Harvest of Insights: Data Emerges as Agriculture’s Most Valuable Asset in Canada
Potato farmer Sheldon Wiebe used to rely on visual and scent cues to detect if his product was rotting inside climate-controlled storage bins designed to withstand prairie temperatures.
But now that his farm in MacGregor, Man., has started testing physical sensors from Calgary-based Cellar Insights on some bins, the first sign of rot may be a smartphone notification.
With data collection that can detect early signs of mold spores using artificial intelligence, the technology can predict spoilage before Mr. Wiebe’s spuds are ruined. This ensures more of his potatoes make it to Simplot Co.’s French-fry processing plant, a 12-minute drive east of his farm. Cellar Insights’ system also uses the season-long data sets it collects to train its models on Manitoba’s drastic climate, which varies considerably between the seasons.
“We’re in such a high-risk business and margins are very tight, and any kind of loss creates heartache financially, so good data really helps us to make good decisions,” Mr. Wiebe said.
He has access to the early-stage technology through a contract with the Winnipeg-based Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative. EMILI is an industry-led non-profit that helps farmers use new agricultural technology developed by companies around the world. Mr. Wiebe’s 10,000 acre, 18-person operation, which also grows other rotational crops, is one of the initiative’s two innovation farms that test new technology at scale.
Elsewhere in the province and in the country, forward-looking farmers are embracing tools such as predictive weed control and smart field management systems. These technologies are part of a wave of digital tools helping Canadian farms play catch-up with the productivity gains of global competitors. For many producers, however, an unclear return on investment, gaps in digital literacy and poor cell service on rural farms make the leap feel impractical.
On one potato field, through EMILI, Mr. Wiebe’s team is testing out an Israeli-founded, AI-powered irrigation system called Autonomous Pivot. It uses a ground-penetrating radar to more precisely measure soil moisture and detect disease or insect issues. In other words, it’s a smart assistant that can prescribe watering before stress on the crop occurs. Without the system, the team has to conduct weekly moisture tests of hand-dug soil samples.
The value of these technologies comes down to the high-quality, transferable data they collect, and what they can use that data to identify or predict. For Mr. Wiebe, the tech can help alleviate the typically time-consuming troubleshooting process.
He gives the example of a rot issue in storage, and how the collected data could help locate where it’s coming from in the field. This kind of tracking helps to “connect all the dots across the farm,” he said.
While producers like Mr. Wiebe are hungry for new technology to improve productivity, investors are reluctant to bet on the ag-tech sector. Investment in domestic agri-food companies, including those aimed at primary agriculture (the stage where crops are grown), has dwindled as generalist investors have come to view food production as fragmented, confusing and high-risk, said RBC lead researcher on the industry, Lisa Ashton.
According to a February report by Ms. Ashton, overall investment in these companies is lower today than it was a decade ago, with deals down 29 per cent, and the value of those deals down 32 per cent.
A 2025 report from the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute said industry discussions are often focused on potential benefits of new tech, without addressing on-farm realities to win over pragmatic producers. Larger grain, oilseed, dairy and controlled-environment operations, such as greenhouses, are leading in digital agriculture adoption, while smaller farms lag behind, the report said.
Players such as EMILI are trying to change that. Along with Farm Credit Canada, the initiative founded AIVA, a network for farmers to test early-stage ag-tech products to reduce business risk.
“It is hard to distinguish what is fact and what is fiction and what is aspiration,” EMILI chief executive officer Jacqueline Keena said. “… By the time a farmer is adopting a technology, and if it’s been through Innovation Farms, we can say with confidence this has been our experience, this is how it’s worked for us.”
This month, FCC also released a report on AI adoption in Canadian agriculture, which found the sector is falling behind other industries in Canada.
FCC vice-president of AgExpert and Innovation Hub Mohamad Yaghi emphasized the potential value that widespread digitalization could add to the industry: “At the end of the day, an anecdote is a data point.”
