This year marked the tenth anniversary of the event, held on Feb. 10, Canada’s Agriculture Day.

Farm Credit Canada CEO Justine Hendricks opened the packed conference by speaking to the need for unity in the sector.

“It’s been 10 years of working together to build a stronger industry, and we’ve been asking ourselves a really important question: how can we better feed our families, our communities? How can we better feed the world?” she said. “The theme of today’s conference is igniting the power of 10 and unleashing a new decade of action.”

Hendricks noted “2025 was a pretty unforgettable year, but sadly for all the wrong reasons.”

“[This year] is the year we must turn the page and make bold changes that respond to new global environment in which we find ourselves,” she said. “Each and every one of us in this room has a responsibility to do our unique part to drive this industry forward.”

“It’s doing it together,” Hendricks added. “That’s where we’re going to make a difference, because none of us can do it alone.”

Producer/business collaboration drives innovation

The theme of unity connected many of the day’s conversations.

In the morning’s first panel, investors and agribusiness leaders discussed the importance of collaboration for industry-wide success.

That collaboration must begin with understand the goals of four primary stakeholders in the agriculture system: farmers, tech startups, universities and nonprofits said Johnny Park, CEO of Wabash Heartland Innovation Network (WHIN), an American consortium dedicated to advancing tech adoption.

“The success of the ecosystem depends on how you align incentives for all those four stakeholders,” Park said.

Farmers often know they must adopt technology but don’t have the time or resources.

“The way we solve that is, as a nonprofit organization at WHIN, we do a very rigorous vetting process of all those technologies from around the world,” Park said. “That itself is very enticing for farmers to engage with us, because we are essentially becoming their R and D on their behalf.”

Technology companies want access to customers Park continued, “so, we enable that by having a network of farmers in our region who are incentivized to adopt their technology once they go through our vetting process.”

As for academics, Park said what they often want most is the ability to do research.

“The best way to do that is let the farmers use emerging technologies from around the world,” said Park.

This will raise problems for companies and farmers to solve with which universities can engage.

Park argued adoption, not invention, is what drives innovation. Policy should encourage farmers to take risks on tech.

“The farmer who adopts emerging technologies faster, judiciously, is going to win at the end.”

‘Unit economics’

Gustavo Bassetti, partner at investment service Just Climate, said his company often considers the whole food system when eyeing potential investments.

“We try to understand how the companies that we’re investing in are helping everyone succeed,” Bassetti said.

The firm looks at what Bassetti called “unit economics.”

“Can you do simple math and show to me this new technology or new product is going to make the farmer’s life better, and not necessarily add a line of cost that does not have a benefit?” he asked. “It sounds simple, but a lot of companies are unable to answer that question.”

Roger van Hoesel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Dutch company Ecosystem Navigators, said he has seen new technologies stagnate or fail to find adopters when farmers are not consulted and considered in the process.

“In the Netherlands, we have seen fantastic technology,” van Hoesel said. “Close to my office is this company has a completely robotized greenhouse. Not a single person in it anymore. Still, it’s not being adopted yet, and it has to do with the fact that it was developed by people who are not farmers themselves.”

Innovators need to find farmers in the community who are open to their technology and have influence in their communities, he said.

In a later panel, Ashley Nicholls, Founder of REACH Agriculture Strategies echoed the need for farmers to be active participants in partnerships.

“When we’re talking about innovation, we’re talking about collaboration and getting people involved, I think that it needs to come from both sides,” Nicholls said.

“We need to be really paying attention to boots on the ground. We can develop all the best protocols in the world, we can develop all the best financial programs, all these amazing products, but if the end user, if the producer that is in the pen, that is in the tractor, if they aren’t willing to use it … the innovation side of things just kind of falls flat.”

How collaboration can drive public trust

Lisa Bishop-Spencer, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity (CCFI), said collaboration can help win back public trust in the Canadian agri-food sector.

According to CCFI public sentiment research, trust in Canada’s food system has been shifting.

“For the longest time, maybe for the last nine years, farmers have been at the top in terms of trust and transparency,” said Bishop-Spencer. “This is the first year that we’ve seen scientists overcome farmers.”

She said this is a good sign, as it means those who are trusted to talk about the food system are being treated as more reliable.

“The importance of collaboration is the fact that when people don’t trust the food system, it affects the entire system,” she said. “It affects affordability, it affects food security, it affects food sovereignty and it affects innovation.”

A record low of Canadians had a positive impression of the food system in 2024. Those numbers saw a sharp turnaround in 2025, which Bishop-Spencer attributed largely to unity in the face of threats from the U.S.

