and trade regulations and import duties and taxes and recycling charges and limitations and rules.

“I understand why they do it, but there’s a whole group of people making life very difficult for any sort of innovation.”

The post Alberta farmer powers ahead with free code for farm equipment appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Despite some setbacks, she remains excited about what the technology has to offer, she said.

Mundt and husband Brenton are part of a pilot project testing the Australian-made Ceres Tag. Unlike other tracking technology, the tags don’t require any extra infrastructure because the data they generate is tracked by low-orbit satellites (which means they can even transmit data through tree cover). Alongside GPS location data, the tags also monitor ambient temperature and animal activity levels.

Mundt said that the mapping data (accessed through an app called Aglive) has been the most useful for her 150-head cow-calf operation — despite the herd staying in the home pasture all winter.

“We can set a fence perimeter on the software so that, should the tag cross the physical fence and a cow gets out, it sends us an alert,” said Mundt, adding she’s keen to see how the location data will also save on time and fuel costs once the herd moves to larger summer pastures.

Because the cows were kept close to home, the Ceres Tag’s cold-weather limitations weren’t an issue. Designed in Australia (where the coldest temperature ever recorded was -23 C), the tags are designed to shut off and conserve battery power at -21 C. However, the cold snaps didn’t kill them, said Mundt, and the tags came on again without problems when the weather warmed up.

Tagging was also a bit of an issue as the dual-pin tags contain delicate technology and require a special applicator and a gentle touch.

“You can’t just crunch it as hard as possible,” she said. “As experienced as we are at tagging cattle, I guess there’s maybe just a bit more for us to learn here.”

The tags also only upload data every four hours, which is less than Mundt would like — although since each one uploads independently, the gap between herd-locating pings isn’t that long.

“Even though we only had such a small sample of our herd tagged, it was really interesting to notice where they went, because that did seem to be generally where the herd was going to,” she said.

But the biggest barrier is cost.

An intro kit — 10 tags and an applicator — goes for US$2,999, although the Canadian Agricultural Partnership’s Farm Technology Program (www.tinyurl.com/bp99f86u) covers GPS tags and trackers.

“And that really makes a big difference because if you didn’t have this government funding available, then I would say that it’s probably out of reach for quite a few ranchers,” said Mundt.

Cost is definitely an issue, agreed Susan Markus, a livestock research scientist at Lakeland College.

“All these technologies, they’re expensive,” she said. “We’re trying to see, is there some other value-added components to these tags besides just knowing where the animal is?”

Because the tags measure movement and temperature, they have been described as a “fitbit for cows” and in her study, Markus wanted to see if they could monitor breeding activities — specifically, what was happening when a bull was close to a cow.

But again, the four-hour upload interval didn’t offer frequent-enough data points to get that picture.

Still, monitoring cows via direct-to-satellite GPS has a lot of potential, she said.

“The whole GPS concept is extremely promising because ranchers don’t want to have other infrastructure and towers and other things set up to capture that data,” said Markus, adding the Ceres Tag might suit producers who require less frequent location data.

While this particular tag didn’t have what Lakeland researchers were looking for, they will continue to study GPS cattle tags, and other monitoring technologies.

For example, they are currently studying a smart Rumen Bolus from a Hungarian company called Moonsyst International. It can detect heats, monitor calving events and track changes in behaviour that indicate health troubles. It can even track water intake via an animal’s temperature.

“If they’re not drinking water over a period of time, we don’t get those spikes in the decrease in the temperature,” said Markus. “And in the one case, the water had frozen up and there was no water to be drank. And they’re in a pen and there’s no snow to be licked. So they obviously had no water for the day and so just to know that was extremely useful.”

However, the Moonsyst bolus is not GPS enabled, and so cattle must be relatively close to a base station (which the company says has a range of 500 metres).

And it’s the tracking capability of the Ceres Tag that intrigued Mundt, who noted it would be particularly useful for ranchers who have issues losing animals or grazing them in hard-to-reach areas.

