Growing up on a big grain farm near Eston, in west-central Saskatchewan, he knew he had neither the heart nor the stomach to “actually be a farmer,” Ken Jackson says.
“I like to build stuff.”
Jackson went on to study engineering technology before founding and selling several different startup companies in Saskatoon.
Now, however, that path has led him right back to where he started.
His latest venture, Intelliconn Communications Solutions Inc., is a technology company that aims to make farms across Saskatchewan, Western Canada and North America more efficient and more effective.
While many of the “big gains” in agriculture have already been achieved — such as large equipment and better crop varieties — he figured the new firm could help by “fine-tuning the system,” he said in an interview.
“A few years ago I saw an opportunity to solve a couple of problems in agriculture, those being constant connectivity on the farm and also the problem with grain sample acquisition — essentially, grain quality management.”
Intelliconn has been commercializing what Jackson calls “post-last-mile” connectivity tools for a couple of years. This year, the company plans to build on that by introducing its grain data and analytics products.
Dubbed Ingrain and Insight, they are intended to replace the methods farmers have been using to collect grain samples with real-time, highly-accurate digital sampling and monitoring.
“A guy with a scoop on a stick just is not getting a representative sample of what’s going in the bin,” Jackson said, adding that representative samples are vital to ensure grain does not spoil in the bin.
The company is planning to integrate technology that will give farmers information about their crops beyond moisture, including protein and oil content, which typically require testing in a distant laboratory, he said.
“We calculate an average grower per Ingrain unit can realize $40,000 or $50,000 per year in additional income” through decreased spoilage and, to a greater extent, premiums offered to farmers with greater certainty about their crops, Jackson said.
Ron Kielo, whose company K6 Holdings Ltd. farms around 11,000 acres near Delisle, Sask., said he has had a few “fairly major” and “costly” disappointments over the years, problems caused by grain samples not being representative of what was in the bin.
That led him to agree to test an early version of Intelliconn’s grain analytics technology, an experience he found encouraging, and invest in the company. Kielo said he hopes to outfit his farm with the products once they’re commercially available.
“It’s not necessarily what it saves you,” he said. “It’s probably what it gains you … being able to deliver the correct product to specs, that gains you credibility when you’re delivering what you’ve contracted for.”
Jackson’s efforts have not gone unnoticed in the broader technology community, either.
Earlier this month, the company was given one of 10 spots in the Thrive Accelerator, a Silicon Valley-based program that aims to boost ag-tech companies with funding and contacts. Intelliconn was selected from among 300 competitors.
Jackson said the program and the acknowledgement that accompanies it will help Intelliconn — which has acquired other business ventures since its inception — move beyond the “seed capital” phase of its life and toward raising millions of dollars needed to scale up.
While Jackson and his colleagues don’t necessarily fit the stereotype of the typical startup executive, he figures the experience of Intelliconn’s management and directors will be an asset for years to come.
Source: thestarphoenix.com
Author: Alex Macpherson