Guelph-based dairy herd management service provider Lactanet on Monday launched DairyTrace, which it says will operate alongside the traceability module of Dairy Farmers of Canada’s proAction initiative in providing “state-of-the-art traceback capabilities in the event of an emergency or animal health crisis.”

Recognized in June by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as the national administrator responsible for traceability of dairy bovine animals under federal Health of Animals Regulations, Lactanet has been working with DFC toward a national traceability system since 2016.

Federal regulations and DFC’s proAction requirements call for anyone who owns or has possession, care or control of dairy cattle to record and report animal identity, movement, location and custodianship information.

To that end, the DairyTrace system will include a mobile app and online database portal, which Lactanet said will “streamline and simplify” recording and reporting of animal identification and movement, plus a national website with information for dairy producers and handlers as well as consumers.

The program will also offer customer service support, animal tags and instructional materials, Lactanet said.

Exchange systems will also be available for “non-producer affiliates” outside Quebec such as abattoirs, assembly yards and auction facilities, allowing them to use either the DairyTrace system or the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency’s (CCIA) Canadian Livestock Tracking System (CLTS).

“DairyTrace has been developed to provide dairy farmers with easy-to-use tools for managing their traceability obligations,” Stettler, Alta.-area dairy farmer Gert Schrijver, the chair of Lactanet’s DairyTrace advisory committee, said in Monday’s release.

DairyTrace will be managed by Lactanet’s board of directors with “input and collaboration” from DFC, working within existing structures and systems in the dairy sector, DFC said in June when it announced the system would be ready in the fall.

All dairy farmers will have “access to a one-stop-shop” for ordering tags and receiving customer support from DairyTrace customer services, as well as the National Livestock Identification for Dairy (NLID) program offered through Holstein Canada, Schrijver said.

Dairy producers outside Quebec will still buy dairy bovine tags through NLID, which will now be “dovetailed” alongside DairyTrace customer services and both offered via Holstein Canada, DFC said.

The system will also offer customer support via Agri-Tracabilite Quebec (ATQ), through which Quebec producers “have successfully practiced this traceability model for many years using the SimpliTrace system,” DFC said.

ATQ will host, support and transfer data to the DairyTrace system, DFC said, but will also continue to provide its “well-established” services to Quebec producers by way of SimpliTrace.

The DairyTrace system “will also promote information-sharing and potentially add value to research and genetics initiatives,” Lactanet said Monday.

Schrijver in June had hailed the system’s pending launch as “a pivotal milestone for dairy producers, as it will provide the data management infrastructure needed to provide — for the first time — a true, pan-Canadian picture of the movements of dairy cattle.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Dairy cattle traceability system switched on appeared first on Country Guide.

The world’s leading farm equipment maker is outfitting its tractors with startup Hello Tractor’s technology, which allows farmers to hail the machines via an app, monitors the vehicles’ movements and transmits usage information such as fuel levels.

The aim is to help the U.S. company boost sales of its famous green-and-yellow John Deere tractors, a tough task in a continent with the world’s highest poverty rate and the least mechanized agricultural sector.

Deere is currently testing the technology — a small black box fitted beneath dashboards — on around 400 tractors in Ghana and Kenya. It told Reuters it plans to roll out the devices across Africa in the second half of this year, offering it to all contractors who buy its equipment on the continent.

Jacques Taylor, who heads John Deere’s sub-Saharan Africa business, said that the continent badly needs more machinery to develop its farming industry but most farmers don’t have the scale to justify a large investment.

“We would like to see that every farmer has access to mechanization,” he told Reuters. “The gap that we’ve identified is, how do we connect small farmers with tractor owners?”

Deere declined to comment on the investment costs for the rollout. The risks are clear; there is no certainty of any measure of success in Africa, which accounts for a tiny fraction of its global sales at present.

Held back by low incomes, tiny landholdings as well as a lack of bank financing, tractor numbers have long been stagnant on the continent, even as much of the developing world has experienced a boom in mechanization.

Deere thinks it can help on the financing front: it told Reuters it could pull data from the Hello Tractor platform that showed in precise detail how farmers were using its equipment.

That information, it said, could be used by the farmers — who typically lack credit histories — to help secure bank loans.

This would mean they could buy more tractors.

Opportunity knocks?

In central Kenya, a Deere tractor zig-zagged across a sun-drenched field, raking up dry grass and dropping bales of hay. The black box monitored its every move.

The tractor belongs to Agrimech Africa, a Nairobi-based agricultural services firm that has taken up the offer to have the devices installed on its Deere machinery.

“They do the technology. We do the management,” said Pascal Kaumbutho, who heads the company.

Agrimech, which is paid by farmers to work their land, hopes the new tech will help optimise its Deere tractors and connect them to new customers, allowing it to expand.

