To achieve ‘AI for all’ in agriculture, Canada’s farmers need regional, systems-level change
To achieve ‘AI for all’ in agriculture, Canada’s farmers need regional, systems-level change
Publish Date: 2026-06-08 16:59:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping the contours of life as we know it. In agriculture, the world market for AI is expected to reach almost US$47 billion by 2034. AI enables higher farm yields with fewer inputs, an outcome that matters deeply in an era of climate uncertainty and resource scarcity.
In Canada, agricultural policymakers and industry leaders are gradually waking up to the promise of AI. However, as Canada’s new AI for All strategy recognizes, technology alone will not deliver the much-desired transformation while there is an “adoption gap.”
Canada lags behind other G7 countries in system-wide transformation of the agricultural sector. The problem is not a lack of sophisticated tools. It is a lack of systems that help farmers understand, integrate and trust these technologies.
I led my research team at Brock University in a two-year study of agricultural automation and robotics in Ontario. We found that while many technologies were technically sound and commercially available, adoption was constrained by broader structural factors. Our findings apply to AI-enabled agricultural technologies Canada-wide.
The promise for farmers
In agriculture, tools such as Farmer Chat, AgPal and Root AI are transforming farmers’ lives globally with real-time, data-based advice.
Smart sensors monitor soil moisture, nutrient levels and pH. Drones and satellites capture high-resolution field imagery. AI systems synthesize these data to identify where crops are under stress and, in milliseconds, determine which interventions are needed, sometimes at the precise scale of a few square metres.
AI-based early detection of diseases and pests allows producers to intervene before problems become visible. Computer vision systems can identify conditions such as yellow rust or blight days or weeks earlier than manual scouting, reducing crop losses and pesticide use. Irrigation platforms such as CropX dynamically adjust water application…
