As Ag Tech Surges, Can Canada Close the Gap?

By The Globe and Mail

From mushroom-picking robots in British Columbia to drones buzzing over Saskatchewan wheat fields that hunt for weeds, companies in Canada’s emerging agtech sector are racing to remove the least efficient element of modern-day farming from the equation: humans.

That push to bring the worlds of technology and agriculture together, writes Jason Kirby at The Globe and Mail, has taken on new urgency in recent months amid threats to food supplies from high fertilizer and commodity prices, the war in Ukraine, labor shortages and drought across many parts of the world. In just the first half of this year, venture capital investors injected a record US$5.6-billion into agtech companies worldwide, up nearly 20 per cent from the same period a year ago, according to U.S. market data firm Pitchbook.

Yet a disconnect exists between Canada’s vast agricultural resources and what many people in the industry see as its underwhelming agtech footprint. While Canada has produced many cutting-edge agtech companies, the country lags the United States in financing and developing technologies that can improve farm yields, create new products and slash emissions.

How successful Canada is at closing that gap could go a long way in determining whether the country lives up to the oft-repeated rhetoric of being an agricultural superpower or settles as an also-ran.