Sask. farmers embracing regionally developed ag tech

At any given time throughout the rising season, Jake Leguee can have a look at an app and see precisely how a lot moisture is within the floor on his farm. 

He has put in half a dozen climate stations throughout his property – third-generation land he farms together with his household close to Filmore, Sask., within the southeast a part of the province – to make his operations extra environment friendly. The stations monitor a wide range of elements that have an effect on crops, akin to air and soil temperature, moisture ranges and wind. The app, developed by a Saskatchewan agriculture know-how firm, helps him interpret the information.

“That has actually made a distinction in how we handle our crops, and it makes us extra environmentally sustainable, as a result of we’re not placing inputs in if we do not want them,” says Leguee.

The federal authorities’s goal to scale back emissions from the usage of fertilizers by 30 per cent beneath 2020 ranges by 2030, which was launched two years in the past, reignited in the public consciousness this spring and summer season due to a sequence of consultations on how that might be achieved. 

However Leguee says Canadian farmers have lengthy been working to make their operations, together with enter use, as environment friendly as attainable, and the willingness to study, try to undertake new know-how is essential to the job. 

That is a part of the rationale why Saskatchewan has change into a hub for rising ag tech, in response to a number of trade consultants. Plus, farmers in that province have a monitor file of adopting new know-how and supporting native startups, says Sean O’Connor, managing director of Emmertech, a $60-million Conexus enterprise capital fund targeted on Saskatchewan ag tech startups. 

“Farmers are essentially the most progressive enterprise homeowners in Canada so far as we’re involved, and so they’re in search of new options,” he says. 

“You may’t construct ag tech firms on Bay Road. They belong in agriculture ecosystems, the place you are instantly interacting with trade itself.”

‘An important place to do enterprise’

Croptimistic Know-how is among the Saskatchewan-based ag tech firms feeling the native love. Launched in 2018 in Naicam, it develops customized soil, water and topography (SWAT) maps for farmers.

“It has been a fantastic place to do enterprise,” says founder Cory Willness, who labored as an agronomist for a few years earlier than launching the corporate. “In Western Canada normally, there are quite a lot of farmers who’re early adopters.”

Croptimistic’s SWAT maps assist farmers to pinpoint precisely which components of their fields require vitamins and which do not, Willness says, which might lead to about 15 per cent extra income. He provided this instance: If a farmer spends $5 million on fertilizer and seed, however 5 per cent of their acres are a write-off, that is $250,000 misplaced.

Croptimistic is in good firm. In Regina, Precision AI has developed artificially clever drones that perform totally automated, precision spraying, and Floor Reality Ag has created know-how that helps farmers analyze and file grain samples in actual time to raised perceive crop high quality. In close by Emerald Park, Crop Intelligence has an app that enables farmers to research information from their climate stations to make higher manufacturing choices, enhancing the standard of their crops and their income.

Higher yield potential

This know-how couldn’t solely permit farmers to economize due to decrease crop inputs, but additionally enhance yield potential, says Dr. Stuart Smyth, the analysis chair in agri-food innovation on the College of Saskatchewan. 

For instance, if a farmer has 320 acres and may decide that illness is just affecting 5 per cent of their crops, the price of making use of fertilizer to all the tract of land could also be larger than that of the crops misplaced. 

“I inform my college students that within the subsequent decade, the usage of these digital applied sciences actually has the potential to essentially revolutionize what manufacturing agriculture appears like,” Smyth says. 

Agriculture accounted for 10 per cent of Canada’s whole emissions in 2019, in response to the federal authorities, and from 2005 to 2019, fertilizer use elevated by 71 per cent.

“It is a win for the farmer, and it’s a win for the environment,” Willness says of enhancing fertilizer effectivity. “If rules occur, or incentives come, these folks will probably be ready.” 

Startup help

On high of farmers eager on tech, Saskatchewan has a supportive startup ecosystem, O’Connor says, with the presence of main trade gamers, akin to Brandt, AGT Meals, Protein Industries Canada, and provincial financial and know-how growth companies – like Innovation Saskatchewan – which have prioritized ag tech.

I typically hear, ‘You will by no means get into farmers – they only do the identical factor the best way their grandfather did.’ However I simply have not seen that in any respect.– Jason McNamee, Lucent Biosciences

Jason McNamee felt the embrace of this ecosystem when he and his Vancouver-based group from Lucent Biosciences pitched their thought for Soileos at a Saskatchewan tech startup competitors in 2019. It is a plant-based fertilizer that advertises advantages like improved yields, prices and environmental sustainability. 

Though they did not win the competitors, they attracted the eye of AGT Meals’ CEO.

“Murad Al-Katib came to visit to me proper after the pitch and stated, ‘Are you saying what I believe you are saying?’ And he gave me his card,” remembers McNamee. 

Months later, AGT and Lucent partnered along with a consortium of different firms to safe a grant from Protein Industries Canada for $19 million.

Lucent is at the moment ending growth of its new manufacturing facility in Rosetown, Sask., which can make use of roughly 20 folks and have capability to fabricate about 7,000 tonnes of product a yr – to start out. They count on Soileos to be out there to Saskatchewan farmers by subsequent spring. 

“The ag tech neighborhood in Saskatchewan is extraordinarily robust,” McNamee says. “I typically hear, ‘You will by no means get into farmers – they only do the identical factor the best way their grandfather did.’ However I simply have not seen that in any respect.”

Overcoming hurdles

There’s nonetheless a protracted highway forward for Saskatchewan’s tech trade to essentially take off, and a few main challenges forward. 

First, extra funding is required, O’Connor says, as demonstrated by the actual fact there was $182 million of enterprise capital deployed into Canadian ag tech final yr, in comparison with $4.9 billion in america. 

One of many challenges of procuring investments on this sector is that it is a much less understood trade, says O’Connor, and this know-how requires extra time to be developed and adopted, that means it takes longer for buyers to see returns. 

Lastly, small companies right here wrestle to rent native workers, notably in software program growth, Willness says. 

“That is in all probability one of many greatest challenges: attempting to compete with everyone else to seek out tech expertise. It is such a sizzling sector.”

Nonetheless, the truth that Saskatchewan is already seeing this diploma of ag tech growth and funding is an effective information story for Western Canada, says O’Connor.

“For as soon as, it would not belong within the main centres. As a substitute of combating over the crumbs, we will get our personal slice of the bread.”