Computer use on Ontario farms doubling every five years,

but still lags Quebec and Canada as a whole

by KEN BENNETT and SUSAN MANN

Hannam manages 3,500 acres on Woodrill Farms in Guelph and custom sprays considerably more, so he can't afford one of his six sprayers heading in the wrong direction or into the wrong field. So, for the past season, he sent his employees out in the morning with a digital map that indicates the fields to be worked as well as the county roads to get there. Through a clever computer innovation, he combined GPS information on 30,000 acres of cropland and overlaid it onto digital road maps.

"We bought a data set of the Canadian roadmap for this area," Hannam says. Then, working together with nearby Agri-Food Laboratories, he was able to join roads and fields into a more useable map. The information from combine yield monitors was used to determine where fields needed to be sprayed in the spring. The co-ordinates of the fields were overlaid onto roadmaps to guide sprayers to their job locations.

Having a slow-moving vehicle get lost down some lonely country road is the kind of frustration only a farmer can fully appreciate. Now, at least, this possibility is off Hannam's list -- just one of the ways farmers like him today use computers to manage their operations. "I don't want to be an expert in computers, I just want to have the tools that enable me to do my job better," he says.

Statistics Canada reports that, in 2001, four out of 10 farms in Ontario used a computer as a management tool. Across Canada, computer use on farms has almost doubled every five years -- from 11 per cent in 1991 to 21 per cent in 1996 and almost 40 per cent in 2001. In 2001, there were 59,728 farms in Ontario, of which 23,552 used computers -- a jump of nearly 67 per cent from 1996, despite an 11.5 per cent drop in the number of farms.

Even so, the proportion of farmers using computers is less than the 54.9 per cent who use them in the Canadian population as a whole. One reason may be that, until recently, rural areas lacked the providers and high-speed connections that make the Internet as attractive and practical as in urban areas, says a report on the Statistics Canada Web site.

Larger-than-average operations like Woodrill Farms are more likely to make significant use of computers than their smaller counterparts. In fact, the statistics show that computer use is closely related to the dollar value of farm receipts. Six out of 10 farms with receipts of $250,000 or more use computers in some capacity, and farms of this size are about twice as likely to do so as farms in the $25,000-$49,900 category.

Pinpointing the numbers

Fred Wagner, a director of the Ontario Corn Producers' Association, grows a mix of cash crops in Breslau. "In the past," he says, "farmers always had a sharp eye for judging the crops, just eyeballing them, basically. You had a pretty good feel where there were things lacking. But now you can truly pinpoint (shortcomings) scientifically."

Wagner can now confidently quote high and low yields for different parts of his fields. "Before I had a system like this," he says, "I didn't appreciate the size of the variance." While the yield monitor is not on his desktop, this particular type of computer is actually changing his way of thinking about his fields. With the ability to store the information, Wagner can access it again in future years for fertilizer applications.

Wagner still maintains computer use has to pay for itself through higher productivity or lower costs. "It's fine to have information, but what do you do with it?" he asks. "You've got to use it to do things better in the future. Either you eliminate some unnecessary fertilizer spreading in certain areas or you do a better job with less input."

While this kind of specialized computer use may not yet be that common among farmers, they are using computers to go on the Internet, says Alfons Weersink, professor of agricultural economics and business at the University of Guelph. He has done research on the impact of technical change on farmers' decisions. Initially, many farmers may have acquired computers for their families with some idea of also using them to house production and financial information. But plugging financial or production data into a computer is time-consuming. "They probably have to have somebody in the farm family who likes to do that sort of thing," he notes.

The vast majority of Ontario farmers who had computers in 2001 use them for bookkeeping followed by accessing the Internet, sending and receiving e-mails, word processing and livestock and crop record keeping, he says.

Liam McCreery, chair of the Ontario Soybean Growers' Marketing Board, uses his computer both for bookkeeping and to get market information. "I'm on the computer to check my e-mail and I click a button and the information is there," he explains. "It's current and up-to-date."

Going on the Internet also enables him to keep an eye on what his competition around the world is doing, including what they're planting, how their harvest is and what tools they're using. "I can see what the Brazilians are up to."

Useful for herd management

One of the big uses of the computer on the Buchner farm is for the herd management program offered through the Ontario Dairy Herd Improvement Corporation, explains Glenn. "We use it for all of our herd management - breeding, herd health and vaccination program." The program generates lists of cows that should be coming into heat, that need to be dried off or that are ready to deliver calves.

