University of Winnipeg Receives Weston Seeding Food Innovation Grant

Feb 13, 2019

A University of Winnipeg research project has received a $250,000 Weston Seeding Food Innovation Grant.

The project will examine ways to train a computer to recognize and tend for prairie crops. To do this, the system would need to access extensive examples of plants and weeds.

“The main goal of our research project is to develop the means to automatically generate and label these images through a computer controlled camera system. We will then make the images publicly available for use by Canadian researchers and companies, because the fastest way to innovation is to get this data into the hands of more innovators,” said UWinnipeg physics professor, Dr. Christopher Bidinosti.

The research team includes experts from UWinnipeg, Red River College, the University of Saskatchewan, Northstar Robotics, Sightline Innovation, the Canola Council of Canada, and Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers.

The Weston Seeding Food Innovation Grant provides seed funding for interdisciplinary research or technology development to help accelerate solutions to sustainable food challenges, with a focus on food production, distribution and consumption initiatives that primarily impact Canadians, but also deliver key learning toward issues of global concern.

Source : Steinbachonline

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.