Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Lifestyle or hobby farming, defined as small farms with revenues of less than $50,000, represents a significantportion of Ontario's agricultural industry. The success of these farm crops largely depends on environmentalconditions including rainfall, wind, temperature and insects. Though these environmental conditions cannot becontrolled by the farmer, tracking the impact of environmental factors can provide farmers with information tocompensate for inadequate growing conditions. To this end, farmers are increasingly relying on technology tohelp track the conditions surrounding their crops, to maximize yield rates. Technology options are currentlyavailable at considerable expense, with data collection and analytics aimed at large, commercial farmers.Lifestyle farmers do not have the resources to benefit from products that are currently available, and are in needof smaller scale options that can be managed with fewer resources and at a lower price point. The currentproposal is to develop a hand held mobile, integrated appliance that works on an Android or Windows tablet.The product will be cost effective, will lend its data to Analytics application, will incorporate soil, water andwind conditions to be automatically collected by external sensors, and will be aimed at the target market ofsmall vineyards and apiaries in southern Ontario.