Seed Sensing Technology from Bluefield Seeding Solutions is hitting the spot with producers

Craig McCloskey believes that perfect seed placement is the key to growing high-quality potatoes. Craig is a Prince Edward Island potato producer and the founder of Bluefield Seeding Solutions, a small agriculture start-up, with a big vision: to equip producers with his patented precision agriculture planting technologies and help them get the most out of their fields and resources.

In 2019, Bluefield Seeding Solutions launched their Press Wheel. When attached to a conventional potato planter, the Press Wheel can improve the placement accuracy of potato seeds and allow producers to plant more quickly, while using fewer resources. It didn’t take long before farms on Prince Edward Island and across North America took notice of this new technology.

After initial interest was very promising, Craig wanted to see how he could improve the technology.

“Our goal was to reduce ‘misses’ during planting, when a seed doesn’t hit the exact spot the producer wants it to go. The next step was to provide real-time data to producers, so they know where their misses are happening, and how they can lower those misses. If farmers can reduce their misses by 4%, they are using 4% less resources to grow the crop.”

- Craig McCloskey, founder of Bluefield Seeding Solutions

That is great for producers’ operating costs, and for the environment. By preventing gaps in fields and having evenly spaced plants, farmers are more likely to use inputs, like fertilizer, more efficiently resulting in fewer environmental impacts like run-off into waterways and greenhouse gas emissions.

To support the development of this data management technology, Craig applied for, and received support from, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Agricultural Clean Technology (ACT) Program – Research and Innovation Stream. The ACT Program enables producers to adopt clean technologies that help achieve a low-carbon economy and promote sustainable growth in Canada's agriculture and agri-food sector. The program’s Research and Innovation Stream supports pre-market innovation, including research, development, demonstration and commercialization activities, to develop transformative clean technologies and enables the expansion of current technologies.

With support from ACT, and after years of research and engineering, Bluefield Seeding Solutions launched their Seed Sensing Technology. It provides producers with real-time feedback of the actual seed placement, allowing them to maximize planter performance, reduce planting time by up to 30%, and provide adequate space for crops to grow to improve yield and reduce crop waste. Craig also notes that the Seed Sensing Technology helps producers to be more efficient with fertilizers and other crop inputs by providing exact locations where they can directly target the crop.

“Without the Agricultural Clean Technology Program, it would have been a lot tougher and taken much longer to bring this technology to producers. It helped us gather the resources and engineering expertise that was needed to move forward.”

- Craig McCloskey, founder of Bluefield Seeding Solutions

Not content to rest on his achievements, Craig is already developing his latest environmentally friendly precision agriculture technology that can target crops with the precise placement of inputs, like fertilizer, to use them more efficiently.

Where producers want to minimize their misses during planting, Craig hopes that, like his other technologies, this new one will be another smash hit.