The post Satellite tracking of cows still a work in progress appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Regina-based Brandt announced Tuesday it has closed its previously-announced deal to buy the assets of GeoShack Canada — two weeks after Dallas-based GeoShack declared that “a mutually beneficial deal… has not been attained.”

GeoShack has been the “long-time exclusive supplier” for Topcon Positioning Systems equipment in Ontario, including sales, service, and rentals of GPS and other equipment for the ag, construction, survey and engineering industries, through locations in Toronto, Ottawa and London.

California-based Topcon’s agricultural products include precision seeding, spraying and harvest equipment as well as autosteer and guidance systems.

Brandt, which already had a “pre-existing Topcon footprint” in Western and Atlantic Canada and last month made a deal with Topcon for distribution rights to the Quebec market, is now “the exclusive dealer for Topcon Positioning Systems and other complimentary tools and technology for the entire Canadian market.”

GeoShack, in a separate release Monday, said the deal also makes Brandt “likely Canada’s largest geopositioning technology supplier.” Its staff in Ontario are employed by Brandt “effective immediately,” GeoShack added.

“The combination of… GeoShack’s Ontario-based team and Brandt’s national infrastructure is going to be powerful for our Ontario customers,” GeoShack president Scott Beathard said in the same release.

“We’ve worked very hard to build strong relationships and a solid operation in the Ontario market over the last 16 years and we’re completely confident that Brandt will continue to grow the business and provide unmatched value for clients in that market.”

“We’ve worked hard to make this a great deal for our survey, engineering and construction customers in Ontario and Quebec,” Brandt CEO Shaun Semple said Tuesday.

“Brandt’s 56 locations from coast to coast to coast coupled with GeoShack’s strategic locations in Ontario will position Brandt, with the industry’s largest team of experts, to provide an unmatched degree of aftersales support,” Brandt said.

Brandt’s deal with GeoShack parent Ultara Holdings also includes Inteq Distributors, a “complementary business” with a distribution centre at Exeter, Ont. providing sales and service on “an extensive selection of construction instruments, optical equipment, survey supplies and accessories.”

Both the GeoShack and Inteq brands and operations in Ontario will be “transitioned” into Brandt Positioning Technology, the company said.

Neither Brandt nor GeoShack said exactly why the deal had appeared to die late last month, nor did either company say what had happened to revive it. Privately-held Brandt did not disclose the financial terms of the final deal.

Formed in 1995, GeoShack expanded to Ontario in 2003 when it merged the Toronto- and Exeter-based businesses of Laserline Ontario with those of three other independent distributors in Texas, Ohio and Michigan.

Outside Ontario, GeoShack will still have 16 U.S. locations in eight states. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Brandt closes GeoShack deal, locks up Topcon sales in Canada appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The Regina-based Brandt Group announced Wednesday it has reached a deal to buy the assets of GeoShack Canada Co. and the Canadian assets of Inteq Distributors, both owned by Dallas-based Ultara Holdings.

In Ontario, GeoShack is billed as the “long-time exclusive supplier” for Topcon Positioning Systems equipment, including sales, service, and rentals of GPS and other equipment for the ag, construction, survey and engineering industries, through locations in Toronto, Ottawa and London.

California-based Topcon’s agricultural products include precision seeding, spraying and harvest equipment as well as autosteer and guidance systems.

Formed in 1995, Geoshack expanded to Ontario in 2003 when it merged the Toronto- and Exeter-based businesses of Laserline Ontario with those of three other independent distributors in Texas, Ohio and Michigan. Outside Ontario it will still have 16 U.S. locations in eight states.

The GeoShack deal, on top of Brandt’s “pre-existing Topcon footprint” in Western and Atlantic Canada — and a new separate agreement in which Topcon has assigned distribution rights to Brandt for the Quebec market — makes Brandt “the exclusive dealer for Topcon construction and geopositioning products for all of Canada.”

“The territorial expansion of the Brandt operation will scale our presence and penetration in Canada,” Eduardo Falcon, general manager for Topcon’s geopositioning group, said in a separate release.

