In July 2025, EMILI announced the launch of a second Innovation Farms location in MacGregor, Manitoba, which allows EMILI to gain and share insights into technology used to grow and store potatoes. With potato harvest season kicking off, EMILI’s Innovation Farms team joined the team at J. P. Wiebe Ltd. on location at EMILI’s Innovation Farms MacGregor site on September 28 to learn more about potato harvest.
In the field, two diggers work ahead of the harvester to combine potatoes from six rows into two rows. (Photo credit: EMILI)
The harvester works behind the diggers, scooping up the rows of potatoes. The potatoes then travel through a grading system before being loaded into a truck to go back to the yard for storage. (Photo credit: EMILI)
Each truck holds about 33,000 pounds of potatoes. J.P. Wiebe Ltd. has about 32 trucks on the road during harvest. (Photo credit: EMILI)
At the yard, the potatoes are unloaded from the truck, and travel through a system that rids the potatoes of sand and vines. (Photo credit: EMILI)
A potato is cut open to determine the quality. Stress during the growing season can result in hollow hearts in the potato – the cells in the potato stop growing, resulting in a hollow area. This part can be cut out, and the potato can still be used. (Photo credit: EMILI)
Sheldon Wiebe (second from left) and the Innovation Farms team inspect a sample from one of J.P. Wiebe Ltd.’s potato fields. (Photo credit: EMILI)
The final section of the conveyor deposits potatoes at a rate of 200 pounds per second into a temperature-controlled storage facility. It takes about a day to fill half of this building. (Photo credit: EMILI)
Ryan Wiebe (left), and his father, Sheldon, cut potatoes and find no blemishes. (Photo credit: EMILI)
The Innovation Farms team taste raw potatoes. (Photo credit: EMILI)
The potatoes will stay in this temperature-controlled storage until they are taken to market. (Photo credit: EMILI)
Innovation Farms is located on two Manitoba Farms; Rutherford Farms, a 5,500+ acre seed farm in Grosse Isle, Manitoba and J.P. Wiebe Ltd., a 8,500 acre farm with approximately 3,000 acres dedicated to potatoes in MacGregor, Manitoba. Locating its operations on these farms allows EMILI to evaluate the return on investment of agriculture technology in real-world commercial farm settings. Read more about the technology EMILI is testing and validating this growing season.