Before Elmwold Farms put Dairy COMP 305 software onto their computer, they tracked herd health by using a book with a card for each cow. Computers don't make this work any easier, because the information still has to be put in. "But it's a lot quicker trying to get information on an individual cow," Buchner notes.

The computer is also used for bookkeeping and enables them to break costs down on a per cow basis "so we can have a really close handle on our cost of production," Glenn says. "You can see if the cost is escalating quickly. You can look at it and analyze it and say 'why is that?"'

About 300 farmers in Ontario and Western Canada have this program, along with another 125 veterinarians and nutritionists who use it as an advisory tool, says Jeromy Ten Hag, supervisor of dairy software for Ontario DHI.

Like Liam McCreery, the Buchners also use their computer to keep up with market information, checking the Chicago Board of Trade markets two or three times a week. And they can retrieve their milk quality and composition results quickly from the Dairy Farmers of Ontario website, enabling them to see fluctuations in their milk composition so they can promptly correct a feed or other problem.

A farm's milk composition and quality results are available after accessing a secured area of the DFO website using a private password. Farmers can also place bids on the quota exchange. As of last month, 2,650 farmers were getting their milk composition information via the Internet, said Lloyd Whiting, director of information services for DFO. (A further 2,050 farmers get their composition information via MILKLINE an interactive telephone service, while another 30 per cent of producers wait for the results to come out with their milk cheque. There are about 5,900 active producers.)

Part-time farmers, referred to as sundowners, tend also to be avid computer users. "They've got the computer because they use it at work and it's a natural thing for them to bring it home with them," says Ontario agriculture ministry soil fertility specialist Keith Reid. "It's not difficult for them because they've gone through the learning curve off the farm."

Reid says that small farmers who work solely on their own operation tend to be insulated from computer use. He suggests that those five or 10 years from retirement who own a small to mid-sized farm will not naturally turn to computers because it requires an investment of time that will not see immediate payback. "It's a new skill set to learn," he says. "When you're already putting out 110 per cent, you don't have the time and the energy to commit to learning something new."

Age may play a role in computer use as well. Statistics Canada data shows the proportion of farm operators aged 55 or older in 2001 is a substantial 37.5 per cent of Ontario farms, an increase of 3.3 per cent from 1991. At the same time, those under 35 years of age (the group with computer experience through school) represent a sparse 10.6 per cent of operators, down 7.7 percent points since 1991. Interestingly, Quebec, with a lower proportion of older farmers and a higher proportion of younger ones than Ontario, has 8.3 per cent more farms using computers than its western neighbour.

The percentage of farmers in Quebec using computers has zoomed ahead of Ontario. In 1996, Quebec farm computer use stood at 22.06 per cent, just over a percentage point ahead of Ontario. British Columbia led farm computer use with 23.6 per cent, followed by Alberta with 22.9 per cent.

One possible explanation for the higher computer usage among Quebec farmers is that on average they are younger than farmers in the rest of Canada. There are more farmers under the age of 35 in Quebec than anywhere else in the country.

Another reason is a program the Quebec government launched in May 2000, called Connecting Families to the Internet. As part of that program, lower income families in Quebec could apply for a discount on the monthly cost of Internet access or the rental or purchase of a computer. The program was introduced to allow all Quebec families equal access to the information highway. Nearly 300,000 families took advantage of some part of that program. "Perhaps some farms benefited from that (program)," says David Fisk, assistant regional director of the Outaouais region, Quebec Department of Agriculture, based in Buckingham. "I can't say that would explain why Quebec farmers are the highest users in Canada. That was surprising to me."

Keith Reid does not seem concerned that this province's farmers are not rushing to become computer-dependent. "The computer is a tool and is very useful for some jobs," he says. "But, as far as needing a computer to do your books, to do precision agriculture or yield monitoring, there are other ways of doing that. If you know your fields and can use visual cues to make changes in management, you don't need a GPS system on your tractor and an automatic controller."