Brandt’s other acquisition, Inteq Distributors, is a “complementary business” with a distribution centre at Exeter, Ont. providing sales and service on “an extensive selection of construction instruments, optical equipment, survey supplies and accessories.”

The deal with Ultara is expected to close June 26, giving Brandt what it calls a “comprehensive retail footprint to supply premium geopositioning equipment to Canadian construction and forestry contractors, engineering firms and survey companies.”

“We are very excited to add this highly respected team along with these key product lines and support services for our customers in Ontario and Quebec,” Brandt CEO Shaun Semple said in Wednesday’s release.

“The combination of the GeoShack team and Brandt’s national infrastructure is going to be powerful for Ontario customers,” GeoShack president Scott Beathard said in the same release.

“We’ve worked very hard to build strong relationships and a solid operation in the Ontario market over the years and we’re completely confident that Brandt will continue to grow the business and provide unmatched value for clients in that market.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Brandt buys GeoShack’s Ontario business appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into smart equipment that knows what it’s doing but can’t talk to each other,” said the Lacombe-area farmer at the recent AgSmart event at Olds College.

“There’s so much data now available to us on many, many different platforms — all the way from your grain company’s platform and your accounting software to the bin monitoring software you use.

“But all the data in the world doesn’t matter if it’s not easy to disseminate to make better decisions.”

Big data has been hailed as the future of agriculture for nearly a decade, and it’s easy to see why. As margins become razor thin and land prices skyrocket, farmers need to do more with less — maximizing every inch of rain every pound of fertilizer and every single seed — to make a profit.

But at this point, farmers have picked the low-hanging fruit. Now, they’re looking for smaller tweaks that, when added up, can lead to big savings on the balance sheet.

“It’s all about being more profitable. It’s about maximizing the products that we’re using and being more efficient with our time and resources,” said Marvin Talsma, product marketing manager at the Climate Corporation.

“Everything we’re doing is trying to make the next crop better. We’re trying to learn along the way and tweak things, whether it’s a fertility rate, seeding rate, seed placement, or water management.

“We’re trying to improve, but without knowing what we’re doing, it’s hard to evaluate and make those decisions.”

That’s where data comes in — and the average farm collects a lot of it. Yield maps, soil moisture probes, variable-rate technology, drones, and GPS all generate data.

But as Bruggencate points out, whether that data is useful is another question altogether.

“That data needs to be usable,” said Talsma, one of the speakers at AgSmart, an event designed in part to give farmers a better sense of the practicality of new ag technology.

“Every plant in that field is a potential data point. So how can we use that plant to change what we’re doing in the field?”

Making it pay off

That’s one of the biggest challenges on Holly Johansen’s farm.

“Technology on the family farm has really become a decision-making tool — you can literally be making on-the-spot management decisions from anywhere in the world,” the Wetaskiwin-area farmer said during her visit to AgSmart.

“On our farm, lots of the pinch points we have will be corrected by technology. But how do we turn yield mapping into profitability mapping?”

There are no easy answers for that yet.

As new technologies come online, new platforms are also introduced into the mix — and these platforms don’t always play nice together.

“If you’re running all green, it works fine, but we’ve got a rainbow farm, and those things don’t always mesh,” said Bruggencate.

“There are just too many platforms needed to access too many different pieces of data out there. So the challenge to industry is to get some platforms and some co-ordination with this.”

Bruggencate invested in Climate FieldView (the platform created by Climate Corporation) a few years ago, and so far, “it’s fairly colour blind,” he said.

“We’re seeing progress on that front, but that’s an area that really needs to be worked on with all the different platforms and tech companies.”

Airdrie-area farmer Larry Woolliams was so discouraged by the lack of co-operation between the platforms he was using that he decided to build his own.

“I couldn’t find anything that really fit our needs, so we’ve started to build our own platform,” said Woolliams, who launched Crop Boss earlier this year with three business partners.

“Not everything fits together, so we wanted to customize a platform to work for everybody. We wanted to try and build something that would play well with other programs and make it more universal to fill this gap.”

Crop Boss was designed to replace the myriad spreadsheets and software Woolliams was using to make his farming decisions. The tool itself tracks everything from daily production to finances in a more integrated way, allowing farmers to make better decisions more quickly and easily.

