Beyond tractors: Farmers navigating the digital transition, and broadband barriers

By Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca Technology is changing the family farm. Data silos are popping up along grain silos as farmers embrace new technologies to radically alter the way they do business. If properly deployed, new systems can address climate change, labour shortages, and how produce gets to market. Farmers are rolling out new equipment to improve their productivity and facilitate their operations. "It's a tremendous advantage for agriculture to be able to dive into high tech," says Keith Currie, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture president. "Certainly, from a couple of aspects, one is the obvious precision aspects of agriculture. We're more precise in what we're doing." Using sensors, satellites, drones and other high-tech strategies, the modern farmer can keep track of the state of the farm without being physically present. Material which in previous years would have been recorded in notebooks is now available online. Farmers input the data, which becomes shareable with others in the supply chain. In May 2023, the federal government announced new licencing guidelines for 5G that specifically mentioned agriculture. The new policy will ease local access to spectrum for ISPs and innovative industries. "One of our research projects that we have here is to help farmers get an accounting or survey information without going to the field," Nasem Badreldin, assistant professor of digital agronomy at the University of Manitoba, told The Wire Report. Currie, who grows hay and sweet corn, sees the impact on his farm near Collingwood, Ont. "I will combine in the fall; I will harvest my crops," he explains. Modern machinery means farmers can yield map their fields. “So when the harvest happens, the combine's recording what the yield rates are in all aspects of the field,” Currie notes. He said farmers can find the new technology in dairy barns and greenhouses. They can use it to keep track of fertilizers, seeds and yield maps. Soil tests done online could easily tell farmers if they need to switch the types of fertilizers they are using or if they need to plant different breeds of crops. Telecoms at forefront Telus Corp is one of the companies at the forefront of the digital revolution. In 2019, the B.C.-based telecom created Telus Agriculture (now known as Telus Agriculture & Consumer Goods). The head of strategy for the division is hopeful for the future of farming and technology. "When you look at where health care was maybe ten years ago in terms of digitization, agriculture is in a similar spot," Chris Terris tells The Wire Report. "We think we have an opportunity to apply the experience that we have in other industries, such as healthcare, and try to digitize an industry such as agriculture that has a massive social benefit to doing better in that space." Although Telus' reach is global, he said, the majority of its work is done in North America and the United Kingdom. Its Canadian operations go across the country. Not surprisingly, Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. is also active in agriculture. In September 2020, it partnered with the University of Saskatchewan to launch a living laboratory to test, develop and demonstrate agricultural technologies. The Livestock and Forage Centre of Excellence (LFCE) was Canada's first research smart farm. It saw researchers maximizing livestock operations' efficiency through the internet of things (IoT) technology in a wireless environment. "We are excited to partner with SaskTel to help producers advance livestock farming to the next level through the use of some of the world's best digital agricultural technologies -- from drones equipped with software to sensors that can monitor herds and their health," Karen Chad, then vice-president of research at the university said at the time. "This cutting-edge research will help meet the world's increasing food demands while enhancing the training of our students in the latest high-tech farming techniques." The experiments continue to this day. On Oct. 19, 2022, SaskTel signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Olds College of Agriculture & Technology to collaborate on 800 acres of land in Craik, Sask. They hope to accelerate innovation for producers, students and agricultural companies across the prairie province. In April 2022, the University of Saskatchewan joined with a national non-profit organization, Palette Skills, and with Winnipeg non-profit Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI) to create a program to help workers hone their skills in the agri-food business. The eight-week program targets automation and digitization technology in agricultural production and processing facilities. Telus's Terris goes farther afield when looking for success stories. He points to a client in Australia who relies on the telecom's technology to track the movement of strawberries from the field to the grocery store. Knowing how fresh the strawberries are or are not allows grocers to set prices that move the product off the shelves. "We waste about a third of the food that we produce," he states. "A half of that third is between the farm gate and the grocery store, and the other half of that third is in our homes. Applying technologies in cases like that can help us reduce that waste." Farmers have been having trouble getting workers over the past few years. Reliance on technology eases those concerns. "It's really been a big game changer for sure," the CFA's Currie notes. "Because we constantly had a labour shortage, it's allowed us to do more with less people." Autonomous vehicles loom on horizon One of the ways farmers can dispense with human resources is through the use of autonomous vehicles. In the near future, driverless tractors will spring up on farms nationwide. They not only address the labour shortage but will also help in the fight against climate change. Tractors and other farm equipment without people driving them will not require air conditioning and other resources that use up diesel in the farm equipment. Monarch Tractor of Livermore, California, was working with the state government in Sacramento to change regulations that would forbid driverless vehicles from operating on farms. