Manitoba farming lab gets boost to help leverage power of AI tech, drones in Prairie agricultural sector

A facility just northwest of Winnipeg hopes to help fuse cutting-edge tech with age-old farming wisdom in an effort to boost sustainability and agricultural yields through tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning and drones. 

The Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI) announced the grand opening of a 8,500-square-foot Innovation Farms Centre on Thursday in Grosse Isle, about 15 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

The provincial and federal government announced they're contributing $2.025 million over five years to the centre through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership. Manitoba is putting forward $810,000 with Ottawa making up the rest.

"Farmers have been loud and clear with us in saying tech is great, innovation is great, but we can't afford to take a risk on our operations, it has to be proven, it has to be reliable," Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said during a news conference Thursday with EMILI and ag-industry representatives.

"We know that climate change and the responsibility to move forward on sustainability is also a really important priority and the best way for us to do that is to make investments like this so that it's affordable and it's easy for ag producers to make those investments in long-term sustainability."

Jacqueline Keena, managing director of EMILI, said the funds will go toward supporting projects carried out at Innovation Farms, some of them existing partnerships with Prairie-based startups testing out agricultural products through various digital and data-driven technologies.

Ray Bouchard, president and CEO of Enns Brothers and board chair of EMILI, said rapid technological change in the farming sector comes with opportunities for growth and sustainability for operations big and small.

But those changes also come with new challenges in an inherently risky sector.

"For farmers, it can be daunting to navigate how new and sometimes costly digital tools can apply to the very own unique circumstances," he said. "Any disruption to a farm's operation may hurt yields and undermine livelihoods."

That's why Innovation Farms tries to bring together farmers and tech entrepreneurs with a focus on ensuring there's a return on investment for the farmer and viable business model for the tech entrepreneur, he said.

"Giving the data scientists and software developers opportunities to hear directly from the farmer helps them understand how producers would use the technology and what they need most," he said.

"By creating a vibrant ecosystem that is focused on testing, validating and demonstrating new digital ag technologies, we can de-risk the adoption of digital technologies for individual growers while also speeding up the development and adoption of these same tools."

Bouchard and Keena both pointed to Geco Predictive Weed Control as an example of the kind of tinkering and field-testing of tech at the Innovation Farms incubator they hope to expand upon.

The Prairie-based startup uses drones and satellites to develop algorithms that can predict where herbicide resistant weeds are likely to occur.

After testing at Innovation Farms, the company was able to refine its tech and improve performance. Now the predictive weed control is being used on 95 fields across 55 farms.

"This is a big problem in agriculture, it is difficult to deal with since they're herbicide resistant but also has a negative impact on crop yield," said Keena, who is also a member of the premier's business and jobs council.

"So this algorithm is good at identifying not only where they are but also where they're likely to be, so that farmers can undertake more aggressive strategies to mitigate those weeds."

Manitoba Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn said digital advances have shaped farming in ways that would've been hard to imagine a couple decades ago.

He said drones are now used to diagnose crop diseases and detect other patterns that help producers save money.

"The drone to me has become the MRI machine of agriculture. Who would've ever thought 20 years ago, 10 years ago that type of technology is becoming so important in our modern agriculture industry," said Kostyshyn. "Our province needs to stay on the cutting edge."