Growing the Future

Why Do So Many Ag Technologies Never Reach the Farm?

Episode Summary

Jacqueline Keena, managing director of EMILI, joins Dan to explain how a 5,500 acre commercial farm north of Winnipeg became a real world testing ground for new agriculture technology before it ever reaches a producer's field. She covers the barrier most ag tech companies face, getting access to full scale data instead of just test plot results, and how EMILI connects startups, researchers, and farmers to close that gap. The tension is that Western Canada has plenty of promising agriculture technology and plenty of skilled researchers, but very little infrastructure connecting the two before a product is asked of a paying customer. Producers walk away with a clearer picture of what EMILI actually does and why data interoperability, not the technology itself, is often the real obstacle to adoption.

Episode Notes

Most new ag technology never makes it past the test plot. Jacqueline Keena, managing director of EMILI (the Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative), joins Dan to talk about Innovation Farm, a 5,500 acre commercial seed operation north of Winnipeg where new technology gets tested at real farm scale, with a working producer, before it's ever asked of a customer.

What's Inside

• Why access to full scale farm data, not test plot data, is the real barrier most new ag tech companies run into
• How Innovation Farm ran 22 collaborative projects in a single growing season, from herbicide resistant weed mapping to sensor networks deployed across the farm
• The Gecko Engineering and Green Arrow Technology story, and what it took to get weed resistance mapping working in a real field
• The data interoperability problem that keeps producers locked out of one clear picture across platforms
• Why closing the agriculture labor shortage may depend on people who never set foot on a farm

Connect with Jaqueline: 
Website: emilicanada.com

Twitter: emilicanada

LinkedIn: EMILI

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

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