“If you’re doing stuff real time, it’s going to save you days — if not weeks — of sitting in front of a computer trying to dissect all this stuff,” he said.

“If we can make this stuff connect so that it all talks, it’s going to be big on the savings. It will give you time to focus on other avenues in your organization, grow your business, and spend time with your family.”

Data-driven decisions

Using Crop Boss, Woolliams was able to go paperless last year, and this spring, the tool was launched for other producers.

“This is still relatively new, but it’s the wave of the future,” he said. “All of this stuff needs to talk. It needs to be universal. There’s a whole other side to this coming that’s going to take ag to a whole new level.”

Talsma agrees.

“We believe that this digital ag space is the next breakthrough in agriculture. It’s going to get us to that next step in our performance,” he said. “And in some cases, it’s not on the horizon — it’s here today.”

Climate FieldView is one example, he said. As a relatively well-integrated platform, Climate FieldView has focused on building partnerships with companies to make it easier to move data from platform to platform.

Talsma likens it to professional hockey players watching post-game tapes of their performance to see what they can improve on — but farmers only get one game a year, so they have to make it count.

“We have one chance to put a crop in the ground the right way at the right time. The end of the year is when we look at our playbook,” he said.

“These digital pieces give us the opportunity to watch game film as the game is progressing.”

As a result, on-farm data is more useful and usable than ever before, despite the platform limitations. Farmers no longer need binders full of yield maps or financial records that sit on a shelf and gather dust, he said.

“With these digital tools, you can carry around years of information on your smartphone and access it anywhere in the world.”

Targeted prescriptions

And things like artificial intelligence and machine learning are edging agriculture ever closer to a day where the right platform could make targeted prescriptions for a given farm.

“If the computer knows my crop rotation history, the hybrids I’ve grown in the past, their susceptibility to different diseases, the soil type I’m on, and the weather events coming, we can use that,” said Talsma.

“If all that information is in one place, I as a farmer could get a notification that says, ‘Based on everything we know, you need to go out and scout this field for disease.’

“But we’re not there yet. This is where we need to go.”

And we’re getting there, slowly but surely, said Brianna Elliot a “techgronomist” at Olds College Smart Farm.

“I think that’s what the next few years are going to be about — integrating this technology at the field level,” she said.

The college is currently comparing different platforms on the marketplace to see how data is being collected, whether the platforms are able to share data with each other, and how often this data actually comes in a usable form.

“We need to be able to make decisions with this data and see that return on investment,” said Elliot.

“Farmers can get spreadsheets and spreadsheets of data all day long, but what are they going to do with it? And do they have time to do anything with it?

“You need to be able to take that data and use it right now in the field in real time. But some of these technologies have a few hurdles to get over.”

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution that’s going to work for everyone, she added.

“In our comparisons, they all have their strong points — it’s just about finding what works for you,” said Elliot.

“I don’t know that there’s one that stands above everything else. You’ve just got to find what works for you on your farm.”

The post The farm data overload needs a fix appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Soil sampling gives you an evaluation of the nutrient levels in your soil,” said Mark Cutts of Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Stettler office. “If you know that you need nitrogen or phosphorus in the crop, then you can counter those when it comes time to put your blends together or get it from an agronomist.”

Soil sampling can also determine soil pH, soil solubility and organic matter, he added.

And while some producers are thinking about other soil health factors such as soil aggregation, water infiltration rates, and other attributes, it’s still a minority who are taking soil samples.

Cutts isn’t sure why that is.

“From my perspective, that information is very helpful in figuring out your requirements for the next crop,” he said. “Soil pH and organic matter is very good information to have.”

Agronomists do a fairly high number of tests, often using sampling or coring machines while many producers use hand augers. Whatever the method, it’s important to get enough samples, said Cutts.

“The key with soil sampling is to collect from representative areas of the field,” he said. You should stay away from areas in the field that are extra wet.

And, of course, you have to act on what the soil tests reveal.

