Alterra Innovation is testing and validating their GrainTracker system at EMILI’s Innovation Farms powered by AgExpert, allowing them to develop the technology more quickly and foster collaborations with agtech companies like Phason, Elmer’s Manufacturing, and TheoryMesh.
Alterra Innovation’s GrainTracker is both a traceability and crop management system. It allows farmers to track every movement of their grain, from field to bin to market. It also uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to optimize crop production year over year, making it easy for farmers to record the value and quality of their crops each season and adjust their input plans as needed.
Before this digitization, farmers relied on paper records and whiteboards to track their inventory and crop management, which comes with the risk of human error or lost files. GrainTracker makes it possible for farmers to capture real-time inventory movements and collect integral crop data with minimal manual entry. Farmers have the ability to access everything through the GrainTracker app.
When first building the technology, Alterra Innovation Founder and CEO, Ellery Burton, understood his strengths and limitations. Burton grew up on a mixed farm in Central Manitoba before studying mechanical engineering at the Royal Military College and working as an engineering officer and pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces. Along with his co-founder, Colin Rosengren, Burton knew they were solving a real problem, but neither he nor Rosengren were electrical engineers. They needed to find the right partners to build durable hardware that could withstand the elements of the farm.
That’s where Phason came in, an agtech company specializing in electronic control systems for the agriculture sector. By collaborating with Phason, they were able to design and build a durable electronic control system that could be attached to farm equipment like combines, augers, grain trucks, and bins.
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