This article was written by Kate Helmore and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 5, 2025.
Canola is harvested on a farm near Clandeboye, Man., in September. The beleaguered Canadian canola industry has faced a 75.8-per-cent duty on canola seed levied in August by China, the largest market for the crop.
Incentives are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports
The first part of Ottawa’s strategy to boost biofuels and shore up domestic demand for canola came into force on Jan 1.
The $370-million Biofuel Production Incentive will be given to biofuel producers over the next two years. A fuel producer could receive a maximum of $40.2-million a year.
The subsidies are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports, whose producers receive hefty tax credits. Ottawa’s payouts are also intended to shore up demand for the Canadian crops used as feedstock in clean fuel, especially beleaguered canola, which has faced a 75.8-per-cent duty on canola seed levied by Beijing since August. China is the largest market for Canadian canola seed.
The incentives are the first part of a two-stage strategy announced in September. Environment and Climate Change Canada is also reviewing its Clean Fuel Regulations (CFRs), with changes expected to come into force in about two years.
“This represents a significant undertaking by the federal government,” said Fred Ghatala, president of Advanced Biofuels Canada. “It represents a speed of action to put a necessary program in place and longer-term vision to have our sector transition from survival to thrive mode.”
Canada’s CFRs came into force in 2023. As part of the regulations, fuels that measure below the carbon-intensity mandate earn credits, and the lower the intensity, the more credits earned.
At full output, Canada’s biofuels sector would generate more than $18-billion a year in economic activity and support 30,000 jobs, according to Advanced Biofuels Canada.
However, biofuel producers have been in “survival mode” since then U.S. president Joe Biden launched the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit in 2022, said Mr. Ghatala. Armed with this incentive, clean fuel imports from the U.S. are outcompeting domestic products in the Canadian market. The 45Z was expanded last July as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
“This has been a freight train coming at our sector since,” said Mr. Ghatala.
The new Canadian incentive does not put Canadian producers on equal footing, he added, but it will help maintain some degree of competitiveness until ECCC finalizes changes to the CFRs.
Fuel producers will be paid on a quarterly basis. They will receive 16 cents per litre on the first 170 million litres of eligible production, and then 10 cents a litre on the 130 million litres produced after that.
This is good news for Canadian canola farmers, said Andre Harpe. In 2024, $4.9-billion of canola was sold to China. Beijing’s tariffs in August sank prices for farmers and slashed exports. The biofuel industry cannot absorb the loss of the Chinese market, but the incentive does play an important role in shoring up domestic demand, said Mr. Harpe.
“Any time canola is going to get used domestically it is a good thing. This is a good start.”
However, the incentives are only the first step, said Mr. Harpe. The most important part is the changes to the Clean Fuel Regulations.
In 2024, 73 per cent of CFR credits from low-carbon fuel support were generated by imports in 2024. A significant source of clean fuel feedstock is used cooking oil that is imported from markets in Asia.
To help Canada’s beleaguered canola sector, the CFRs need to prioritize domestic feedstocks, said Mr. Harpe. For example, according to the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association, a policy to curb imports of cooking oil so canola could capture just half of the Canadian market would use 2.5 million tonnes of canola seed, 42 per cent of the total volume exported to China in 2024.
Two main policies are being evaluated by ECCC, according to a discussion paper unveiled in December. One would require fuel producers to use a minimum amount of domestic feedstock. The other approach would place more value on domestic feedstock by giving low-carbon fuels produced using domestic feedstock more credits per litre.
The comment period for CFR amendments closes Jan. 15.
This article was written by Emily Baron Cadloff and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
Like many farmers, Nick Green trades and barters as a way to ensure his cattle have enough land to graze.
Unlike many farmers, Mr. Green trades in manure.
“We essentially provide a service,” Mr. Green said. And that service is waste. Cow poop, to be exact.
Mr. Green is part of a Living Labs PEI project, where farmers partner with researchers working under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to test out theories in real-world conditions and on a large scale.
In this project, Mr. Green takes his cows to graze on over 200 hectares of land across Prince Edward Island. Some of the land is his. Some parcels are owned by other farmers, and Mr. Green trades with them. His cows can graze their land, and in exchange, their droppings stay on the field, fertilizing it and helping to stabilize the soil health.
