Innovation Tour in Manitoba: A Connectivity and Ag Tech Immersion

On The Road

Innovation Tour in Manitoba: A Connectivity and Ag Tech Immersion

By Ben Craker, Portfolio Manager

Late last month, I had the opportunity to participate in the Agriculture Technology Ecosystem Tour across Manitoba. The trip was organized to review different projects, standards, and initiatives in government, industry, and academia focused on improving agricultural productivity in Canada – primarily through the adoption of technology and resolving interoperability issues.

We visited four educational institutions: Red River College Polytech, the University of Winipeg, the University of Manitoba, and Assiniboine College. Depending on the school, some visits focused on the need for engineers and techs to be able to develop and support the next generation of agricultural equipment. Many discussions centered on the future of autonomy.

Other stops focused more on research and sharing awareness about ISOBUS, industry standards like ADAPT, and resources like those being discussed in ISO/TC 347 and how they might be utilized by academia.

The group also made multiple stops at start-up accelerators and incubators to learn about what is happening in Manitoba and to share what standards and industry resources are available that could help companies scale. This included an impressive array of tools for building prototypes at North Forge, and the community and resources helping start-ups at MB Innovates.

The group also stopped at Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) in Portage la Prairie to learn a little more about the services they provide to heavy equipment companies as well as their capabilities for testing and technology evaluation. A key goal of the week was to determine interest and feasibility of setting up an AEF ISOBUS Test center in Canada, and PAMI is one of the proposed organizations to host conformance testing. After our visit the provincial government announced funding to help further explore the opportunity.

To gauge interest from local manufacturers in ISOBUS testing, the group was taken on factory tours and meetings at both MacDon and Versatile. Both facilities are making investments in their manufacturing capabilities with new lasers, welders, and robots. The groups discussed what labor and skill limitations exist in the context of farm implements becoming smarter as autonomous operations become a reality on many farms.

An interesting assertion coming out of this was that the tractor may be dethroned as the most important piece of equipment, relegated to a power unit the implement commands through technologies like AEF’s Tractor-Implement-Management (TIM) specification. TIM enables automation by letting the implement “tell” a compatible tractor what ground speed, hydraulic flow, or 3-point setting it needs for optimal operation.

On Thursday morning, the group attended the Manitoba Ag Days show in Brandon. In addition to vising different displays and talking with exhibitors, part of the group held a panel discussion at the Farm Credit Canada stage. They discussed interoperability, ISOBUS, and explained the new AgIN initiative for cloud-to-cloud communication led by AEF. The discussion was well received and generated good questions from the audience; I was even called on to address one related to ADAPT.

The week was jam packed with tours and meetings, but we made a lot of connections and drove awareness on several AgGateway projects and resources. There were also discussions on how the ISO/TC 347 on Data-Driven Agriculture is also addressing many issues farmers and agribusiness face on top of the tractor-implement connection addressed by ISO11783 (ISOBUS).

There is a lot going on in Manitoba and Canada to help move the needle on interoperability issues and increase agricultural production, and I was pleased to represent the cause of interoperability on behalf of AgGateway and ISO/TC 347 as well as the farmer data sharing perspective for the Ag Data Coalition. Mother nature even contributed a very interoperable temperature for much of the week: -40 is the same in F and C.