About Prairie Agri Photo

Who We Are

Prairie Agri Photo Ltd. was established in 1976 at Carman, Manitoba by Jack and Linda McKinnon. Aerial Infrared Crop Photography was first used to monitor potatoes, to detect blight at early stages. These square mile and quarter section images are now widely used for general crop management. The same product has proven to be popular to monitor environment sites as well as wetland surveillance. As these aerial images became more widely known, they were used for overall farm management and resource monitoring. There is now a wide range of users in both government and private industry.

A satellite office was opened in Lethbridge, Alberta from 1980-1984 to offer better service to our customers across the western Prairies.

From 1985-1989, infrared photos were provided for the citrus industry in Florida, USA. Contracts were also flown for individuals in Barbados, Malaysia and Australia. In the 1990’s and into the early 2000s, the aerial photographic images were scanned and acres could be measured on computer using our agricultural software U-Count. This measuring software has been recently upgraded to Windows XP. This company also developed a crop planning and field history software program called The BottomLine providing farmers with a easy to use planning software package.

In 2006, the company changed from traditional film imagery to Color Digital Imagery as the IR film was no longer available. GPS navigation now allows the crew to accurately pinpoint photo locations. Recently the company has developed the capability to georeference images for our more advanced customers. All images are now taken in high resolution natural color format. In 2005 the Alberta portion of the business was re-established in Taber under the name Prairie Agri Photo AB under different ownership.

After 31 years of full time activity with this business the owners are ready to sell. The entire business with all of its past customers of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are now for sale to the right energetic, forward looking new owner.

It’s time for the present owners to retire or move on to other adventures.

Kindly direct serious enquiries to 1-800-374-8078 or email pap@prairieagri.com

Jack McKinnon, (owner) After graduating from University, Jack taught high school science, chemistry and agriculture for 7 years. Combining his farming background with his science degree, he developed a practical use for infrared technology to be used in agriculture and founded Prairie Agri Photo in 1976. Jack is now focusing on the transfer of this technology to the international market place under the name Resource Monitoring 2000.

Linda McKinnon, (owner) Linda has been with Prairie Agri Photo since its inception in 1976. She is the office manager and is responsible for quality control of the photographic products as well as streamlining the work-flow during the busy summer season. Linda took care of the nuts & bolts allowing Jack the time to develop new products and to explore new markets.

Dave Holmberg Dave has been our principle photographer for the past three years and is responsible for procuring images and returning them to base. He is retired from a highly technical background in Mining Engineering and it shows in his incredible and dizzying aptitude for math. He also holds a pilots license and just can't seem to stay away from flying.

Ed Leask Ed is our extremely experienced pilot. He has spent his career in the RCAF and CF where he flew various aircraft including the CT-114 Tutor, CF-100 Canuck, and CF-101 Voodoo. He was an instructor on the Tutor, Musketeer, and the Dash 8. Later he flew DC-3's and Dash 8's before retiring in 1998. Ed loves the challenge of flying our Commanche in the summer but finds it a little slow compared to his former aircraft. We're glad to have him on board.

Product Overview

Prairie Agri Photo continues to provide digital color crop photography as well as other new technologies for agriculture. The U-Count software was originally developed in 1993 for taking accurate distance and acreage measurements using the aerial photos. The Bottom Line is a crop planning and field history software which was designed to be easy to use, and help farmers to keep organized computer records.

The most recent addition to the Prairie Agri Photo line-up is our Online Photo Library (Land Search). There are close to 100,000 sections of farmland from across the Canadian prairies available for download directly to your computer, simply by typing in the section number.

For more information about our products, browse our website, or Contact Us.