Farm & Food Care Ontario is teaming up with Ontario's mutual companies and a Hamilton-based company, Harvest Robotics, to help prevent barn fires with a new heat sensor.
Brent Royce, animal care consultant for Farm & Food Care, says the idea is to produce a product that's both practical and cost effective for farmers.
He notes the heat-sensing system indentifies temperatures above preset limits, to help identify potential fire sources before they start.
The technology used makes regular scans of areas within the barn, then compiles the data to map temperatures.
If irregularities are detected, the farmer will be notified.
$35,000 has been committed to the project by Ontario's farm mutual insurers, with another $108,000 added by the Growing Forward 2 initiative.
A prototype of the sensor will be field tested this summer.
Farm & Food Care hopes the project will be completed by October.