In the not-so-distant past, most farmers had small, mixed operations, he said. They grew some potatoes, some row crops, they had a cow or some chickens or both. Now, things have changed.
“We’re more individualized. This person just grows potatoes.
This person grows carrots and turnips. This person grows barley and wheat,” Mr. Green said.
Chemical fertilizers have gone up in price dramatically over the past few years, and it’s been hard for farmers to adjust to those costs.
“One year [our costs] literally went up 100 per cent,” Mr. Green said. “It’s tens of thousands of dollars for us.”
But directly applying manure to fields is a much more cost-effective plan. So the farmers provide the land, and Mr. Green provides the fertilizer – fresh from the cow.
The research is overseen by Dr. Judith Nyiraneza, who is aiming to find out the best way to improve soil health and retain carbon, cutting down on Canada’s overall carbon emissions.
Dr. Nyiraneza said PEI’s soil is great for food production, but it’s fragile. The hills and topography of the island, combined with strong tides, mean the soil is prone to erosion. Growing the organic matter and nutrients in the soil makes it stronger, she said.
It’s also improving crop production for farmers. Though results are in their early stages, Dr. Nyiraneza said using rotational grazing, like the process Mr. Green is undertaking by moving his cattle around the island at specific times, boosted potato yield by 28 per cent.
Dr. Nyiraneza said rotational grazing has been around for centuries. But as farms have grown larger, the practice has fallen off in popularity, leading to soil troubles.
Once farmers moved to chemical fertilizers, Dr. Nyiraneza said, “We saw our soil degrading. It’s almost like we’re going backwards.”
For farmers who can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – get up close and personal with the sights and smells of cow manure, Dr. Nyiraneza and Dr. Erin Smith, another research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, are looking at other ways to bring manure to the soil quickly.
Rather than spreading manure widely across a field – a practice known as broadcasting – Dr. Smith is looking at a more specific injection method, where a large arm attached to a tractor runs over the field, slicing the soil and injecting liquid manure inside, then covering it up quickly, keeping the nutrients in the manure from evaporating.
“So far, we’ve seen a 35 per cent reduction [in nitrogen loss] with the injection method,” said Dr. Smith.
“This means that less nitrogen is being lost and more is available for plants to utilize.”
This opinion was written by David Dzisiak and Frank Hart, and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 21, 2025.
David Dzisiak is an adviser for agriculture and food technology companies and a director of Protein Industries Canada.
Frank Hart is a former Saskatchewan deputy minister of economic development and trade, chief executive of Crown Investment Corp. and president of Greystone Managed Investments.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has set a goal for Canada to more than double exports away from the United States over the next decade, meaning exports to other countries will need to grow by $132-billion annually by 2035. Mr. Carney speaks of Canada as an “unabashed” energy superpower. Canada can also be an agriculture and food superpower – and that reality deserves prominence in our national economic strategy.
In 2024, our agricultural and food exports exceeded $100-billion, reaching more than 200 countries. With the right policy focus, agriculture, aquaculture and value-added ingredients can add up to $45-billion to annual GDP over the next decade.
Our commodity crops frequently become entangled in geopolitical disputes, as is currently the case with canola in China and peas in India. Building a national strategy that moves us beyond exporting commodities and creating more value-added food ingredient production helps avoid those issues.
The world is increasingly in need of more of Canada’s food production capacity. Food-import dependency is rising across much of Asia and Africa as those countries’ populations and incomes grow faster than their domestic food production. By 2050, the global middle class is expected to expand by approximately two billion people.
According to Engel’s Law, rising incomes reshape dietary preferences and food spending. Newly wealthy citizens first seek a better diet, shifting from cheaper starch-based foods to higher-protein and specialty items. This presents a compelling business case for Canada. The plant protein market in Southeast Asia alone is projected to reach more than $25-billion by 2033.