“If there are samples (of fields) that are low yielding, make sure that you can figure out how to manage them,” he said.

While labs aren’t doing soil sampling that differently, there have been some changes in technology. GPS allows producers to go back to the same area of the field and sample again, which produces a more consistent dataset, he noted.

The post Interest in soil health is growing, but testing still lags appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

And he’s rolling it out for the first time in July 18 to 20 at Ag in Motion (AIM), Western Canada’s outdoor farm show now in its third season.

“Everyone else is working on adapting the tractor technology to be autonomous, where this takes a grassroots look at it and says, why do we need a tractor?” says Beaujot, president and founder of SeedMaster, which has been developing the concept over the past three years through sister company Dot Technology Corp.

Not only does the DOT autonomous field implement platform eliminate the need for the hefty drawing power of a four-wheel-drive tractor, it eliminates axles, wheels and hitches on most field implements by essentially turning them into self-propelled units.

“The main reason I wanted to avoid having a tractor is if you take a 500-horsepower tractor and you drive it through the field, between 20 per cent and a third of its power requirement is to move itself. It has to have all the weights on it for the traction to pull whatever is behind,” Beaujot said in a recent interview.

“In this case, the weight of the implement and weight of the grain, or seed or fertilizer — whatever you put into it — satisfies the traction requirement.”

It takes only seconds for the U-shaped ‘prime mover’ operating on four independent hydrostatic wheels to sidle up to a specially designed implement such as seeder, sprayer or grain cart and hydraulically lift it onto its platform.

By carrying the implement instead of pulling it, it provides the same mobility — while being ‘driven’ remotely.

Beaujot says it potentially reduces the capital costs farmers have tied up in equipment, in addition to offering double-digit cuts in the cost of fuel and labour.

“I suspect that we would be looking at a 20 to 30 per cent saving per foot of implement,” he said.

The autonomous platform can be controlled by a remote operator or programmed through GPS with a ‘flight plan’ for the field or part of the field. The unit shuts itself off if it deviates from its programmed path or if it encounters obstacles. The operator can monitor and adjust the programming for several units operating simultaneously through a mobile device.

The unit is powered by a 160-hp Cummins diesel engine, which Beaujot said is more than adequate for operating a 30-foot seeder at speeds up to six m.p.h.

The company plans to conduct field tests throughout 2017 and make the first units available to a select number of farmers in 2018.

Full commercialization will follow. It also plans to make the platform accessible to all implement manufacturers for development of DOT Ready implements.

Better and safer

Beaujot has seen the trends to larger farms continue on the Prairies, which has coincided with fewer experienced operators available to do the work. He said this technology is part of the solution.

“I am convinced that if we put side by side any operator and a machine like this that is properly set up and you run them both for 17 hours, like farmers try to do at seeding time, that it will not only operate better and safer, but it will do a better job.”

The DOT autonomous field implement platform will be featured in live demonstrations at 2:45 p.m. daily at the AIM show site located 15 minutes north of Saskatoon on Highway 16.

It’s just one of many new innovations and hundreds of exhibits at this 325-acre site showcasing new developments in crop or livestock technology, equipment and agribusiness services.

Other innovations at AIM

Other new innovations being launched include:

• Michelin North America’s EvoBIB tire, a ‘two in one tire’ that adapts its profile and footprint according to the farmer’s requirements. At ultra-low pressures, the contact patch increases to reduce soil compaction, while enabling the power transmission to be increased. At higher pressures, the tire transforms so that only the central continuous band grips the road, giving a smoother vibration-free ride, fuel savings and improved safety.
• Farmers Edge will showcase its FarmCommand Scouting system — an app-based tool for monitoring and addressing field conditions. It is the first mobile scouting app that’s integrated with the FarmCommand, giving growers an integrated and seamless experience. It is also launching Corn Manager and its Next-Gen FarmCommand farm management tool.
• In the livestock sector, there is Libra TMR by AgriMatics, a tablet-based livestock ration weighing and data management system. It measures the exact weight of ingredients going into a feed mixer, tracks and measures what has been fed to each pen and allows users to export data from the app through email.
• Northern Strands Co. Inc. is launching its Grain Bin Fall Protection system, which is designed to protect a worker from a fall while inspecting or repairing a bin.
• PolyWest will introduce Safe-Fill, designed to prevent cross-contamination between water fill stations and the user’s tank.
• Agroliquid is releasing the Flavanol Polymer Technology, which is designed to optimize a grower’s fertilizer investments by providing a product that doesn’t tie up in the soils. Virtually all of what is applied is taken up by the plant. An added benefit of this technology is that nutrients are protected and resist the losses that can happen when applied in stressful environments.
• DirectSpray Nozzle is introducing an innovative pressure washer attachment designed to quickly reach where a normal pressure washer nozzle can’t. You can change the nozzle from straight to 45, to 90 degrees on the fly. No tools are needed.

