London Inc. June 2022 - 24

Upfront Agriculture
SMART FARMING
It's still early days for autonomous agriculture technology, but a Southwestern Ontario
firm is out in the fields, proving the feasibility and value of robotics and automation
CANADA IS
IN the midst of a fourth agricultural
revolution, where advanced technology and automation
are converging into a blossoming Internet of Farming - a
potential revolution in the way Canadian farmers grow food
and feed growing populations.
But this revolution is by no means assured. By 2025, one
of every four farmers in this country will be over the age of
65, and farm productivity is plateauing. There's also a labour
shortage of over 120,000 workers in Canada's agricultural
sectors, with no sign of letting up.
Change is needed to attract new people to the field. " It's
more than an economic imperative, " concluded a recent
RBC study of the ag industry. " Our food security is at stake. "
Haggarty AgRobotics (www.haggertyagrobotics.com),
based in the town of Bothwell southwest of London, wants
to see that agricultural revolution coming to life here, in
Southwestern Ontario, on some of the most fertile farmland
this country has to offer.
" When people used to farm 50 years ago, you would go
into the field with your tractors and everything was manual.
The way you drove was manual. The way you planted was
manual. You had no information about the field, " says Chuck
Baresich, co-founder of Haggerty AgRobotics and Haggerty
24 | londonincmagazine.ca | JUNE 2022
Creek, the parent agricultural company from which their
new robotics company is being spun off.
" The next step is to remove the person out of the cab of
the tractor, " Baresich continues. " What we did - or, what
we're doing - is we have brought together various pieces of
autonomous equipment, and we have worked out a system to
deploy those pieces of equipment on farmers' fields. "
In recent years, Haggarty Creek has explored the business
of precision agriculture, Baresich says, using technology
like GPS and field computers to gather more precise data to
help farmers do their work.
Farmers today are often working with smart tools -
fertilizers that know not to over-spray a spot, for instance.
As those tools have become commonplace in the farming
industry, the logical next step for Baresich was automation.
" We had started down this road in 2020 and did a lot of
experimenting with it in 2021, " he says. " But now what we're
doing is saying, 'We're going to focus on this.' "
They now have a fleet of 11 different types of robots to
automate a variety of simple farm tasks. " Some of the robots
are small - the size of a wheelbarrow - and they drive
through the field, " Baresich explains. " The other robots are
bigger - the size of a car - and they do the same thing. "
http://www.haggertyagrobotics.com http://www.londonincmagazine.ca
London Inc. June 2022

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