Reid says the real lesson behind precision agriculture is not about computing. Instead, it is the realization that while farms expand and merge fields together, the larger area cannot be managed all the same way

. "In a way, we're going ahead by stepping back and saying we'll manage not by field boundaries, but by what's appropriate for that particular place in the field," he says. "We haven't got the fence line there anymore, but we still recognize that it's different. You don't need a computer to do that." BF

Two-year-old Agri-e still looking for business

by KEN BENNETT and SUSAN MANN

One example of e-business at work in agriculture is the Agri-eBusiness system introduced in early 2000. Developed by the big three Ontario grain organizations -- corn, soybeans and wheat along -- with the Agricultural Commodity Corporation, the initiative involves electronically transmitting sales data from 110 elevators and 45 dealers to the organizations' offices.

"There is a world of potential out there," says Brenda Miller-Sanford, executive assistant with the Ontario Corn Producers' Association. "How we build this system for an electronic community still has a way to go, with input from producers to find out how they can better make use of it."

Some of the potential integrations being talked about include identity-preserved tracking and loan programs, as well e-marketing. Miller-Sanford believes the strength of the system could eventually pull in other agricultural industries such as red meat and dairy. But for now it's just the corn and wheat organizations that are involved after the soybean board pulled out in the spring of 2001.

The soybean board started looking at the Agri-eBusiness system in 1998 in order to find a more efficient and less expensive way of transferring producer information from dealers to the organization's office. "We worked with our other groups (corn and wheat) to see if there was a better way we could do it electronically," McCreery explains. "But when it got to the position where we had the numbers, we made the decision not to go ahead."

He said that the cost to have producer information sent through the Agri-e network to the soybean board office would have been prohibitive. "It's cheaper for us to have people mail it to us." Now dealers send a hard copy of the information directly to the soybean board office.

The soybean board still plans to explore a cheaper, more efficient way to transfer producer information, possibly through the Internet. BF

Creating incentives for high-speed Internet to go rural

by KEN BENNETT

In September 2001, the federal government rolled out its $105 million program to ensure broadband (high-speed Internet) access for all Canadian communities by 2005. First announced as a commitment in late 2000, the Broadband for Rural and Northern Development Pilot Program is now in the second of two rounds of applications to receive half the cost up to $30,000 to develop a business case plan.

"We came up with about 4,200 communities that don't have broadband service now," says Olsen. In the first round, there were 223 applications representing between 1,700 and 1,800 Canadian communities, not yet half of those within the Industry Canada focus. The deadline for the second round of proposals is March 1, 2003.

Ontario has 63 applications in the first round, among them Lambton County, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent and Elgin Community Futures Development Corporation (CFDC), a community access organization for Elgin County.

Donna Lunn, the community development officer for Elgin CFDC, believes farmers would get excited about computer use if the rural infrastructure for broadband were there. She says they can make a good business case to attract service providers. "We haven't just looked at agriculture in the rural communities," she says.

By pulling together other sectors, such as rural businesses, municipal offices and libraries, Lunn envisions banding together a rural network that looks as appealing as urban populations to Internet vendors.

"Aggregate their needs and then you've created a demand," she says. "Vendors are becoming more interested now in being able to service that. There's no sense in being a lone cowboy out there trying to do this. It's too expensive, and it changes too quickly." BF

OFA aims to launch Internet portal next month

"The only thing more frustrating than a slow connection is actually surfing the Internet," says Neil Currie, OFA general manager. He describes the portal as "a work in progress" but predicts that one day it will offer "one-stop shopping for electronic tools for farmers and rural residents."

There will be content from member organizations, interactive chat lines, news feeds, weather, classified advertisements for machinery and livestock, crop information, even a "farm-oriented eBay" and "everything else our members require, as well as applications such as distance learning." For example, farmers will be able to access pesticide management courses, Currie says. Perhaps even Data Transmission Network (DTN to most farmers) will be available.

So far, this Internet portal hasn't cost the OFA anything, Currie says. Licensing the software cost the OFA $100,000, which was recovered with a grant from the Agricultural Adaptation Council. The OFA is working with a new company called W3Connex, based north of Toronto, which has a business plan for wiring rural Ontario with a high-speed network. The portal works best with high-speed connections, Currie stresses.

Currie said the OFA has endorsed the business plan and made a presentation to the federal Liberal rural caucus and to the Progressive Conservative caucus in Ontario.

The OFA will promote the network "as an affinity type program" for members. " We won't have an ownership position or investment in the network. But it will be highly compatible (with the portal.) We see it as the future for our members," he says. BF