The first thing you notice about Ursa Ag headquarters is how unassuming it is. Located just off the Queen Elizabeth II Highway in Bowden, there is little to suggest the low-slung, metal-sided industrial building is home to a tractor manufacturer that has received international attention in recent months.

Health Canada’s recently approved change to allow for broader drone spraying of pesticides is being hailed both as a win for farmers and a non-scientific head scratcher. Until this spring, pesticides labelled safe for aerial application could be applied by conventional aircraft, typically a spray plane. As of June 30, this provision has been extended to drones.

On the farm, decision-making is shaped by weather. Should the sprayer roll today or wait until a brewing storm passes? Can seeding be completed before incoming rain hits? Greater confidence in weather forecasting and earlier notice of developments could benefit farmers significantly.

As the rain continued to fall over a very wet growing season, Redwater-area seed farmers Chelsea and Shane Tomlinson watched beavers build dams across two of their fields. “We have never seen this happen before,” said Chelsea.

Broadacre agriculture is synonymous with synthetic fertilizer. It’s the primary ingredient to a top crop and virtually all farmers use it. Canola, corn, soybeans and wheat all love a healthy dose of the critical input throughout the growing season, so to abandon its use sounds far-fetched. However, research suggests change is afoot, albeit not in Canada. Yet.

Throughout 2024 and 2025, thousands of frustrated European farmers blocked major highways and shut down the continent’s busiest cities. This was in protest of soaring fuel and fertilizer costs, the growth of cheap imports that destabilized local markets and tightening environmental regulations. In December 2025, the European Commission responded with the release of its much-anticipated Food and Feed Safety Simplification Package, otherwise known as Omnibus X. The legislative package contained technical, environmental and trade policy mechanisms meant to address farmers’ concerns. But buried in the package is a contentious mirror clause that, if passed, will reduce import pesticide residue limits to a “technical zero” for any substance banned for use in the EU. Neonicotinoids were the first to go; new limits took effect in March. Although it has not specified which ones, Brussels has signalled that more chemistries will follow. The clause raises serious concerns for global trading partners, chief among them Canada, who could be regulated out of European trade for using products declared perfectly safe in their own jurisdictions.

A wide variety of agritourism options are available at home and abroad to agricultural professionals and the general public. Notable among international travel destinations, every two years, hundreds of Canadian farmers visit Hannover, Germany, to attend the world’s largest agricultural equipment fair.

Equipment manufacturers have long promised a hands-free future in which autonomous units seed, spray and harvest with little or no human input. At Hannover, Germany’s Agritechnica 2025, the world’s largest agricultural trade show, there was an obvious shift from this fanciful vision to practical implementation. Across all equipment categories, from sprayers and spreaders to headers and tillage tools, manufacturers switched focus away from full autonomy to machines that monitor themselves and make continuous, real-time adjustments.

It’s funny to discuss AI today as if we haven’t been living our lives with real applications of this seemingly Back to the Future technology for decades. With many examples from ’90s era voice-to-text software and Roombas to social media algorithms and Watson the AI Jeopardy contestant, artificial intelligence has been embedded in our social fabric for some time. It’s only now, given the ability to interact with it, that average citizens are starting to glimpse its true potential.

Leonard Retzlaff of Saddleridge Farming bets sunlight will help stabilize the family farm’s income. Located near Rosemary, the farm is operated by Retzlaff, his father Ralph and brothers Philip and Luke. The family raises purebred Charolais cattle, custom backgrounds beef cattle, produces pedigreed alfalfa seed supported by leafcutter bees and grows canola, corn, wheat and winter rye. All their cropland is irrigated with pivots, which require a significant supply of electricity, one of the main reasons the family pursued solar power generation.