Canada already has agtech ideas — it needs the next step

Canadian labs and startups are overflowing with brilliant agtech ideas. So why do so many promising tools stall at the farm gate instead of moving from a successful trial to broad use on the farm?

If our country is serious about harnessing its potential to be a global food superpower, this gap between innovation and adoption deserves far more attention.

Agriculture isn’t an afterthought in Canada’s economy. It is one of the few sectors where better tools can improve efficiency, decision-making and competitiveness within a relatively short window.

Canada’s agtech ecosystem is among the world’s best. Yet innovation support is often too focused on getting startups off the ground, rather than helping proven technologies through this critical growth phase and into the market.

Reaching the market requires repeated validation and testing in different conditions to build trust among buyers. Farmers need confidence that a new tool will work under real-world conditions and deliver a return on their investment.

Without that confidence, there are missed opportunity costs.

Promising companies lose momentum when they should be growing. Producers miss out on tools that could boost efficiency and reduce operational risk. And Canada loses more than just farm-level productivity gains. It misses the chance to strengthen sectoral competitiveness, grow local agtech companies and build new export opportunities.

That is why our country needs to think differently about agtech support. The goal shouldn’t simply be to launch more startups. It should be to help more proven technologies survive the journey to scale.

This is not an abstract problem. Across Canada, digital agriculture tools are showing what better data, automation and precision systems can do on the farm.

Industry analysis has found that precision agriculture can raise crop farming productivity by five per cent, while lowering fertilizer, herbicide, fuel and water use. But those gains are not spreading evenly. Survey data from Statistics Canada has found that larger farms — those generating well over $1 million in revenue, 50 per cent higher than the national average — were far more likely to report using at least one newer digital technology than the smallest farms.

What is less developed is the support structure that helps more producers adopt proven tools with confidence and helps more technologies move beyond isolated success.

For many agtech companies, the hardest stage comes after showing early promise. In agtech, a tool can perform well in a trial and show value in the field but might still fail to reach wide adoption. That gap is often described as the missing middle. At this stage, a technology has shown promise, but still needs validation in real-world conditions, producer confidence and a clearer path to scale.

For the past five years, Innovation Farms — part of Enterprise Machine Intelligence & Learning Initiative or EMILI — has given innovators in Manitoba a full-scale space to test and demonstrate new tools in real farm conditions. Geco Strategic Weed Management is developing predictive weed control tools that allow farmers to use herbicides more precisely. Bushel Plus (soon to be BranValt) builds harvest optimization tools that help reduce grain loss in the field. Cellar Insights uses remote monitoring capabilities to improve storage conditions and reduce spoilage risk.

These are the agtech innovators, among many others, that Canada should prioritize: companies with practical technologies, strong commercial potential and direct value for producers. Moving them from field-tested to market-ready is not a side issue in the innovation process. That is the point. Innovation only matters when farmers can actually use it.

That is why EMILI is proud to be one of three founders of the Agriculture Innovation, Validation and Adoption network (AIVA), alongside Farm Credit Canada and WHIN. AIVA connects farmers, innovators and Validation Hubs to bring proven agtech solutions to market and de-risk tech adoption.

AIVA spans four provinces from Alberta to Ontario. Its Validation Hubs include EMILI’s Innovation Farms, Olds College, Innovation Farms Ontario and Area X.O. AIVA is designed to strengthen Canada’s place as a world leader in validating, adopting and scaling proven agtech solutions.

Federal, provincial and territorial leaders can help by ensuring policy frameworks — including the eventual successor to the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership — that support these types of efforts. Proven technologies need help getting beyond the pilot stage. Without real-world testing, credible validation and trusted partnerships they will not reach broad use.

Canada already has agtech ideas. What it needs now is a better path to real economic value. For innovation to truly bolster the agriculture sector and drive greater economic growth, we have to do more than celebrate new concepts. We have to help proven technologies reach scale.

Jacqueline Keena is CEO at EMILI, and a professional agrologist with degrees in agribusiness and public policy.