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Opening of the 2015 Precision Agriculture Conference

Opening of the 2015 Precision Agriculture Conference

Opening comments and introduction of Thursday night speakers at the Precision Agriculture Conference in London, Ontario. Keynote speaker Dave Scott with GEOSYS on satellite imagery and tools for your farm including their new Crop Health Monitor.

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Albums: Thank You to the Exhibitors and Sponsors at the 2015 Precision Agriculture Conference in London, Ontario

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Comment by OntAG Admin on February 27, 2015 at 6:29am

The conference’s opening panel consisted of Steve Redmond, David Scott, and Steve Denys.

Steve Redmond, a precision ag specialist with Hensall District Co-operative started off the panel presentation by discussing five things farmers learned in 2014.

1.    Precision ag is spatial management – Every field is different so there’s no need to try and average the results for an entire field to see if it works on your farm.
2.    Farmers need to build a precision ag team – The team should consist of people steeped in agronomy so the farmer is receiving the best guidance when they ask for it.
3.    NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) maps are useful – Sensors like GreenSeeker map crop vegetation and are highly correlated to final yields
4.    Plants do not lie – Yield monitors can have errors due to various factors, but getting dirty and looking at the plants will tell you the truth about what’s actually going on.
5.    Do not give up on yield monitors – Processing is becoming more automatic and everything is relevant so farmers need their yield monitors and data to validate what they’re doing.

Agriculture Headlines from Farms.com Canada East News - click on title for full story

Depopulation could destabilize food systems

It’s difficult to argue that climate change isn’t the most pressing threat to our agri-food sector. Farmers, processors, distributors, retailers and transporters have all been forced to adapt in real time to extreme weather events, shifting growing seasons and volatile conditions. From droughts to floods to wildfires, climate change has tested the resilience of every link in the food supply chain. Yet, for all the challenges the sector has faced – and will continue to face – due to climate pressures, it has managed to cope reasonably well. Investments in technology, new crop varieties, smarter logistics and infrastructure upgrades have helped absorb many of the shocks. But there is another looming threat – quieter, slower, and far more difficult to reverse – that few in the industry appear prepared for: depopulation. At its core, the food industry is built on one assumption: that there will always be more mouths to feed. Growth in population has long been a proxy for market growth.

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