As the name of his Rocky Mountain House business suggests, Sheldon Rice hunts for water, and most of the time he locates it. WaterFind uses electroseismology, which employs electromagnetic and seismic signals to pinpoint underground water sources for wells on acreages, ranches, dryland and irrigated farms and feedlots. It’s a modified version of the same technology used to locate oil and gas deposits.

Vijay Kumar Tiwari didn’t expect to become a hero in the eyes of wheat farmers. But since he and his team at the University of Maryland in Washington, D.C., identified a gene mutation capable of tripling the number of kernels on a head of wheat, the postcards have rolled in. He has received handwritten notes from farmers cheering him on. “They’ve said, ‘We’ve heard the news, and we are really excited about it.’ Hopefully it translates into farmers’ fields,” said Tiwari, an associate professor of wheat breeding.

No topic sucks more oxygen from the room than AI. Opinions abound around whether AI is a positive or negative, and data centres have become the quintessential NIMBY issue. There is deep fear AI will disrupt the job market, create widespread unemployment and hardship, or worse.

A year ago in these pages, Grain Growers of Canada (GGC) warned that the country was losing ground on crop research. Public investment was declining, competitors were investing more aggressively and farmers were being asked to do more with fewer tools. We called on the federal government to reinvest in the science grain farmers rely on, because productivity growth keeps Canadian grain competitive.

Emerging markets tend to have a few things in common: an increase in population, urbanization and changing diets with a growing demand for wheat-based foods. As Canadian grain farmers, you know the value of diversified markets. That’s why Cereals Canada wants to continue to open new doors for Canadian cereals, meet growing demand and create more opportunities for you the farmer, exporters and the value chain. 

We often treat soil like it’s just dirt, but it’s so much more. It’s the source of life in many ways. Healthy soil is a living, breathing ecosystem that serves as our planet’s most vital capital. The health of soil, often termed “dynamic soil quality,” is a measure of its response to agricultural management and climate change. A single handful of healthy earth contains billions of microbes that work in permanent, silent partnership with plants to cycle nutrients, filter water and capture carbon. For farmers, this living network drives yield and resilience; for the public, it secures our food supply and stabilizes our climate.

Hulless, or naked, barley refers to varieties in which the loosely adhered outer hull is removed at harvest. In Canada, these have typically been developed for the food sector with special attributes such as high fibre or anthocyanin content. Eleven two- and six-row hulless food varieties are currently registered in Canada. Breeders have also developed hulless malting barley varieties.

Farmers collect enormous volumes of data through yield maps, soil samples, field records and farm management software. It has been a constant challenge to figure out what to do with it. Think of all those dusty binders and unopened spreadsheets.

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.