Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Agriculture is a strategic economic activity and is fundamental to help and keep many rural areas alive in Nova Scotia, Canada and worldwide. In order to support the economic and social welfare of their population, today's agriculture should be productive and environmentally responsible. This requires technological innovation to maximize the efficiency of the activity while ensuring that food production delivers a good quality and reasonably priced result, complying with sustainable environmental criteria. In this context, Hanatech Inc. (Hanatech) is a Nova Scotia company developing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, with a current focus on building systems. With the support of Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), the company is now looking to expand into agricultural systems, helping farmers be more productive in their crop yields, utilizing new technologies such as smart sensors, farming drones, and self-drive tractors. Hanatech is therefore developing a ""Smart Sensor"", which includes multiple sensing functions, i.e. soil temperature, moisture, and pH, to be validated and optimized for commercial use.*The proposed applied research project will help Hanatech gain valuable insights into feasibility and productivity of their agriculture-based IoT solution as they grow their distributing capacity for their evolving business. On a supply side perspective, the future adoption of the proposed IoT-based solutions will have an important impact in terms of market opportunity for hardware providers, software providers, network/connectivity providers, and final service providers/integrators, which in turn, will translate into the generation of specific jobs in those different subsectors. The outcome also has potential to be an innovative service launched by a Canadian company, adapted to Canadian farming environment, while most of the existing solutions are deployed in warmer climates. Such an innovation represents the fastest way to boost productivity and economic growth in the Canadian agricultural sector.*