Six years ago, extreme weather, international market closures and skyrocketing expenses left Alberta farmers reeling from significant losses.
“In 2019, we had a very bad year and we all know it,” said Chandra Singh, a research chair with Lethbridge Polytechnic.
“Total losses of all the crops in Alberta alone were about $750 million.”
He and his team began working to find solutions to very real problems in the agriculture industry.
“We are focusing on three major crops which are prominent in Alberta. All the grain crops here, potato is another main crop — particularly in southern Alberta — and sugar beets are another crop. We are focusing on all three crops on the storage, handling, some of the processing and the quality aspect,” he said.
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While storage might appear as simple as dumping crops in a container, Singh says that mindset is exactly what’s causing one-fifth of all Canadian-produced food to go to waste.
“We are working on different sensing technologies for monitoring with our industrial partners. They will improve the monitoring, then (be able to) make better decisions. Also, the automation side, so creating better storage environments,” Singh said.
“For example, in grain bins you want to first dry the grain, then cool it, then monitor and keep it for as long as you need it to be there.”
He says some of these solutions could save $75 million every year.
“I’m not saying that you cannot do more, but being realistic, I think that’s what the impact should be,” said Singh.
It may not seem like it, but finding food efficiencies is crucial for everything from better beer to tastier tomatoes.
“There are so many aspects. There’s the soil health, there’s the plant health, then there’s the agronomy side of things. We work a lot on the seeding rates and dates and all sorts of things,” said Mike Gretzinger, manager of the agronomy program at Farming Smarter.
“Almost any factor that you can think of is going to have an impact on the end result.”
He says research conducted by his organization ensures farmers are better prepared in the event of a 2019 repeat.
“We can test out things so 500,000 other individual farmers don’t have to fail at something. We can test it out and fail at it and give a consensus over what we should be doing instead.”
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