As technology continues to influence the way we live, work and farm, smart farms and technology development have a critical role to play in the global grand challenge of feeding a growing population with fewer resources while reducing the environmental impact.
Technology integration in the agriculture industry is needed to accelerate the progress and innovation to grow Canada’s ag industry. Within broadacre, dryland crop and beef production, applied research is focused on:
At Olds College, technology integration on the Smart Farm is divided into three areas of research: Smart Agriculture, Digital Agriculture and Autonomous Agriculture Equipment.
Smart Ag applied research is focused on evaluating, demonstrating and validating agriculture technologies, tools and practices in order to provide manufacturers and users with information on their functionality, accuracy and value — particularly for broadacre, dryland farming in Alberta soil and climate conditions.
The research team collaborates on industry-driven applied research related to smart ag technologies with the goals of saving producers time or money, improving efficiency, and improving environmental sustainability. These technologies include prescription maps, trace gas analyzers, drone and satellite imagery, soil moisture probes, soil nutrient sensors, disease and pest monitoring systems, weather stations, in-bin monitoring systems, rural connectivity solutions and data collection.
The Smart Ag applied research team is also contracted by companies who need support in validating a recently developed innovative product, technology or process. Data and information collection methods have advanced and are allowing researchers to draw informed conclusions faster to provide better guidance to the agriculture industry.
Smart and precision agriculture are heavily reliant on data, and the Smart Farm prioritizes the collection, integration and utilization of agricultural data for evidence-based decision making to enhance farming decisions.
Ag digitalization represents one of the greatest opportunities — and one of the largest challenges — for agriculture producers. Gathering the right amount of the right information, and then having a way to use it to enhance farming decisions, requires technology that producers can easily understand and manage.
Olds College of Agriculture & Technology has been developing a Digital Ag Strategy that provides guidance for the collection, integration and utilization of agricultural data for evidence-based decision making. This strategy also supports the research and work on the Smart Farm, along with industry partners and the College as a whole.
The College uses advanced digital technologies and tools to enable the collection of millions of data points from individual fields on the Smart Farm. More information helps to understand fields and variability better. These provide training for students, and are used for applied research and the development of new, next generation technologies.
Olds College of Agriculture & Technology is conducting future-focused research on the evaluation and improvement of economic, environmental, and logistical benefits of autonomous agricultural equipment for broadacre crop production.
The Smart Farm is on its fourth consecutive growing season using the Raven OMNiPOWER™ platform for significant seeding, spreading and spraying duties. Over three years of research with autonomous farming equipment has helped the team run the equipment more efficiently, get more acreage coverage, and improve field efficiencies and uninterrupted hands-off operation. As team members continue to gather more and more data during research activities, they gain more insights into the performance of autonomous equipment on the farm. While OMNiPOWER operates on its own after a mission is programmed, it requires supervised autonomy which means it must stay within line-of-sight of the team.
The Smart Ag research team also started the 2023 growing season with a brand new OMNiPOWER 3200 platform — a gift-in-kind from Raven Industries, Inc. — utilizing technology and equipment to farm more efficiently. Using the OMNiPOWER 3200, researchers are planning to get an increased amount of acreage coverage, expand data collection to further improve efficiencies with autonomous equipment and map cellular connectivity in real time.
Olds College students also receive hands-on learning opportunities by operating, studying and using data from OMNiPOWER on the Smart Farm and in the classroom. The precision agriculture programs at the College, and the inclusion of OMNiPOWER and autonomy in student learnings, is getting students ready to work in the ag tech industry.
Research Technician
Data Scientist
Research Technician
Research Technician
Project Lead
Research Project Manager
Technology Integration Specialist
Manager
Data Scientist
Project Lead
Herman Simons
Manager - Smart Agriculture
403.318.9698
hsimons@oldscollege.ca