Innovation & Technology

BNN Bloomberg by Sandrine Rastello The virus brought BRP Inc. an unexpected windfall, with throngs of first-time customers riding out the pandemic on Sea-Doos, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles. It’s betting that greener machines can help sustain the growth. The Canadian powersports manufacturer plans to introduce a broad lineup of electric-powered products within the next three…

Sure, a lot of ranch work really is pandemic friendly, like feeding cows, baling hay, fixing machinery. But let’s face it. Raising cattle, and in fact all of agriculture, is really a people business. Time and again you will hear it’s the people, plus the animals, that make this a special way of life. So…

Digitization of information and data management — that will be the focus of the Vancouver-based company best known nationally as a cellphone, TV and Internet provider. As its new agriculture division acquires and partners with nine companies (so far) TELUS Agriculture takes on a global reach. TELUS Agriculture doesn’t plan to be part of the…

BNN Bloomberg by David Welch General Motors Co. is promising to go green by making all of its global operations and vehicles carbon neutral by 2040, including selling only zero-emission models by 2035. The pledge is a bold embrace by the automaker of emission-reduction goals set by California. The state is one of the largest…

We are a Ukraine-based company which means that our parents and grandparents lived in the era of infamous Soviet collective farms, where tractors were considered to be an ultimate technology. For them, a smart farm will sound like a fairy tale. So let it be, a fairy tale of a smart farm. First of all,…

We have heard of many major businesses and brands of yesteryear’s now reduced to non-entities. Hindustan Motors (HM) had monopoly in passenger cars till the 1980’s with its classic Ambassador reigning supreme on Indian roads. With the arrival of Maruti car and later on several new generation cars, HM lost out miserably. Likewise, Hindustan Lever…

When Heather Mundt sought an alternative to branding, a new livestock ear tag in development on the other side of the world opened the door for new management decision possibilities. Heather and her husband Brenton, who run a cow-calf operation and grain farm at Oyen, Alta., were interested in GPS ear tags for identification and…

What comes to mind when you hear the word “beef”? Perhaps, meat, hamburger, steak or even leather. These are all products of the beef animal (or cattle), but there are also many other byproducts. Beef byproducts are the products that we get from beef cattle that might not be quite so obvious. For example, soap…

Farmers have seen hundreds of technologies come and go that didn’t prove their worth. So when drones started circling over agriculture a few years ago, it wasn’t surprising the hype of their practicality was met with great skepticism. While some products were good, others were simply not suited for ag.  By developing an end-to-end solution…

In September of this year, the Australian Council of Learned Academics (or, ACOLA) released its Future of Agriculture Technologies report. Commissioned by Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel, on behalf of the National Science and Technology Council, the forward-looking report comes at a crucial time for Aussie farmers. After a decade of what can genuinely be described as…