Enhancing efficiency - Next-Gen In-Plant agricultural systems

Apr 23, 2024

By Farms.com

The landscape of in-plant equipment and systems in agriculture is transforming, reflecting a shift towards more sophisticated yet user-friendly solutions. These systems are crucial for ag retailers and wholesalers striving to stay competitive amidst challenges like labor shortages and increasing operational costs.

Current in-plant systems are designed to be scalable, supporting the trend of larger facilities that replace outdated ones. This scalability helps facilities serve more extensive areas and manage a growing range of products, including biologicals and proprietary blends, which have become more mainstream over the past decade.

The integration of advanced electronics into these systems has made them more effective without complicating operations. Features enhanced by high-speed internet, such as improved multi-location management and network-based options, facilitate better control and monitoring of operations. This integration results in systems that not only offer high speed and accuracy but also ease of use, meeting the critical needs of today’s ag businesses.

Automation is increasingly vital due to the ongoing labor challenges in many rural areas. Systems now come with interfaces that can be managed via tablets, computers, or control boxes, allowing operators to multitask effectively. This flexibility helps mitigate the labor shortages by enabling fewer workers to manage more extensive operations efficiently.

Future trends indicate a continued update and expansion of in-plant systems as facilities age and as businesses aim to tap into new markets and streamline operations for less experienced staff. This evolution is part of a broader push towards optimizing logistics and integrating in-plant systems with other essential business tools to maximize efficiency.

As the industry progresses, the role of in-plant systems is set to grow, driven by the need for more accurate and efficient processes and the increasing reliance on data analytics to provide insights that guide business decisions and ensure sustained growth in a competitive market.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”