How Digital Technologies Are Helping Canadian Farms Become More Sustainable

By The Globe and Mail

Advances in technology and digitization have made small- and large-scale farming more efficient, sustainable and better for the environment, according to The Globe and Mail. Sandra Clement is one of those farmers. Sandra, her husband and their three daughters grow soybeans, corn, and wheat on a few thousand acres in Embrun, Ont., just southeast of Ottawa.

Although she says she’s no “tech wizard,” about 10 years ago, Sandra turned to technology to improve how their farm operates as new digital agriculture platforms became available. Before this, their main source of data was paper-based reports on crop yields, a measurement of the amount of a crop grown, which they would calculate once a year after each harvest. “It was completely different,” she says, “and if we wanted to keep up with technology and keep the girls interested, we needed these tools to evolve.”

“Technology helps us make good decisions because every field is unique,” she adds. “For example, some fields have sandy soil and some have clay soil, so technology gives us data-driven decisions to maximize our returns on each acre.”

The platform she uses now is Bayer’s Climate FieldView, an easy-to-use digital agriculture platform that lets farmers collect, store and analyze field data in one platform. FieldView visualizes and analyzes crop performance with field data maps so that farmers can make the best input decisions, to maximize yield and improve sustainability. Sandra was drawn to how easy the platform is for her and her family to use and the satellite imagery it provides, helping her with useful insights that previously were difficult to detect, such as spotting early signs of disease or pests and visualizing when crops are ready to harvest.