Kaumbutho, whose company manages a dozen tractors, envisions a future in which Agrimech runs a 1,000-strong fleet. “Right now, we’re reaching about 1,500 farmers,” he said. “Within the next two or three years, I’d like to reach 20,000.”

Such opportunities exist in markets across Africa, said Hello Tractor founder Jehiel Oliver, but companies like Deere have lacked the tools to develop them.

“Nigeria alone needs 750,000 (more) tractors to be on the global average,” he said. “Our technology is a market-maker for tractor manufacturers who want to sell into those markets.”

Deere’s annual revenue of about $40 billion is dominated by the Americas and Europe (all figures US$). It doesn’t break out numbers for Africa, but combined revenue from Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East was $3.9 billion last year.

Finance frustration

Outside South Africa, the continent’s most developed economy, around 80 per cent of African cropland is still cultivated by hand. Yields are half the global average. With its population set to double by 2050, increasing productivity is a necessity.

One of the biggest barriers to mechanization is finance; though agriculture accounts for around a quarter of Africa’s economic output and some 70 per cent of jobs, banks often view farmers as high-risk because of the lack of credit histories.

“It’s one thing to go to a bank and say ‘You know. Hey, I work very hard.’ It’s another thing to be able to show it,” Kaumbutho said.

Deere said the data from the Hello Tractor platform shows how often equipment is in use, how much land it’s working, and whether it’s tilling, planting or harvesting. That information can be used to create financial statements, it added.

Tshepo Maeko, vice-president and head of agrisales at South African-based lender Absa, sees potential to unlock more lending in this kind of technology which gives banks a fuller picture.

“We will be able to see how big the risk is or how big the opportunity is,” he said.

Deere is working with Hello Tractor and the banks to format the data to create easily digestible automated reports. No loan decisions have yet been made based on the information.

But Antois van der Westhuizen, John Deere Financial’s managing director for sub-Saharan Africa, said that should be possible by the time the scheme is rolled out across Africa.

“The banking systems are trying to adapt,” he said. “It’s a journey for us to really get them to understand it.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Omar Mohammed, writing by Joe Bavier.

The post Deere taps tractor-hailing tech in bid to break ground in Africa appeared first on Country Guide.

Winnipeg-based FarmLink announced Tuesday it will merge Farm At Hand, the software platform developed by Kim Keller and Himanshu Singh, into its operations. Financial terms of the merger weren’t released.

“It has long been our belief that to truly empower the farmer we have to be where they are, and they are on mobile devices,” Keller and FarmLink co-founder Brenda Tjaden Lepp said in a release. “This merger is about innovating to help build stronger relationships with farm business partners worldwide.”

“With FarmLink we gain new relationships and expertise, allowing Farm At Hand to truly become the platform for agriculture, from seed to sale,” Keller said.

FarmLink emphasized in its release that Farm At Hand’s policy of not sharing farmers’ information with outside parties will continue.

“Farmers will still choose who they share their data with,” the company said, and the Farm At Hand platform “will enable them to leverage technology to enhance their business relationships farm-wide.”

Keller and Singh, who launched Farm At Hand in Saskatchewan and made their app available in 2012, relocated to Vancouver the following year and have since expanded to include seven staff.

The free Farm At Hand app is now used by about 21,000 farmers in North America and overseas, and a paid version, designed for agribusiness, is expected to be rolled out by early next year.

FarmLink, founded in 2004, bills itself as Canada’s premier source for grain marketing advice, with market advisors in all three Prairie provinces and offices in Winnipeg and Carman, Man., Lethbridge, Camrose and Vermilion, Alta., and Saskatoon, Yorkton, Weyburn, Swift Current, Melfort and Kindersley, Sask. — AGCanada.com Network

The post FarmLink picks up mobile management app appeared first on Country Guide.

The network, operated by ag meteorology firm Weather Innovations Consulting (WIN) in partnership with Glacier Farmmedia, owners of this website, gets its data mainly from over 1,100 weather stations set up at farms, grain elevators and other locations across Western Canada.

Farmers signed up for WeatherFarm’s daily email will be able to get daily data from the station of their choice, the company said, but will also get a daily wind and precipitation forecast.

That forecast, broken into morning, afternoon, evening and overnight segments, will include wind speed and direction, cloud cover and expected precipitation levels.

The email will also include maps charting high and low temperatures across the province of the farmer’s choice, noting the province’s daily average highs and lows.

The email also connects farmers to WeatherFarm’s local hourly forecast for that day and the following day, plus a seven-day forecast.

From the email, farmers can then reach other information on the WeatherFarm site for that station, including radar, weather analysis, historical data and crop-related tools such as SPRAYcast Lite, which helps farmers find windows of time most favourable for spraying.

A new WeatherFarm app is also now available for iPhone and Android phones, providing a mobile version of the station data and other information available on the WeatherFarm website. — AGCanada.com Network

The post WeatherFarm boosts local-level data for farmers appeared first on Country Guide.