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration in California recently introduced rules requiring all self-propelled equipment to have an operator stationed at the controls. Monarch appealed the decision. The appellate board found merit in its arguments but did not overturn the regulation. "The decision does not change current regulations," Monarch Tractor's CEO, Praveen Penmetsa, stated at the time. "There are already autonomous technologies operating on farms across the country. Monarch Tractor's petition aimed to make the adoption of autonomous technologies on the farm easier, faster, and with less paperwork for farmers." Monarch made the first all-electric autonomous tractor on the market. John Deere is expected to release its version of an autonomous farm vehicle soon. Connectivity needed One of the challenges facing farmers is the need for more connectivity in rural areas. The Canadian government has unveiled a plan to roll out high-speed internet nationwide by 2030. Some provinces have rolled out even earlier deadlines. That resource is desperately needed, according to Keith Currie of the CFA. "Uploading this stuff takes a long time if you don't have high-speed broadband," he says. "It might take a week if you're on no broadband or 3G or older cell service. So that becomes problematic from a timing aspect, especially if you're on the go in the spring or the fall." Currie is pleased with the efforts made so far by federal and provincial authorities. Telus' Terris agrees that broadband rollout is necessary. "It's key. Putting my telco hat on, it's a major hurdle to adoption of digital technology," he states. "In the U.S. you've got 18 per cent of farms that have no access to internet. We know in Canada we've got an asymmetrical relationship between urban and rural populations with respect to network coverage. I think it's somewhere around only 37 per cent of homes in rural Canada have download speeds of 50 megabits per second and uploads at 10." Currie is excited about the future, conceding that much progress has been made in the last five years. "That's where 5G comes into play," he remarks. "It's going to be a real game changer as far as that connectivity that we need." The Ontario farmer is critical of how some firms have been slow on the uptake of broadband expansion. "What we really need now is for the telecommunications companies, for lack of a better term, to get out of the way," Currie tells The Wire Report. "We have the spectrum available now to do that expansion, not all companies are willing to give up spectrum that they're not using." In 2021, the Commission for the Protection of Quebec's Agricultural Territory rejected an application by Quebecor Inc. to build a freestanding telecommunications tower and a power line in Mascouche, Que. The commission announced at the beginning of 2022 that it will review that decision. The federal government has actively promoted the digitization of the farming community. In March 2022, it earmarked $860,000 for six small agricultural businesses to advance automation and robotic technology. This will advance work productivity and labour shortages. The grants, issued through the Innovative Solutions Canada program, follow a previous disbursement of $1 million to seven companies. The following month, the government paid out $419,000 to Mojow Autonomous Solutions Inc. to further research on an artificial intelligence data recording kit called Eye-Box. Mojow, which has offices in Saskatchewan and Alberta, uses sensors, cameras and GPS to help farmers collect and assess data. On Oct. 11, 2022, the federal government joined with the government of Manitoba to launch the Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) program. The online platform combines national and international sustainable sourcing standards, thus allowing farmers to address market requirements for specific products. Cutting-edge privacy and cybersecurity policies ensure the protection of the information. These developments can't come soon enough for people in rural areas. Ray Orb is the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) and reeve in Cupar, Sask. He wrote an op-ed article for The Hill Times urging the adoption of high-speed connectivity in sections of the country like his. "The federal government needs to recognize that without the ability to connect to reliable and affordable broadband internet, many of the efficiencies it is hoping to gain are just not possible," Orb stated. "Digital infrastructure and broadband connectivity are at the forefront of evolution and should be deemed an essential service if we are going to come remotely close to hitting emissions objectives." He is hopeful that all regions of Saskatchewan will have internet parity within two years. That goal is achievable due to the flat landscape of the prairie province and SaskTel's years of high-tech research. However, he warns that one individual or organization will not solve broadband challenges. To that end SARM has formed the Rural Broadband Action Committee