The Field of Excellence is a collaborative research and demonstration program that occurs annually at Discovery Farm Langham. This popular program attracts a variety of agriculture industry partners, bringing their insights, learnings and objectives together in a single cohesive project focused on informing and engaging with Canadian farmers.
The Field of Excellence is a part of the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network, which is building a collaborative framework among Canada’s Smart Farm initiatives for sharing data and expertise to help farmers, industry and technology developers better understand, utilize, and develop smart agriculture technologies and systems.
The main objective of the project is to utilize various data layers to inform management decisions throughout the growing season. The 2023 Field of Excellence will consist of wheat and canola. With a strong focus on ag tech, this year’s project will feature tools such as satellite imagery, drones and hardware sensors for remote data collection.
In 2023, this project was funded by Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network and is a collaborative effort with the following partners:
A&L Canada Laboratories Inc.: During the 2023 season, A&L Canada Laboratories showcased their TerraSiteRX program at Discovery Farm Langham. TerraSiteRx is an innovative analytics platform for agriculture retailers, crop consultants and farmers to use to interpret farm-generated data.
AgExpert: The AgExpert platform was utilized throughout the season at Discovery Farm’s Field of Excellence Project to track field operations, plus the cost and application of pesticides. This information provided critical information to assess the Project’s overall success. See more on the 2023 growing season videos here.
AGI: AGI was the Discovery Farm Langham provider of grain handling and storage equipment used in the Field of Excellence Project.
Axiom/ACT Agriculture: Axiom Exploration used the partnership with Discovery Farm and the Field of Excellence Project to further develop its Xact Agriculture product. The Xact product is deep learning artificial intelligence that uses multispectral data from satellite, in combination with soil samples collected by the Field of Excellence partners, to derive a complete fertility assessment for large areas of land. Xact produces high-resolution fertility data with significantly decreased sampling effort.
CLAAS: CLAAS of America supplied a state-of-the-art combine to bring in the harvest for the Field of Excellence Project.
Nutrien Ag Solutions/Proven Seed: Nutrien Ag Solutions and Proven Seed were the preferred suppliers of crop inputs for the Field of Excellence Project.
SWAT MAPS: The SWAT MAPS ecosystem was utilized in several ways, including as a basis for applying prescriptive rates of seed and fertilizer to each SWAT zone.
