Agriculture depends on innovation; in fact it was built upon it. In this issue, we bring you numerous stories about innovation that has happened or is happening in Western Canada and, in some cases, beyond. To tease your appetite for the contents in subsequent pages, here is a quiz based on the information within: Being […] Read more
Farm Living
Ergonomics the driving force behind inventor’s front-facing snowblower
If the good Lord had wanted people to blow snow all day with their necks twisted 180 degrees to the rear of the tractor, He would have made their heads face backward. That’s one good reason for converting a combine into a snow blower when tasked with windrowing snow. The human neck can take only […] Read more
Start your day with … a bowl of crickets?
Jarrod Goldin is president of what he believes is the world’s largest livestock ranch, but there should be an asterisk attached to that claim. “As far as livestock head count is concerned, I think we may be the biggest farm in the world because we have 110 million head of crickets,” he said. Goldin formed […] Read more
A vet’s newest tool
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are designing an endoscopy capsule capable of making detailed photographs of a horse’s innards, which are a largely unexplored frontier. “Whenever I talk to students about the horse abdomen, I put up a picture of a horse and put a big question mark in the middle,” said veterinary researcher […] Read more
VIDEO: A practical outlook
Manitoba entrepreneur applies personal philosophy about using local, healthy foods to create thriving business
As a rich, marzipan-like scent wafts out of a tiny container of brass-gold oil that she is holding, Mila Maximets muses on years of painstaking efforts to use all parts of the tart cherries she processes. “I’m not into juices,” said Maximets, who has been manufacturing a seabuckthorn puree for five years and has just […] Read more
Yield-boosting hybrid wheat varieties on the horizon
Farmers in Western Canada have always relied on innovation to make their farms more productive and more profitable. From mechanical innovations such as combine harvesters and rubber wheeled tractors nearly a century ago to the adoption more recently of chemical weed control products, genetically modified crop varieties and GPS assisted machinery, the evolution of prairie […] Read more
VIDEO: Molecular farming: small scale work nets big results
Fish poop and green algae might help farms grow without having to expand. That’s the hope for developers of an integrated farming system that could combine grain, fish and algae in a self-sustaining circle. “Molecular farming is a really good option,” Bruce Hardy, president of Myera Group, said during a tour of its laboratory-farm at […] Read more
New tech measures cattle feed intake
Feed consumption and weight gain are linked to healthier herds, so keeping an eye on feed intake can pay off
AIRDRIE, Alta. — When Camiel Huisma was helping a friend manage his ostrich chicks in 1990, the link between feed intake and animal health intrigued him. The hatchlings were selling for $6,000 each, but the survival rate was less than 16 percent. As an engineer, he saw death loss as a problem that could be […] Read more
Go, fish
Innovations in aquaculture:
In the 2015 movie The Martian, an astronaut stranded on Mars is forced by necessity to grow his own food. The potato crop doesn’t work out so well for Nick Watney, played by Matt Damon in the movie, but Dr. Nick Savidov believes growing food on Mars is quite possible. The bigger opportunity, however, is […] Read more
VIDEO: Building a better bagel
Sometimes the most innovative creation is something that seems exactly like something else, but is actually profoundly different. Such are the regular-looking and good-tasting bagels being eaten at the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals. They look like regular wheat bagels. They taste like regular wheat bagels. But the human lab rats consuming the […] Read more
