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Ukrainian Grain & Oilseed Market

Ukrainian Grain&Oilseed Market

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High-tech in the Manitoba potato patch

14.04.2010 10:45 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — Relaxing on a pillow is something most potato growers can only daydream about when they have the irrigation system operating during June, July and August. Brent Metcalfe is an exception. Manager and part-owner of WM Ventures of Treherne, Manitoba, Metcalfe is responsible for 1000 acres of potatoes. In a 10-mile radius from home base, the farm has seven centre-pivot irrigation systems drawing water from three pumps in the Assiniboine River. It also has two booster stations and about 50 kilometres of water-distribution lines. Metcalfe ventured into irrigated potato production in 2003 after a career in grain production. Technical assistance in planning the transition to irrigated production was provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agri-Environment Services Branch (AESB), formerly the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA). The irrigation technology worked fine, but Metcalfe found it hard to rest. He never knew when the line pressure might drop or a pivot was wrapping around a tree. He and his crew could not be everywhere all the time to monitor how the systems were performing. Metcalfe considered his options, wondering if information technology could help. That led to discussions in 2007 with Bruce Shewfelt, AESB’s irrigation and drainage section lead. «Our new mandate in the Agri-Environment Services Branch is around promoting adoption of environmental solutions to priority issues like water and climate change,» Shewfelt says. «We felt Brent would be a good candidate for early adoption of some high-tech equipment to see how well it works at field scale. We’d been involved with Brent in other activities and thought he might like to test-drive some high-tech equipment for real-time monitoring.» Shewfelt suggested Weather INnovations Incorporated (WIN) of Chatham, Ontario, for a solution with respect to integrating remote monitoring and an automatic alert mechanism. WIN already was working in Central and Western Canada with remote monitoring systems for cereal, tomato, beet, fruit and corn growers. «The core of our business is modelling information and decision-support systems,» says Ian Nichols, WIN business manager. «That can be anything from insect or disease forecasting, to statistical representation of weather events, to something like we do with Brent, monitoring and managing infrastructure.» WIN assembles instrumentation and transmitters into specific networks suited to individual farm requirements. The core instruments are low-powered sensors manufactured by several world-leading manufacturers. Austria’s Adcon Telemetry builds the solar-powered radio and cellular networks. Adcon, one of several manufacturers of wireless products, has been perfecting communication systems for more than 10 years and regularly adds new features for the agricultural sector. For the 2008 season, Metcalfe had sensors installed and networked on two pivots and two pump stations. He also had remote monitoring for rainfall and soil moisture. «Brent wanted some way to monitor pressures in the pipelines, pressures in the pivots, and direction of movement of the pivots at any given time. We were interested in irrigation scheduling using soil moisture sensors and rain gauges installed in-field. Several options existed, including pivot companies and other telemetry companies. Brent chose to trial the WIN system,» Shewfelt says. Once the sensors and transmitters were installed, data could be transmitted to a specialized computer set up at Metcalfe’s farm office. It stays on continuously, and with a high-speed Internet connection, relays the WM Ventures field data to Weather INnovations. Every piece of data is tagged in the field. At the WIN office, it is gathered, processed and available online as text, tabular data or a graphic display. At home, Metcalfe simply «logs in» to see how the system is performing in real time. «Technology is continually advancing; many telemetry options are currently available,» Nichols says. «The important aspect is to identify the right equipment set to meet the particular needs of the client, and to ensure there is flexibility. For example, in 2009, Brent wanted to monitor the 120-volt lines on his pivot in addition to pressure and direction. It was a simple matter, adding an $80 cable and sensor, instead of replacing the original system or adding a second system.» Metcalfe says, «They give us the opportunity to see it in real time. I log on to the Internet and see, right now, what’s going on, as opposed to having to download something that’s history. During the irrigation season, I log in three, four, five times a day, probably. In two seasons, we’ve never had a time when I wasn’t able to use it. It’s been very reliable. And, we have alarms; the system phones me if something is off the parameters we’ve set. That’s one thing I really wanted.» Mobile options connect on the road In the truck, he also can connect to the stream of information using a mobile broadband card that plugs into his laptop computer, cellphone or PDA. Most of the farm has fairly reliable and strong cellular service. One limiting factor, Metcalfe notes, is elevation. Radio telemetry relies on line-of-sight transmission. One of his pivots is about 150 feet below field level, at the bottom of the Assiniboine River Valley. He plans to have that pivot, and another one or two, tied into the system in 2010. «The equipment is the expensive part. The annual monitoring isn’t too bad at all,» he says, adding that there is also an option he is still studying, for monitoring soil moisture with the same system. «We’ve had a couple moisture sensors for the last couple years, and I’ve kept an eye on them but haven’t done a lot of decision-making based on the information they were giving me. I think they may play a part in the decision-making process but I need to be a little more comfortable with the technology.» Soil moisture monitoring is another of many applications for the Internet-based technology. «The neat thing about our service is that we can add almost any sensor to the remote transmitting units. If you want a dozen different kinds of soil moisture sensors, from different manufacturers, we can do that,» says Nichols. WIN grew out of University of Guelph research projects and was spun off as an independent company in 2006. It is able to integrate farm sensors and weather information to produce localized forecast models for potatoes, sugar beets, tomatoes, blight, spraying conditions and more. Since the 2003 start of WM Ventures, Shewfelt says several other companies have begun to offer similar telemetry equipment. «The biggest hurdle now is the cost, but competition is quite strong. The technology is changing very quickly. Lots of options are on the way through a variety of manufacturers, including Canadian companies,» Shewfelt says. The AESB plans to begin using and studying performance of some of the other systems available at research centres at Carberry, Manitoba, and Outlook, Saskatchewan, in 2010, he says. «We’re looking to see what’s available and do field-scale demonstrations so producers can come to our sites and see what’s going on. The ultimate purpose is better water management and sustainable use of our limited water supply,» he says. Remote monitoring probably has some impact on potato quality for the farm, Metcalfe says. In the first years, there were nights when a pivot would stop and not be found until it was checked in the morning. That is history. «The biggest benefit I see is risk management, not having pivots stop and stay unattended, being able to monitor from a distance so that, if something isn’t right, we get called before it breaks something worse than it already has. Those are the real impetus and savings. It isn’t necessarily improving quality, but at some point we may be able to do something about that too with the soil moisture sensors,» Metcalfe says. And, he can rest now when his head hits the pillow on a warm summer night. «In fuel, in time, in downtime from equipment that stopped overnight and wasn’t found until morning, the savings are in the tens of thousands of dollars a year, easily,» he says.

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