Farmers may soon be able to chat with an AI assistant for agriculture on their smartphones. This is the vision of Felippe Karp, an instructor and researcher at Olds College of Agriculture and Technology. He believes it could make farming easier by boosting efficiency and profits.
When Greg Newman is pitched a new product for his 3,000-acre grain farm in Alberta’s Peace Region, the first question he asks is: “Has that product been tried and tested up here?” Without local data, he’s not buying. “What works in southern Alberta can work totally different up north,” said Newman, who farms alongside his two sons near Fort Vermilion.
Until recently, Saskatchewan attracted less than one per cent of Canadian tech venture capital dollars. In 2019, Conexus Credit Union of Regina established its business incubator, Cultivator, to kick-start the province’s modest tech sector. “Saskatchewan was missing out in a big way because we didn’t have this tech ecosystem,” said director Laura Mock.
Farmers and rural communities in southern Alberta are heavily dependent on the health of the region’s ground and surface water resources. Much of the province’s 815,000 hectares of public and private irrigation is contained within the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB). Here, 13 districts serve 556,000 hectares of farmland and 40 communities that include Calgary, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat as well as many rural properties.
When Ian and Jennifer Guldberg set up a small milling operation to transform their own grains into feed for their sheep and poultry, the couple soon realized they’d hit upon a business opportunity. They formally began a small, direct-to-customer feed business in 2021.
Vancouver’s ClimateDoor helps clean technology companies raise capital, access government grants and create business partnerships at home and abroad. On a weeklong Team Canada Trade Mission in February, the business developer co-ordinated meetings between Canadian clean tech and ag tech businesses and the Australian business community in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Then-federal trade minister Mary Ng led the mission, which was delivered by Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service.
In August 2025, GrainsWest spoke with Wolf about the use of optical spot sprayer technology in Western Canada. As a variety of products enter the marketplace and advancements in this technology roll out, he predicts big things are yet to come.
As the saying goes, rain makes grain, but has this bountiful moisture become too much of a good thing? At risk of being a wet blanket, GrainsWest took this watery worry to Alberta Grains agronomy programs specialist Lara de Moissac.
University of Guelph graduate Riley McConachie recently earned a master’s degree in plant agriculture and credits his advisors with suggesting he use newly released AI technology in his thesis project. This prompted his idea to combine the use of Meta AI’s Segment Anything software with remote sensing technology to evaluate crop disease.
This past fall, Northwest Polytechnic (NWP) in Grande Prairie launched its new two-year Agriculture Operations Diploma Program. “The program is unique because it focuses on preparing people to work in the ag industry on farms, in retail and in sales,” said NWP agriculture operations instructor Josefine Bartlett. The program’s curriculum balances agricultural theory with hands-on experience, and the school year aligns with the seasonal demands faced by students who live and work on family farms, she added. “It’s a one-of-a-kind program with nothing else quite like it across Canada.”