The Crown corporation has recently been pushing hard for increased capital investment in innovation across Canadian agriculture and food.
The hope, Ms. Keena said, is that testing can bring down the cost of new technologies over time as farmers are forced to operate in an “increasingly lean way.” As competitors such as Brazil and Australia have gained market share, Canada’s position in global agriculture and agri-food trade slipped to seventh from fifth place as of February, 2025, according to another RBC report.
Solutions are growing to address obstacles to adoption, such as the lack of access to reliable cell service and high-speed internet in isolated farming areas.
For example, equipment-provider John Deere has partnered with SpaceX’s Starlink network on a product called JDLink Boost, which became available in Canada last year. The satellite-based connectivity tool mounts directly on equipment and ensures high-speed internet access to run smart technology.
Although best known for its green and yellow tractors, John Deere also offers data collection and farm management software that is compatible with other brands. This kind of software tracks and records inputs, field boundaries, yield and weather conditions.
Rick Rutherford has recognized the utility of such data for quite some time. He’s the producer heading up EMILI’s other innovation farm near Grosse Isle, Man., and takes pride in the data his grain, pulse and oilseed operation has amassed over the last 14 years. “The collection of the data is the cornerstone of everything we do,” he said.
The data sets made him a strong candidate to test out Geco, a predictive weed control system created in Vancouver. It uses AI, satellite imagery, crop-growth modelling and a historical records from fields to develop maps of weed patterns.
It can then predict where weeds will sprout the following season, and generate “prescriptions” for spray and seeding rates to target stubborn patches. This allows Mr. Rutherford and his team to spot-target the application of herbicides, as compared to the the traditional, less precise method of spraying uniformly across the field.
In using less chemicals, Mr. Rutherford said the technology is “making our farm more environmentally cautious.” During the spring, Geco can also provide guidance on where farmers should plant seeds more densely to crowd out weeds for chemical-free management.
Mr. Rutherford noted that no tech, including Geco, is a silver bullet for improved productivity or sustainability, but an AI-powered toolkit does provide an advantage. “I haven’t seen one yet that’s come through EMILI that revolutionizes our whole farm. It just applies another tool,” he said.
Thought leaders, including venture capitalist and Dragons’ Den star Arlene Dickinson, have called for Canada to meet the moment on agri-food. Ms. Dickinson has invested in agri-food companies across supply chain steps. When it comes to attracting investment, Mr. Rutherford points out that the more data available on a crop, the more value it has because of factors such as traceability.
“There is a quite a movement now for people to know where their food comes from and to be able to go back and say: ‘Yes, this came from a field in Grosse Isle, Manitoba, and these are the inputs that were used on that field,’” he explained.
For many, accessing the benefits of predictive technology feels still on the horizon.
Taylor Phillips, chief technology officer at Maverick Ag, a Saskatoon-based risk-management consultancy, guides farmers through the digitalization process. He said “clean, calibrated and accessible data,” are the ingredients needed to get high-quality results from new tools, but many farmers don’t know where to start.
He has been coaching producers to develop AI literacy with off-the-shelf tools, such as Google’s Gemini ecosystem. He helps them understand how to consolidate years worth of their farm data in one place, often by using AI to compile scattered spreadsheets on various programs.
One of Mr. Phillips’s clients, Taylor Wallace, who operates a 21,000-acre grain and pulse farm near Unity, Sask., has begun incorporating AI into his team’s daily routines.
Mr. Wallace is aware he has merely skimmed the surface of what’s possible with this emerging wave of tech. With high-quality crop data, he hopes his farm will soon be able to tap into the full potential of what predictive tools promise: insights that shift a farmer’s role from reactive to proactive.
Mr. Phillips’s value proposition to his clients frames their data as a precious resource.
“They don’t realize that one of the most valuable commodities that they’re growing on their farm isn’t just the grain, but it’s the data itself, and the value inside of those data points for making different decisions,” he said.
With reports from Kate Helmore
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
