CAAIN Supports Research & Innovation in Livestock
By Braxten Breen
Farms.com Intern
Patience Palmer, a Program Manager for the Canadian Agri-Food Automation & Intelligence Network (CAAIN), provided an overview of CAAIN at the recent Farms.com 2022 Western Precision Agriculture Conference and Ag Technology Showcase.
CAAIN’s mandate is to facilitate collaboration between the private sector, researchers and academia. So far, CAAIN has launched 6 funding calls and plans to expand to various categories of agriculture production in Canada.
An example of CAAIN’s most recent launch is the Livestock Innovation Program, where it raised up to $5M in support, that will consider a broad range of livestock options and their primary products.
The application window for this program closed February 6, 2023.
The Livestock Innovation Program has been developed to foster technological advances in livestock production and primary processing. The goal of the program is to support research and development to enhance efficiency in livestock agriculture and includes the adoption of automation such as the implementation of robotics and automation, data-based decision making, and validation of new technologies through smart farms.
The competition is categorized into three broad topic areas:
- Animal production and efficiency
- Animal food safety and quality
- Sustainable production
CAAIN runs with a Connect – Create – Cultivate system.
- “Connect” is developing member-based networks
- "Create” is funding agri-food research and innovation pillars
- “Cultivate” is supporting the development of a national network of smart farms
Palmer shared examples of companies CAAIN had previously supported in the Precision Agriculture sector, including one regarding automation and scalability, which was SWATMAPS’ Croptimistic Technology. (Read the related article on SWATMAPS.)The goal was to develop and demonstrate new soil technologies that could be beneficial to producers. CAAIN contributed $1.1M with a total project value of $2.75M.
Watch the complete video below of Palmer presentation about CAAIN below.