“The question is, how do we leverage that and make it last? Because during crisis, we’re great and we’re well trusted, but how do we maintain that in times when we’re not in crisis?”

The next step in collaboration is to get more people talking about Canadian food. Trusted industry voices who talk about what they do can address some of the myths out there.

“It’s as simple as going on a live and just walking your barn and showing people what you do and telling the stories of who you are,” Bishop-Spencer said. “If they trust you, then they’ll trust your neighbor.”

She noted the new Canada’s Food System initiative, which she said is “aimed at elevating the food system from farming, from before farming, to all the way to retail and food service.”

Collaboration for red tape reduction

Collaboration is also integral to getting a message to the government regarding the sector’s concerns about red tape said Pierre Petelle, president and CEO of CropLife Canada.

“CropLife Canada has always been a big proponent of working in collaboration with the whole value chain, so from farmers to input providers to exporters and processors,” he said.

CropLife has over 40 member organizations, including Bayer, Nutrien and SeCan. Petelle said they have had concerns about predictability and a buildup of regulatory barriers.

Last summer, that sector sent a letter to federal leaders asking to work together on ideas “to really unleash Canadian agriculture,” Petelle said.

Petelle said this type of collaborative approach is something he expects to see CropLife members continue with.

“We know that if our members are enabled, they bring better technology that helps the farmer be more productive, that then helps the exporter export what the consumers want in other countries.”

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“While these technologies [automation, data analytics, etc.] hold the potential to optimize production and enable data-driven decision-making,” the report said, “their adoption has led to increased demand for workers with higher levels of education and skills.”

According to the report, published at the end of July, adoption of precision technologies like GPS guidance, yield mapping and variable rate application has been growing steadily. This is most prominent on large-scale farms. Sixty-four per cent of farms with revenues over $1 million use some kind of precision technology.

The report said that, in light of agriculture’s persistent labour challenges and its aging workforce, businesses may increasingly turn to automation. However, it also called adoption of technology “lethargic.” It attributed this to the perception of insufficient return on investment, lack of government support, and lack of in-house expertise.

Technology adoption will increase the need for certain roles and decrease demand for others.

The report put the top five fastest-growing agricultural jobs as nursery and greenhouse labours, truck drivers, landscape and horticulture technicians, animal care workers, and biological technologists and technicians.

The top five fastest declining roles are agriculture managers, specialized livestock workers and farm machinery operators, livestock labourers, harvesting labourers, and accountants and bookkeepers.

Automation technology adoption in the agri-food workforce will require a more educated workforce.

“The skills most in demand for the future agriculture workforce are product design, digital production, and digital literacy,” the report said.

The Conference Board of Canada recommended investment in education programs to develop worker proficiency with “digital tools, product design, and complex problem-solving and emphasize soft skills such as adaptability.”

It also recommended promotion of the role of farming and food production in the economy, particularly the need for tech-savvy workers.

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“We need less feed intake, less manure, less emissions, because that is where the complaints are,” said Daniel Berckmans. “That means we must be more efficient in the core equation.”

That “core equation” is his way of adding up animal feed needs: base metabolism plus activity, plus thermal or environmental regulation, plus mental state, plus the production of meat, milk or eggs.

Berckmans is a biosystems researcher out of KU Leuven university in Belgium and the University of Tennessee. He was among the speakers at a July 10 forum on precision livestock farming at the University of Manitoba.

Energy used by the base metabolism — basic functions of life like keeping organs running — can be calculated through heart rate. Berckmans said there are at least six companies working on a commercially feasible way to measure that, and technology for horses is likely to debut this year.

Animal activity can be tracked through things like aggression monitoring. Berckmans cited his previous work on a seven-year project, which found that aggression in pigs could be detected by measuring the distance between the camera and the pig’s back, “because they jump up,” he said.

Research has also been done on the energy horses expend when frustrated versus when calm. Berckmans pointed to data outlining energy expended while a horse was running in a ring alongside energy expended by brain activity at the same time. The horse was shown a bucket of food. When the horse realized it wasn’t going to get the food, it became frustrated and began to expend more mental energy.

Infection and disease can also cut production and profit. Sensors can help localize infection in a barn, compartment or room, potentially reducing disease spread and antibiotic use. Berckmans noted technology that monitors and analyzes the sound of coughs in a facility.

“Precision livestock farming gives us the data,” he said.

It can then be used to measure how far an operation is from desired outputs and to design prediction-based controllers.

