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When Peter Swinkels started wild blueberry farming, he used good old-fashioned elbow grease to rake the bushes by hand when the time came to harvest the berries.
But now, more than four decades later, artificial intelligence is one of the tools of the trade in his fields.
The Belmont, N.S., farmer is working with researchers at Dalhousie University, which officially launched the Atlantic Institute for Digital Agriculture this fall to help the region’s farmers address challenges and develop solutions tailored to their crops and conditions.
Swinkels, past president of the Wild Blueberry Producers Association of Nova Scotia, said the initiative is “extremely exciting,” especially as climate change challenges the hardy fruit. He said the berry can benefit particularly from the application of pesticides using precision farming tools.
“If you burn it or hurt it, it takes years to come back. So we’re very cautious about what we use, and what’s in our toolbox for pesticides,” he said.
Rather than spraying an entire field, a farmer can deploy cameras mounted to farm equipment that use AI to target weeds.
Patrick Hennessy, a PhD student at Dalhousie, said the precision sprayer project required 4,000 images of weeds to be labelled and uploaded to the system. If a weed is detected, a pesticide is automatically sprayed from a corresponding nozzle — all without any need for an internet connection.
“Everything on the sprayer operates on the sprayer, it does not have to communicate with an outside network at all.”
Hennessy said Dalhousie is also developing an app to help count wild blueberry buds and determine an appropriate timing for fungicide application.
Travis Esau, director of the Atlantic Institute for Digital Agriculture, said Dalhousie is looking to support technological innovation on smaller-scale farms in the region.
“You really have to have, for a lot of cases, large acres to be able to make the technology pay for itself. And so the solutions need to be adapted to be able to be applicable for the small and medium-sized farms in Atlantic Canada. And that’s really where we’re looking to help fill a void,” said Esau.
The university is in the early stages of planning a building to house the institute at its agricultural campus in Bible Hill, N.S. No timeline or budget was provided, but a spokesperson said faculty are now fundraising and exploring partnerships.
Drone technology
Drones are among the new technologies that show promise for wild blueberry farmers.
While some countries have already approved more widespread application of pesticides by drones, there are limitations on what can be deployed while hovering over Canadian fields.
Health Canada says five products are registered for drone application by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and other products are under review.
“Pesticide application by drone is a new technology and drone specific data is typically required to assess the risks as drones are expected to behave differently than traditional aircraft as a result of their design,” Health Canada said in a statement on Dec. 2.
Hennessy said drone-based spraying could help prevent crop damage caused by large farm equipment.
“We’re in the process of collecting data to see how effective that is, if it works just as well as ground-based spraying,” he said.
The prospect of more innovation comes in a year when wild blueberry yields suffered due to drought.
Swinkels noted challenges are becoming more common, with too much precipitation three years ago and severe frost the year prior.
“We’re very fortunate that the wild blueberry plant is very hardy and I feel with a little support from technology that we might be able to work through these extreme climate changes,” he said.
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