in the province. SaskTel, Access Communications Cooperative Ltd., the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, and the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce are among the stakeholders sitting at the table. Once farms are online, cybersecurity will be an issue, according to a professor at the University of Guelph. Ali Dehghantanha is the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence at the western Ontario school. He has heard reports of 11 cases where farm data was compromised, but he calls it "the tip of the iceberg." "We don't know how deep this issue is," he cautioned The Wire Report. "It's based on what we see, what we notice, and previous complaints." Of the nearly dozen cases he is aware of, about half involved malware being inserted into the farmers' computers. The rest consisted of information theft, which was sold on the darknet. Since agriculture deals in vast amounts of money, banks are naturally concerned about the security of online transactions, Dehghantanha notes. He is skeptical of things improving in the short term. "Cybersecurity should be an element of the design system," he says. "Unfortunately, I do not see doing that." He blames the uptick in cybersecurity issues on the lack of awareness by technology users. Six years ago, the federal government announced the Innovation Superclusters Initiative. BCE Inc.'s Bell Canada and Telus were among the companies vying to take part in the process. The ISI was a $950 million fund promoting digital innovation. Bell and Telus were ultimately successful in getting the funding they sought. Farmers have been clamouring for high-tech solutions to their agriculture challenges for years. The IoT technology has revolutionized life on the modern family farm. "The whole internet thing has just taken off on the farm," then-CFA president Ron Bonnett told The Wire Report in 2017. "The technology has actually been rapidly gobbled up by farmers when they see the economic advantage to using it." At the time, he cited problems with connectivity, suggesting satellite technology could have to be deployed instead. Telecom analyst Bill St. Arnaud warned that costs could prohibit or severely limit such an option. "It will be part of the solution, but I think it will always have a minor role," St. Arnaud maintained, terming satellites a fallback position. Problem goes back years Even before then, farmers were decrying the lack of high-speed access in rural areas. In 2015, Brent Royce of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture wrote a report in which more than 90 per cent of respondents said access to the internet was vital for their farming operations. Without such access, business would suffer, they told him. Farmers were early adopters of new technology. A 2014 Farm Credit Canada agency survey discovered that 76 percent of farmers had a smartphone. The use of tablets was also increasing, the poll found. As far back as 2017, Bell invested in IoT technology, making a $500,000 grant to the University of Manitoba to further studies in high-tech agriculture. University of Manitoba's Badreldin says while some older farmers are skeptical of the high-tech revolution, others are adopting it wholeheartedly. Drones, satellites and sensors have changed the way farmers produce their crops. "But still, there are some technologies that need to be pushed forward more," he says. The professor believes adoption should be in full swing in two to three years. He believes that it is not just a question of hardware but the analytics which will process the data once it is amassed by the hardware. Keith Currie of the CFA says improvement in connectivity will benefit everyone in a given area. "It's crucial to our businesses, but it's also crucial to our communities," he asserts. "There's a lot of businesses in rural Canada that service us, and they need that connectivity as well." Chris Terris of Telus agrees. "Rural connectivity is a key component," he says. "I'd extend that to not only the practice of farming but, as I said earlier, connecting the farm information, should the farmer want to do that, having that connectivity to share it with their grain buyer or a company that's looking to buy it." To that end, the CFA partnered with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) to offer reduced rates for satellite internet last summer. Farmers were offered one month of free service and discounts on monthly payments. A residential package costs $199 for hardware (instead of the usual $759) and $140 per month; a business plan costs $3170 for hardware and $320 per month; and a roaming package costs $759 for hardware and $170 per month. The roam package permits use in tractors and other moving vehicles. Nasem Badreldin sees changes coming to the academic community as well. One of the advantages of the research currently underway at the University of Manitoba is that student agronomists are learning new ways to study agriculture. "Within the next couple of years, you will find some changes that happen to the faculty of agriculture," the professor predicts. With all these changes to the agricultural sector, future generations of children may find themselves singing, "Old MacDonald had a farm, AI, AI, O."

Beyond tractors: Farmers navigating the digital transition, and broadband barriers

News | February 23, 2024

By Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

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Beyond tractors: Farmers navigating the digital transition, and broadband barriers

News | February 23, 2024

By Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

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