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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