"The awesome thing with pulse crops is no nitrogen needs... not having to put any nitrogen on a pulse crop is a great starting point," he says, noting that this allows growers to not only meet PKS requirements but, in some cases, build soil fertility for the rotation.
"If Canada wants generational change in agricultural innovation, we need to transform our policy around how we fund plant breeding," he says. The current system, heavily reliant on public funding and check-off dollars, is increasingly under pressure. Reinheimer points to signs that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) is shrinking its breeding footprint-especially in wheat, where AAFC varieties still account for about 80 per cent of acres. The problem? There's no updated funding model to match that shift.
Starting plants from seed extends your relationship with the garden, gives you more control over seed sourcing, and saves real money compared to buying nursery starts, sometimes as much as 90% per plant.
It can drive through the field and look at every square inch. We really honed our craft on model performance and detection with rocks, and now we've transitioned that into weeds. The robot uses a boom-mounted camera system to capture detailed imagery across the field. With eight cameras operating at 1 millimetre resolution, TerraScout can generate billions of data points per acre, allowing it to identify specific objects, including individual weeds.
The input planning calculator is a robust tool that can help farmers and agronomists better understand on-farm finances while helping uncover which crops make the most sense to plant from a cost perspective. By inputting key on-farm financial and agronomic data, including seed and agronomy service costs, growers can compare each crop on their farm and explore their true cost of production.
If we did that today, it would be a hundred percent, because right now, without question, 2026 is riskier than 2025. So farmers really [face significant challenges]. The war in Iran continues and it works back to the world of agriculture. It's had an impact on fertiliser and diesel prices and commodity markets, as well as currency.
"I've been with Syngenta for 28 years," Ramachandran says, noting that early travels across Canada shaped his passion for seed care. "What really stood out to me is seeing firsthand the passion, the resilience and the impact the growers made." Those experiences, combined with Canada's short growing season, continue to guide his work. "Everything that we have done... is around addressing those challenges, and how do we create solutions that are fit for purpose, for Canadian growers?"
When you think of farming, what ingredients do you generally associate with a successful harvest? The basics certainly come to mind: fertile soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of water. But there are other variables that can also mean the difference between a crop of healthy fruits and vegetables and a large heap of organic waste. And it turns out that one of those variables is a very small hawk.
Yaghi describes AI not as a silver bullet, but as an advanced form of statistical pattern recognition-tools that can identify trends in data that may be difficult or time-consuming for people to uncover on their own. The real opportunity, he says, depends heavily on what farms are already doing. Operations that are consistently collecting and digitizing high-quality data are better positioned to benefit, whether the goal is lowering per-cow costs in a dairy, improving financial analysis, or identifying operational efficiencies.
Based on years of post-transition reviews, MNP has identified seven traits common to successful farm families, MacLean says. First, they start early. Early planning allows flexibility and time to work through the tough stuff. Clear, respectful communication is the second trait - and it's essential. Families who talk openly and establish expectations avoid the dangerous territory of unspoken assumptions. Farms that navigate the process well have a shared vision.
As concepts such as "regenerative" and "biodynamic" continue to enter the mainstream coffee lexicon, scientists continue to literally dig into the soil to give them meaning. A recent peer-reviewed study from India's Western Ghats argues that one of the clearest signals of healthy, sustainable coffee farms lies in the ground itself, with organic coffee soils performing better than soils from conventional farms treated with synthetic inputs.
Future Farm is a modular vertical farming system designed by Qing Duan for integration within urban architecture, proposing a model where buildings function as hydro-ecological systems. Rainwater is collected, filtered, and redistributed to support plant growth and domestic needs, establishing a closed-loop water cycle that combines sustainable agriculture with everyday city life. The project incorporates public greenhouse spaces, shared kitchens, rooftop farms, and educational zones to enable collective care, learning, and interaction with urban farming processes.
People grow asparagus from crowns because it shortens the long wait times for harvesting. From seed, you'll need to wait three years before harvesting asparagus. Some people consider that a waste of time. The tradeoff is that you can keep harvesting every spring for up to 15 years or more. If you plant crowns, you get a one-year jump on things. However, those crowns may have soil-borne diseases you don't know about, so there is a risk involved. Seeds remove that problem.