The Olds College farm will be getting a makeover to become a farm of the future.

They've officially launched their Smart Farm, and Director of Smart Ag at Olds College, Jason Bradley, said the multi-million dollar transformation will be done in phases.

"So we started on one field, a 110 acres, with a crop focus on Smart Ag, and we're going to scale that across the rest of our 700 acres of crop land at Olds College. The next phase after that we'll be looking at livestock."

He added, their Smart Farm will be transformed with commercially available technology, and they've already installed a number of new tools.

"Things like stationary soil monitors, digital weather stations, some fairly advanced things using spectroscopy and multispectral imaging of soil and plants, and connecting that through neural nets and applying artificial intelligence to test for soil health and macronutrients in the soil, and different components of a plant or grain."

Bradley said, the farm also has a WiFi network so you can access the internet out in the fields.

The Smart Farm is designed to provide hands on learning for students at Olds College and life-long learners in agriculture.

 

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