Canadian project to improve on-farm logistics

16-03-2020 | Smart farming | News

2003-10-09 00:00:00 John Shedd, 85, loads a container with Bt-corn harvested from his son's farm 09 October, 2003 near Rockton, Illinois. Shedd and his son farm 800 acres of the corn on farms in Illinois and Wisconsin. Bt-corn is a GMO (genetically modified organism) crop that offers growers an alternative to spraying an insecticide for control of European and southwestern corn borer. The Shedds sell the corn for use in ethanol. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP) FOR NEWSPAPERS AND TV USE ONLY

Supercluster project is to help farmers become more efficient and achieve higher returns while improving traceability along the value chain.

Protein Industries Canada in partnership with an industry consortium, announced an investment of $ 9.25 million into a project that is to help improve on-farm logistics and food traceability through an integrated data platform.

Make on-farm practices more efficient

This project will utilise data from the farm gate, through the entire supply chain, to make on-farm practices more efficient, increasing consumer traceability while reducing input costs and the overall environmental impact of the sector.

Digital mapping and optimisation technologies

The Protein Industries Supercluster project brings together the expertise of Coutts Agro, a large-scale farming operation, with technologies from Verge Technologies and Skymatics, which uses digital mapping and optimisation technologies to help farmers improve in-field operations by capturing information around input application, fuel use and more.

Fewer passes required to maintain a field

Verge Technologies software results in fewer passes required to maintain a field, leading to reduced fuel costs and mitigating a producer’s environmental impact. This dataset will be used by Provision Analytics to create linkages to support food traceability, transparency and key metrics associated with energy efficiency.

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This project will utilise data from the farm gate, through the entire supply chain, to make on-farm practices more efficient, increasing consumer traceability while reducing input costs and the overall environmental impact of the sector. - Photo: AFP

This will be the first project to attempt to correlate farm level practices through the value chain from production to processing. Historically, all notions of sustainability and traceability have been constrained to individual steps of the value chain. This project brings together the different touchpoints to support traceability and sustainability initiatives and advance Canada’s agriculture and food sector.

The consortium, consisting of Provision Analytics from Calgary, AB; Verge Technologies from Calgary, AB; Skymatics from Calgary, AB; and Coutts Agro from Kindersley, SK will invest, $ 4.6 million or half of the total project budget, with Protein Industries Canada’s co-investment making up the other half.