By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup for Wednesday December 27, 2023

Dec 27, 2023 | 1:09 PM

The Manitoba government is expanding its Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program (RALP).

The changes are in the area of carbon sequestration and grassland resilience practices.

Manitoba Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn said with increased climate variability making it even more difficult for producers, programs must align with the needs of Manitoba producers to encourage sustainable farming.

The change opens the program for all primary producers, community pastures, agricultural Crown land forage leaseholders, Indigenous primary producers, and communities to access funding.

Selected applicants will receive 75 per cent of the total approved eligible costs up to a maximum of $15,000 per project.

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Applications are being accepted until Jan. 22. Projects must be completed in 18 months.

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As the calving season draws closer, Ashley Perepelkin won’t need to get up every three or four hours in the evening to check her cows.

That’s because the Alberta producer and her husband can monitor their animals’ health, activity, nutrition and growth through cameras, thanks to facial recognition technology for animals called 360 Live ID.

Perepelkin said cameras watch for signs such as contractions to determine if a cow is about to give birth and will send her a text to notify her.

The platform was developed by a startup called OneCup AI. It’s the creator of Bovine Expert Tracking and Surveillance, or BETSY.

CEO Mokah Shmigelsky said the technology has been on the market since 2022, and there are now 140 setups across Canada.

Shmigelsky said the idea for BETSY came about when she and her husband were sitting around a campfire at a family reunion in Saskatchewan discussing the challenges in the cattle industry.

Shmigelsky said dairy farmers are not only interested in calving alerts but also alerts when cows are in heat and are ready to breed.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @farmnewsNOW