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Better Farming

February 2017

The Business of

Ontario Agriculture

39

FRONTIERS

IN

AG

have a clear financial benefit for the

farmer. Ryan Koeslag, executive

director of Ontario Bean Growers,

asks: If an application makes “you do

x, y and z, does it result in bot-

tom-line increases? ... Does it have

calculations that translate to advan-

tage? With a million things on the go,

it can’t be another marginal input.”

Policy to promote the benefits of AI

and data analytics

Farm organizations see their support

of a vibrant agri-food sector often

driven by unique local public and

private policy considerations.

Trace Genomics takes data serious-

ly. “We generate a lot of genetic data,”

says Diane Wu, CEO of the company.

“This could be taken by third parties,

so we put a lot of thought and legal

work into protecting our client’s data

in a way that has not been done before.

We need to address this in terms of

education to alleviate some of the fear

that farmers might have.”

Ontario must also remove barriers

that get in the way of adopting these

applications. “Until we have broad-

band optics, we don’t have the

capability,” says Don McCabe, past

president of the Ontario Federation

of Agriculture.

“We need to speed up the process

to do the job of broadband for these

new technologies to come along to

start seeing how they can immediate-

ly add value and allow Ontario

farmers to remain competitive.”

How will we ensure that the

benefit of these applications is clear in

return-on-investment value, is

evidence-backed and maintains

public trust?

We are now able to imagine

information and computerized

possibilities that did not exist before:

assessing soil modifications, checking

plant response rates, analyzing heat

and weather image patterns, manag-

ing plant and herd robotics, and

linking health and genetic diagnoses.

Managers and users who collect

farm data will continue to face

important discussions about security,

ownership and confidentiality. Whale

mentions “mitigating the risk of

adoption where the new technologies

need to work in harmony with the art

of farming in how well the applica-

tion understands the many intricacies

of agriculture with so many variables

and management styles.”

“Information and knowledge from

data can only be realized when the

context of the data is truly under-

stood,” adds Hand.

“We need to use these powerful

new analytic tools with our eyes wide

open.”

“We require clear issues of owner-

ship of data and who has what when,”

says McCabe. “We want to move into

this arena and represent farmers’

interests.”

Adapting to the evolution of data

capacity and its analytics is a tall

order. Further application in on-farm

experience and collaboration across

the research and transfer spectrum

are required.

But these new technologies, as

long as they are used responsibly,

promise great possibilities.

BF