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The latest release from StatsCan’s 2016 Census of Agriculture showed farmers were particularly keen to jump into new technology if it improved the efficiency of their operations or their bottom lines.

StatsCan spokesperson Erik Dorff said the agency has been going through old census reports dating back to 1871, showing farmers have long been ahead of the curve when it comes investing in new technology.

“As we look through what we collect on the census, we always see that farmers have been fairly aggressive in adopting new technology,” he said in a phone interview.

From using horses to pull plows, to ever-increasing engine horsepower, to zero tillage, to seed genetics, Dorff said farmers are consistently early adopters of change.

“Farmers have been really innovative businessmen in applying and leveraging technology to make their operations more efficient.”

The StatsCan report showed large-scale farmers are most likely to adopt new technology, with the percentage of farms that report technology use as part of their operations growing as sales increase.

On farms with sales of $1 million or more, 95.9 per cent reported using at least one of the technologies listed. That compares to 42.7 per cent for farms with sales of less than $10,000. On farms with sales of $100,000-$249,999, 73.3 per cent reported using one of the technologies listed.

Those include robotic milking, greenhouse automation, automated animal housing environmental controls, automated animal feeding, GIS mapping, automated steering, GPS technology, smartphones, tablets or computers for their farm operations.

On grain and oilseed farms, 48.6 per cent reported the use of automated steering, 62.5 per cent used GPS and 15.8 per cent used GIS mapping.

The more acres farmed by grains and oilseed farmers, the more likely they were to adopt these technologies.

On farms reporting 10,000 acres or more of cropland, 93.6 per cent used automated steering, 97.1 per cent used GPS and 52.7 per cent used GIS mapping.

The report also noted more farms are using larger and more advanced equipment.

The value of farm machinery and equipment rose 15.4 per cent across the country from the last census in 2011, to $53.9 billion in 2016.

Larger tractors and other equipment enable farmers to complete field work more quickly, the report noted.

“Well, we’ve got some really, really cool technology that is being deployed on the farm,” said Dorff.

“The technology does allow operators, where suitable, to be much more productive, to really do more with less.”

In the report, the average total value of machinery per farm registered at $278,405 in 2016, up 22.7 per cent since 2011.

On livestock operations, hog and pig, and poultry and egg operations were mostly likely to use automated environmental controls for housing and automated feeding. In 2015, 53.6 per cent of hog and pig farms reported they used automated animal feeding and 43.3 per cent of poultry and egg type farms reported the use of automated environmental controls.

Nationwide, 11.1 per cent of livestock farms reported the use of automated feeding systems and 10.2 per cent reported the use of automated environmental controls.

For dairy, 8.9 per cent reported robotic milking technology. Not surprisingly, the percentage of farms that reported having robotic milkers increased as the number of cows increased. However, the number peaked at 17.4 per cent on operations milking between 201 and 500 cows. Operations with 501 cows or more and having robotic milking machines declined to 13.1 per cent.

The StatsCan report said the initial investment to buy robotic milkers for a large herd, combined with the particular management challenges of a large herd may outweigh the benefits for large operations.

Canada-wide, 66.3 per cent of farms reported using technology of some type. That could include anything from using computers or smartphones for farm management, to GPS technology, auto steering or automated animal feeding.

— Terry Fries writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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