This tech is helping Canadian farmers grow smarter, not harder

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Much has changed since seventh-generation apple farmer Quinton Gibson started working in the family orchard as an eight-year-old.

Back when his grandfather was managing Gibson Farms in Newcastle, Ont. – a 300-acre apple farm an hour east of Toronto – the now 21-year-old says the trees were much bigger and further apart, while caring for them depended on a combination of experience, intuition and guesswork.

“In my grandpa’s days they did the same thing every year and either it worked, or it didn’t, but it was more of an art than a science,” he says. “[Farming] now has switched to being more science than art; there’s actual data to put behind the decisions you make.”

For example, Mr. Gibson says they use soil samples and leaf sap analysis tests to determine fertilizer and nutrient mixtures. The farm also uses an AI-powered camera system that, when attached to an ATV or tractor and driven around the property, uses machine learning to track the plant health and predict the future output of each individual tree.

That technology, which was developed by Toronto-based Vivid Machines Inc., instructs users on when to remove the inner branches that produce smaller fruit, a process known as “thinning.”

“Thinning will make or break your season,” Mr. Gibson explains. “If you under-thin [the branches], you’re going to have too much fruit, and it’s going to end up being really small, and in our market small fruit doesn’t pay, so having tools to help you make those decisions is a big game-changer.”

Vivid Machines is just one of Canada’s many agriculture technology – or agtech – innovators that are helping farmers like Gibson maximize yield, reduce costs and lower emissions.

According to the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, such technologies could unlock $30-billion in economic opportunity for Canada and help fill the 100,000 job vacancies that it estimates will impact the country’s agriculture sector by 2030, while helping Canada meet its emissions targets.

“Land is increasingly expensive, and for people to be able to continue to afford a farm, we need to find ways to be increasingly efficient,” says Jenny Lemieux, chief executive officer at Vivid Machines, who co-founded the company four years ago. “What we’re really talking about is improving food security by increasing the amount of food produced on existing acreage while generating enough profits that somebody could live off of it.”

Ms. Lemieux adds that agtech founders like herself often depend on the hospitality of farmers like Mr. Gibson, who volunteer their farms as testbeds for new tools and technologies.

“Especially when it comes to machine learning, you can’t build models without the data, which means we need farms to let us come in and collect enough data to build algorithms,” she says. “We find Canadian growers are really forward-thinking and very innovative; not only do they help us with access to data, but they really help determine our roadmap and provide insight into what’s working and what isn’t.”

Ms. Lemieux adds that Canada benefits from being the home of a large and well-established agriculture sector and a globally competitive technology sector that has helped pioneer emerging technologies like AI.

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Canadian startups like Vivid Machines also benefit from government-funded grants from organizations like the National Research Council and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

“We’re a massive agricultural nation, and we have fantastic talent coming out of various schools across the nation – both in terms of agriculture and software like machine learning and computer vision,” she says. “I can see an amazing opportunity to become a leader in this space. All the ingredients are there.”

The opportunity to improve output while reducing costs and emissions extends well beyond fruit farming. Canadian dairy cow genetic analysis companies Lactanet Canada and Semex, for example, won a prestigious international award at the IDF World Dairy Summit last year for helping dairy producers measure a cow’s methane production, enabling the breeding of lower-emission cattle.

“That’s a great example of how, as there’s more information that comes out, it is going to help us achieve that carbon reduction,” explains David Wiens, president of Dairy Farmers of Canada.

Mr. Wiens, who runs a family farm southwest of Steinbach, Man., with his brother, Charles, – which includes 240 cows and 1,800 acres of cropland – says the industry operates a lot differently today, thanks to new technologies.

Chief among them, he says, are automated milking machines that not only eliminate the labour intensity of milking, allowing farmers to spend more time managing herd health, but also generate insights into individual cows.

“It tests the quality of the milk, and there’s a built-in mini lab in this milking system too that can give us strong indicators of the health of the cow,” says Mr. Wiens, whose farm was recognized last year as Grand Champion of the Dairy Farmers of Manitoba’s Milk Quality – the first robotic farm in the province to win the honour. “Based on the milk test results, it can indicate if the cow has an infection, for example, and we can address it before any symptoms are showing.”

Dairy farmers also typically need to keep a sharp eye out for any indicators of changes in walking patterns that might indicate lameness, which can be a serious and costly issue if not managed effectively.

Mr. Wiens says new computer vision and AI technologies – like those used by Vivid Machines – will soon be able to detect minute changes in their movements, helping farmers address health issues much sooner and more effectively.

“The tools that we have now are doing things that we could not have dreamt of 25 years ago,” he says. “[The technology] is just speeding up, and we’re seeing more and more of it as time goes on.”

Along with AI-powered camera technologies and machines that can automate some of the agriculture industry’s most physically demanding jobs, both Mr. Wiens and Mr. Gibson are excited about the potential impact of drone technology for a myriad uses, including field management to monitor pests, weeds and diseases in crops.

“Drones now can map vegetation in a field, identify certain weeds, and you can spray those particular plants instead of spraying the entire field,” Mr. Wiens says. Says Mr. Gibson:

“I’ve seen a bunch of different versions of autonomous apple-picking drones. I think it’s probably still five or 10 years out from being commercially adopted, but it’s necessary, for sure.”