Western Fair investing government funding into robots on the farm

Hoeing your row has never been so high tech for farmers.

The Grove agri-business hub at Western Fair has announced that $2.4 million in federal and provincial government funding will be used to fund the development of robots and other technologies in agriculture.

“Maybe farming is going to be done from your comfortable chair in dining room from your laptop, operate the farm that way,” commented Art Veldhuizen. The retired John Deere manufacturing worker was marveling at robots working the field at the Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock on Tuesd.

Several pieces of automated, robotic farm equipment were on display at the event. “We have robots that are anywhere from a planting robot to a weeding robot, to a harvesting robot out on display at this event,” said Chuck Baresich, president of Haggerty AgRobotics, one of the groups involved in the project. He said that some robots are manufactured overseas, while some are made in Canada.

“We can put some field trials out there, test these robots, and de-risk it for farmers so that they don’t have to make an investment and hope that it works, they can make it knowing that it works,” added Reg Ash, the CEO of the Western Fair Association.

Robotic farm equipment works on a field at the Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock, September 10, 2024 (Bryan Bicknell/CTV News London)

It’s anticipated that robotic and autonomous farm equipment will help address a labour shortage in the agricultural sector.

“I’ve never met a farmer yet who said they have too many employees,” said Baresich. “Usually they struggle to find enough.”

“This is one way that we can attract people in to farming without necessarily having that deep agricultural base,” added Ash.

It’s still very early days for the technology. According to Baresich, there are only a couple dozen farms across Canada and the U.S. where robots are being put to work on the fields - but he said that’s about to change very soon

“In the specialty crops, the vegetables, the orchard space I think we’re going to see 50 per cent adoption very, very quickly, like under ten years, because the labour challenges are only going to get worse,” he said.