Reading Time: 2 minutes East-central Alberta’s Lakeland College is set to offer what’s billed as Canada’s first degree program in agriculture technology, as a two-year post-credential program, starting in September. The program, announced Wednesday, will consist of full-time studies at Lakeland’s campus at Vermilion, about 180 km east of Edmonton, plus “experiential learning practicums” off campus, en route to […] Read more
Alberta’s Lakeland to offer ag tech degree
College to launch first-in-Canada program in September
Sollio outlines pandemic recovery plan for food sector
Support sought for automation, digitization, telecommunications
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa — One of Canada’s largest agri-food companies has laid out a five-point industry recovery plan for federal politicians to consider. During a meeting Tuesday of the Commons standing committee on finance, the president of Quebec-based Sollio Co-operative Group shared plans to limit consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agrifood supply chain. Sollio employs […] Read more
Digital supercluster backs precision fungicide development
Project aims at wheat leaf rust, reducing pesticide load
Reading Time: 3 minutes A West Coast ag tech company in the crop pest control business is setting its sights on wheat leaf rust, with support from one of Canada’s five research superclusters — but not the cluster you might expect. Out of the five federally-supported superclusters launched in early 2018, Protein Industries Canada has been most closely linked […] Read more
Autonomous farm machinery drives out into the desert
DOT Technology Corp. holds an impressive demo day in Arizona
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s obvious that Norbert Beaujot invests a lot of time thinking about the coming transformation of ag machinery, and about how to explain it to the farmers who are going to be at the very centre of the action. Beaujot is founder of DOT Technology Corp. and the inventor of the DOT autonomous power platform, […] Read more
Self-driving versus the lawyers
Fully autonomous farm vehicles are already here, but setting the rules for their use won’t be simple
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Senate of Canada had a pretty simple question when it held the hearings that led to is report, “Driving Change, Technology and the Future of the Automated Vehicle.” It’s a question farmers are asking too. When is all this technology going to arrive? You couldn’t exactly say the experts answered it with precision. Their […] Read more
UAV regs changing – for the better
Transport Canada looks to streamline and standardize the rules for drone use
Reading Time: 5 minutes The growth in the functionality of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) over much of the past decade has been steady. From the early days when advisers, dealers, agronomists and laboratories purchased and used the units to derive valuable insights into crop performance to more recent sales of much simpler designs for hobby uses, UAVs have made […] Read more
‘Xaver’-ing success
AGCO’s MARS project lands a new name ahead of its market release
Reading Time: 3 minutes Several months ago Country Guide reported on the field robot project called MARS, which is an acronym for Mobile Agricultural Robot Swarms. It began as a joint research project between the European Commission and AGCO’s Fendt brand. At the Agritechnica machinery show in Hanover, Germany, in November, AGCO revealed the project has moved beyond the […] Read more
Probing drought stress in corn
The potential for measuring, modelling and helping improve production is astounding
Reading Time: 6 minutes The design and creation of a new robotic device for phenotyping plants is a double-sided boon to agriculture. On one hand, it is indicative of the enormous potential of the autonomous systems now in development for farm applications. On the other, it’s a huge leap forward for researchers and plant breeders and their ability to […] Read more
UAVs and crop scouting. Are they worth it?
Seven organizations supported a two-year study on whether drones can provide practical benefits to farmers
Reading Time: 5 minutes When Chris Neeser began to design a research project on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in crop scouting, he wondered if anyone would be willing to fund it. “This was different from a typical research project,” says Neeser, a research scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Crop Diversification Centre, South, in Brooks. “There […] Read more
Not just a driverless tractor, but no tractor at all
A global launch at Ag in Motion could change the way you farm
Reading Time: 4 minutes While farmers have been waiting impatiently for equipment designers to commercialize the driverless tractor, Prairie inventor and entrepreneur Norbert Beaujot has found a way to ditch the tractor altogether. And he’s rolling it out for the first time in July 18 to 20 at Ag in Motion (AIM), Western Canada’s outdoor farm show now in […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
