RFA Ethanol Podcast

Improving Production with Farm Controllers

Lizzy Schultz

caroline-forest The 2016 International Production and Processing Expo (IPPE) is all about innovation, with several companies using the expo to showcase innovative new strategies to help improve production. Intelia has always been a standout when it comes to electronic innovations, and their latest products offer producers the potential to see exceptional improvements in both production and sustainability efforts.

The Canadian company, based in Montreal, has been designing comprehensive custom electronic products and services since 1999, and specializes in custom custom control and automation products. Intelia has developed controllers for everything from arcade games to elevators, but they have recently begun to shift their entire focus on agriculture.

“Across agriculture I’m seeing farmers increasingly want to have access to their production data, because that data is knowledge, and knowledge is how you can optimize your production, and become more efficient and cost-effective,” said Caroline Forest, Director of Sales & Marketing for Intelia, in an interview during the expo.

The company has designed the Excel Technologies brand product line for the horticultural and farming industries, with products developed especially for dairy, hog and poultry farms. The technology works to provide producers with environmental control systems that provide ideal growth conditions for production through monitoring of atmospheric conditions. The product is known for its user-friendly interfaces, and the technology is known for its incredible precision and reliability.

“Farmers are increasingly mobile, everybody’s got a smartphone, and the size of farms has increased a lot, especially in the US, so you’ve got one production manager that is supervising 50-100 barns, and he cannot physically visit all of them each day,” said Forest. “Through savvy applications and web-enabled controllers, he’s able to access the barns from his smartphone or desktop and respond to any kind of alarms or problems that the controller is reporting back to the producer.”

Listen to Chuck’s full interview with Caroline here:
Interview with Caroline Forest, Intelia

Photos from IPPE: 2016 IPPE Photo Album

Coverage of the International Production and Processing Expo is sponsored by
Coverage of the International Production and Processing Expo is sponsored by NOVUS
Ag Groups, Audio, Gadgets, IPPE, Technology