A Manitoba farmer asks, “how sustainable is my five-year old German combine that’s maybe still functional for another decade, but now it’s junk because I can’t find a replacement electronic panel?” And sure enough, the panel he needed was nowhere to be found. Every scrapped Claas had already long ago been stripped of this particular […] Read more
Ron Lyseng
Stories by Ron Lyseng
Soil and leaf analysis made laser fast
Clients will receive results within four hours from the time the the high intensity LaserAg device receives the sample
WOODSTOCK, Ont. — A high-intensity laser soil or leaf analysis device takes one minute to perform a task requiring many hours in a conventional lab. It yields immediate, highly accurate data for 16 main elements. LaserAg is the brainchild of LogiAg in Chateauguay, Que., a leading agronomy provider serving more than 5,500 farms in the […] Read more
Robotic soil sampler is slow but consistent
The autonomous SmartCore is not just another agricultural robot — it should also be considered an agronomic tool
Try pulling six-inch cores from 100,000 acres on 2.5-acre grids with just four machines. It happened this fall, thanks to the autonomous SmartCore robot that samples 110 acres per hour. The machine was developed by two Purdue University engineering students, Troy Fiechter and Drew Schumacher. Once out of college, they turned their engineering project into […] Read more
Manage field data points every 20 feet
It’s a daunting challenge managing all data on 100,000 fields totalling 30 million cropped acres 24/7/365, but it’s a task performed routinely at the Farmers Edge technology centre in Lethbridge. The office is a busy place with more than 40 staff crunching data daily on every acre under contract, said Farmers Edge founder Curtis MacKinnon. […] Read more
Precision ag = sustainable ag?
We had phosphorus for Christmas dinner. I had phos. You had phos. Everybody filled up on phos. It’s an old tradition among people who eat — any time, anywhere and not just at Christmas. If you went south for Christmas and ate tacos in Tijuana, you had phos. If you went north to Baffin Island […] Read more
Are we ready for electric tractors?
Car and truck manufacturers are falling off the fossil fuel bandwagon in droves and jumping on the electric train. Now add tractors to that list. Every month, another e-tractor announcement comes across our desks. Environmental factors drive this trend, along with energy efficiency, lower maintenance, lower noise level and motor longevity. There are more e-tractors […] Read more
Big farm vs. small farm: survival of the fittest
Everybody has an opinion during coffee shop debates about optimal farm size and sustainability, and it seems every opinion is correct. We asked, which farms are sustainable in troubled times? It depends on who you talk to. First we talked to farm management consultant Peter Manness, who works out of the MNP office in Brandon. […] Read more
Are e-tractors practical?
Even when purchase prices come down, will it ever be practical to run a big battery powered 4×4 to replace your Versatile? We will see bigger battery tractors than we have now, for sure, but they will be very expensive until battery costs comes down. For now, Europeans can buy a 70-horsepower electric tractor with […] Read more
DumpDek force feeds forage blower’s blast
WOODSTOCK, Ont. — Keeping expensive equipment running during peak season is vital in all types of farming operations, including hay harvest. A forage hauler sitting waiting for something to happen is not good. In a typical forage harvest, the forage-collecting tandem trucks and trailers are sometimes seen waiting to dump their load so it can […] Read more
Swing blade sawmill makes money
Woodstock, Ont. — Portable sawmills come in three varieties: Band saws, chain saws and those historical six-foot diameter big blade saws. More recently, manufacturers have developed small blade mills as a viable option. I spent a year working at a bush mill where we mainly produced railroad ties, along with dimension lumber with the side […] Read more