“That’s what we do for decades in airplanes, in making mechanical systems, electronic systems,” Berckmans said.

While there’s been lots of research into agricultural use of precision technology, very little has been implemented, he said.

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Discovery Lab, a grassroots organization that supports entrepreneurs, will be hosting a pitch event on July 29, the day before AgSmart, the Alberta agriculture technology event, on July 30 and 31.

Discovery Lab@AgSmart aims to bring together Discovery Lab’s network of advisors and investors and connect them with people who are starting up agriculture technology businesses.

“The whole event is framed and constructed to help those people who are trying to start and grow a company,” said Michael Overduin, CEO of Discovery Lab.

The Discovery Lab process has benefitted Mark Olson, CEO of Flokk, a company that has created software and hardware that makes cow-side data gathering easier for management and traceability.

He worked with Discovery Lab and Olds College to bring the concept to agriculture.

“We’ve established valuable contacts every time we’ve gone,” said Olson.

Discovery Labs works to make the process of being involved as welcoming and simple for companies.

“We try and make it as easy as possible, and as a result, we attract a large variety of people,” said Overduin.

That includes companies that are at the concept phase up to those that are selling a product and looking for more guidance or funding.  They also could be looking to find a way into a new foreign market and people in Discovery Lab’s network can help with that too.

Discovery Lab has 270 advisors in its network.

There will be 15 companies presenting information about their company at the event, with room for one more, says Overduin. The companies receive coaching on their presentation and feedback after the event.

Flokk will be one of the presenters.

“We’re pursuing this because we this see as a much more effective way to try and attract and engagement investors, and we’re going and then doing it on our own,” said Olson.

Farmers are encouraged to attend the event too.

“This is a huge growth industry in Canada, with global demand,” said Overduin. Attending the event allows farmers to observe technology trends, opportunities and what they could implement on their farm. It’s also an opportunity for farmer to expand their networks.

Anyone interested in attending can sign up at www.discoverylab.ca.

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Funding under this initiative will support collaborative on-farm tech innovations in hopes encouraging farmers to adopt emergent agriculture technology.

CAAIN receives funding from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to address challenges facing agri-food producers and processors. CAAIN CEO Darrell Petras said this competition would expand on the network’s previous goals.

“This is building on an initiative that we at CAAIN have run in the past, and that is supporting the use of smart farms to build a network, or networks across Canada.”

“We are focused on helping innovators reach the farm gate,” he said. “Ultimately, what we want to do is drive production at the farm level, increase productivity, increase the efficiency, support the farmers.”

“It will be a competitive process,” Petras said, “but we’re certainly open minded in terms of who comes forward, what regions and what types of technologies they bring to us.”

“This is an emphasis on collaboration to make sure we’re driving… the right technology forward for adoption.”

According to a December 8 CAAIN press release, the competition will build on the $30 million CAAIN has already committed to 30 projects whose value is over $100 million.

Proposals will be evaluated based on several criteria, including technical merit, breadth and knowledge of network members and economic and social benefits to Canadian ag-tech and agriculture. More eligibility guidelines apply and can be found on the program guide.

Petras described the smart farm network as a “test market” for new ag technology across Canada.

“Just because the technology works in Alberta for particular type producer doesn’t mean same technology work the same way in Ontario or another part of Canada,” he said.

There are currently eight smart farm locations across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. Petras said he thought all regions across Canada could benefit from smart farm expansion.

“We just want to reach as many as many producers as we can en masse and then connect them,” said Petras. “It could be an extension of what’s already being… within an existing network, or it could be a separate network.”

Initial applications must be in by Jan. 12. The competition term will begin in June 2024. Successful networks must complete their activities by September 30, 2026.

–updated Dec. 14 to correct the name of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

— Jonah Grignon reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa.

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Farmers Edge made the announcement via a media release on Nov. 16.

It said it had a received a non-binding proposal from its majority shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, which would see Fairfax acquire all common shares the company doesn’t already own at 25 cents per share.

When the company made its initial public offering (IPO) in March 2021, it did so at $17 per share.

Fairfax owns more than 61 per cent of Farmers Edge’s shares.

Farmers Edge said it has formed a committee of independent directors to evaluate the proposal and to “explore potential alternatives, including maintaining the status quo,” the news release said.

There is no timetable set for the committee to complete its review.

The digital agronomy firm has been beset by financial problems for some time. In August, it announced layoffs of 20 per cent of its workforce and consolidation of operations in North America. It also shuttered its Australian operation.

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