An Ontario start-up believes precision agriculture should be easy to use and accessible to all. That’s the premise behind the farm management software IntelliCulture has developed to solve what it says are three of the biggest critical challenges on the farm: labour availability, pest prevention and machine safety.
Why it matters: Margins are slim in agriculture and technology can help farmers pinpoint areas on their farm where they’re racking up expenses without knowing it.
Thousands of the systems are already in use on commercial farms primarily in Ontario and California, and the company has offices in London, Ontario and Salinas, California.
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“Growers are asking questions like how much money they’re spending on each farm to grow a crop,” says IntelliCulture CEO and Co-Founder Cole Powers. “Our system is like a pulse check on benchmarking across your farms and your equipment operators and will identify your most costly operation points – so that you know if one field is 150 per cent more expensive to grow than another, for example.”
Through specially developed data loggers that easily plug into a tractor, IntelliCulture provides a real-time view of a farm’s equipment fleet through a web portal or an app, giving farmers and farm managers detailed information about management and performance.
ShopView offers weekly equipment summaries of the general health of the farm fleet, automated maintenance scheduling and alerts of machine issues. The goal, notes Powers, is to minimize and prevent breakdowns and keep equipment running as efficiently as possible.
CropView helps with digital task planning and coordinating crews and equipment, tracks how many acres were covered in how many hours by each machine, and issues alerts on overdue or inefficient work to ensure maximum efficiency.
The CabView app makes it easy to manage orchard spraying, showing where each sprayer is in operation and sending instant notifications if the operator is overlapping a row, spraying an area that has already been sprayed, or has missed a section.
“This is the real-time view of ‘where is my tractor and what is it doing,’” says Powers. “We have growers in many sectors, but especially orchards and vineyards, so cherries, apples, grapes, nuts and other speciality row crops. A mis-spray is super costly in these sectors and CabView gives you one quick roll up of what is happening.”
A data logging unit costs about $220 and the software subscription for each machine is estimated at about $500 per year, he says.
Algoma Orchards, located in Durham Region, is a leading Canadian apple grower, packer and juice producer. With over 1,600 acres of orchards, they started using the IntelliCulture system in 2022 after hearing about it from one of their customers who was already using it. The Algoma fleet includes 30 tractors, four pickup trucks and eight platforms.
“When we spray a fungicide or a pesticide, I have over 20 operators spraying at various farms so this gives a bird’s eye view of the whole operation and we can monitor so we’re not missing sections and not over-spraying,” explains Manus Boonzaier, farm operations manager at Algoma. “In the past, I’d have to call multiple people to see how progress is going.”
To date, he adds, his principle focus has been to monitor the equipment, tracking hours spent in the field versus out of the field, and managing servicing and maintenance.
“We’re getting more accurate job costing done and keeping better track of expenses on service, but we’re not using the system to its full potential yet,” he says. “I give him (Cole) a lot of feedback, and the staff is eager and always listens to recommendations. Don’t look at the short-term cost, it’s a long-term plan that will pay off down the road.”
For Powers, that long-term plan includes a vision of running IntelliCulture on robotics which are increasingly coming into agriculture.
“Growers will still need to manage, whether it’s machines or people – and we’re super fortunate to work with growers who have a lot of ideas,” he says.
In 2022, the company secured $1.7 million in seed financing led by Emmertech, an ag-focused investor based in Saskatchewan, and the 519 Growth Fund out of London, Ontario.
