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MBP wraps up District Meetings

The Manitoba Beef Producers wrapped up their District Meetings with a virtual event on Tuesday.

General Manager Carson Callum noted that 2023 was a variable year with some areas too wet and some too dry.

"It's just a really mixed bag of production outcomes that we saw. So producers from our understanding and over the last number of weeks, in-person meetings, have been able to find enough feed or produce enough feed or have some carryover. So going into the winter months it's not as concerning as say we saw in 2021."

He noted that some producers had challenges with losses during the spring storms of 2022 adding that the Disaster Financial Assistance program can be very cumbersome and delayed.

Callum encourages producers who may still be waiting on assistance to keep pushing or to call their office for some assistance in moving through the backlog.

Source : Pembinavalley online

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Designing a Robotic Berry Picker

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Since blackberries must be harvested by hand, the process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. To support a growing blackberry industry in Arkansas, food science associate professor Renee Threlfall is collaborating with mechanical engineering assistant professor Anthony Gunderman to develop a mechanical harvesting system. Most recently, the team designed a device to measure the force needed to pick a blackberry without damaging it. The data from this device will help inform the next stage of development and move the team closer to the goal of a fully autonomous robotic berry picker. The device was developed by Gunderman, with Yue Chen, a former U of A professor now at Georgia Tech, and Jeremy Collins, then a U of A undergraduate engineering student. To determine the force needed to pick blackberries without damage, the engineers worked with Threlfall and Andrea Myers, then a graduate student.