Sasktel launches Smart Ag at Farm Show
April 28, 2025, 12:02 pm
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A lot of smart ideas tend to float around Canada’s Farm Show every year, and SaskTel told attendees last week about their latest plan—SaskTel Smart Ag.
“We’re really excited to be launching SaskTel Smart Ag here at Canada’s Farm Show,” said Heather Clair, Marketing Manager in charge of Smart Ag at SaskTel. “We couldn’t think of a better time of year and place to start talking about SaskTel Smart Ag on this large scale.”
She explained how Smart Ag is an ecosystem of companies based in Saskatchewan and around the world.
“We’re providing the background infrastructure for them to build their technologies off of,” Clair said. “We’ve partnered with some phenomenal companies that are experts in their field, whether it’s soil analytics, data analytics, tracking cows, taking care of water sources—it’s all about how can we help farmers be empowered with a digital toolkit to make better, more sustainable decisions. It’s very much about options, it’s very customizable.”
A pair of the partner companies were represented at SaskTel’s trade show booth during Canada’s Farm Show, both promising some new technology for Saskatchewan producers.
Xact Agriculture is based in Saskatoon, using advanced AI-powered algorithms to process multispectral data captured by satellites. What that means is they can provide detailed soil analysis to help farmers make more informed decisions to optimize their operation.
In tandem with the dynamic brain power at Regina-based Kvale Informatics, the result, as Clair describes, is “a war room management system for your farm.”
“They have this great enterprise grade dashboard that can pull from APIs or your login credentials, to connect the information from your tractors, from your weather stations, from Xact Agriculture, and it creates a very holistic look at your farm,” she said of Kvale’s offerings. “That kind of information can be combined with your seeding data, your spraying data, your traceability data. Start to finish, it starts to layer upon itself and give you some really great analytics on the back end to be able to make better decisions.”
There’s also room for more partners to join the SaskTel Smart Ag realm, according to Clair.
“We’re very interested in talking to any companies that are wanting to take part in this,” she said. “One of the key features within our ecosystem, though, is we want to make sure that everybody that we work with understands that the farmers own their data. This is a an open data system. Everybody can use the data to create tools, but the ownership of that remains on the farm.”
This includes places like Cultivator powered by Conexus and Saskatoon-based Co.Labs, both of which have been in communication with Smart Ag.
“The companies that are coming out of those programs are phenomenal, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m really excited about SaskTel Smart Ag, because it’s allowing those startups to get a foothold into the community,” Clair said. “You don’t have to be approved for the big platforms. This is a platform that can take whatever those great up and coming tools are and integrate it with some of the more long-standing systems within agriculture.”
Solar-powered ear tags
A perfect example of how all the technology comes together is found in the Australian-based Smart Paddock livestock management system. At the centre of the system is a solar-powered ear tag for livestock, which provide real-time GPS monitoring of each critter wearing the fancy earring. The tags have a 10-year lifetime, can be applied using tagging equipment producers already have at their fingertips, and can be transferred to different animals.
The company also offers SmartTrack trackers for equipment, SmartFence monitors for voltage levels on electric fences, and updates on water levels through SmartWater.
“We want those companies to be able to build off of what we’re providing, to be able to reach their own needs,” Clair said. “We want to support them.”
