A Niverville company that started with a daughter’s question on the family farm has now signed up more than 100 active farms for its equipment-tracking app. Katie Friesen, founder of FarmerTitan, launched the business after she returned to help manage her father Rick Friesen’s mixed farm and found no one knew what maintenance had been done on the machinery.
The app uses QR codes stuck on each piece of equipment. A farmer scans the code with a phone and sees the full service history, parts details, and any open work orders in three clicks or less. “It was built for people like my dad,” Friesen has said, noting her 65-year-old father was the first tester. Since starting, users have logged more than 2,500 work orders through the system.
Friesen points to research showing that roughly 25 per cent of farm equipment repairs are preventable with consistent record-keeping. Those savings add up as machinery costs rise. FarmerTitan also offers one-time purchase options because “a lot of farmers hate subscriptions,” Friesen has explained, though subscription plans are also available.
This month, FarmerTitan graduated from Cohort 5 of the Conexus Cultivator Agtech Accelerator at Ag in Motion in Langham, Saskatchewan, from July 21 to 23. The accelerator is Canada’s first credit union-led business incubator, linking agtech companies with mentors and investors. The trade show is Western Canada’s largest outdoor farm expo, with tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Beyond the accelerator, EMILI (Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative) is testing FarmerTitan through its Agriculture Innovation, Validation and Adoption Network on three farms across Canada this growing season. Friesen, a Niverville native who previously worked in venture capital in Miami and for a Colombian tech firm, says she designed the tool to be simple enough for any farm operation.