A warmer climate will lengthen Canada’s growing season, and the additional atmospheric carbon can boost crop yields. Coincidentally, in 2025, the Prairies will produce the largest crop ever. Climate change, on the other hand, is expected to negatively impact food production in countries where the majority of the middle-class population growth is occurring. Developing Canada’s food technology industry, therefore, is not only crucial to food security and diversifying our trade but will also position Canada to play an increasingly influential role.
Shifting away from a commodity-export paradigm towards greater value-added processing at home must be viewed as an industrial strategy encompassing innovation, intellectual property, capital investment and job creation. The business case for adding $50-billion in GDP from agriculture and food has been well studied by several groups, including the Royal Bank of Canada, the Arrell Food Institute, the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute and Protein Industries Canada.
Canada is a world leader in producing pulse crops and canola, which contain high-quality, non-allergenic proteins and valuable co-products, such as the protein and starch extracted from a fava bean. Canada should process these crops domestically and add value here, rather than outsourcing the process to a foreign buyer. In processing, the economic value-add can be five to 10 times that of the commodity trade.
The challenge is attracting capital to help young companies grow. Historically, agriculture and crop processing have not been viewed as a place to invest private capital. Grain elevators and canola mills require significant capital outlays and run on thin margins.
In 2019, the federal government launched Protein Industries Canada, one of five global innovation clusters. The organization has provided leadership and facilitated investments of more than $700-million in food and agriculture innovation in Canada, which is a great head start. This has advanced the development of higher-quality crops and innovative processing technologies for proteins, flours and starches, which serve as new ingredients for global food products.
This year’s federal budget has introduced several measures to mitigate investment risk, including tax incentives. Existing programs at the Business Development Bank of Canada or the Canadian Infrastructure Bank could be of great help; however, the existing qualification criteria currently target large projects, not small companies looking to scale production.
The government must do more. A 2024 study conducted by Ernst & Young determined that the payback for the federal treasury from investment tax credits in support of increased food processing investments was 219 per cent over 10 years, resulting from tax revenues associated with the increased GDP and employment impacts. Expanding domestic food processing could create approximately 17,000 new jobs. Aggressive incentives will help attract risk capital and facilitate scaling young companies into global suppliers. These facilities, once built, can’t be relocated to another country. However, if we don’t build them here, another country will, taking the economic advantage from us.
We also need the government to think more about agriculture as part of Canada’s economic strategy. Polling by Abacus Data for Protein Industries Canada shows that nine in 10 Canadians agree that agriculture and food production are key to the country’s economic future. Unlike other industries that require lengthy regulatory approvals, expensive infrastructure and complex stakeholder agreements, food processing facilities can be scaled relatively quickly. Our farms have the lowest carbon footprint among developed countries. Canada has a generational opportunity to convert its agricultural advantage into a high-value, globally competitive industry.
UN calls for every country to make its agricultural systems inclusive and sustainable
This article was written by MARS staff and was published in the Toronto Star on October 25, 2025.
Celebrated on Oct. 16 each year, United Nations World Food Day commemorates the founding of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945.
This year, the organization is calling for every country to make its agricultural systems as inclusive, sustainable and healthy as possible.
That’s not so different from what the UN demanded eight decades ago — although the global landscape has changed dramatically in the intervening period.
By 2050, the world’s population is expected to be close to 10 billion. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. If we’re going to meet that need, according to the FAO, we’ll have to produce 70 per cent more food than we do now.
But we have a finite amount of arable land on the planet, and the pernicious effects of climate change — flood, droughts, soil erosion — are only making growing food on that land more difficult. It’s a wicked problem: how do we make more with less?
“The only way you can solve that problem is with innovation,” says Graeme Millen, vice president of strategic finance and business development at Farm Credit Canada (FCC).
Historically, agriculture has lagged behind other industries when it comes to embracing novel technologies, but as Millen points out, technological advances in other sectors — robotics, AI, cleantech — have also quietly been transforming farming.
“It’s a really positive spillover effect of robust tech economies elsewhere,” he says.
In Canada, FCC has helped support this evolution. In the spring of 2024, it launched an investment arm, FCC Capital, with a commitment to invest $2 billion by 2030 to advance agtech.
In its first year of operation, FCC Capital closed nine direct investment deals totalling $170 million and invested in three new funds.
This past summer it launched Root, a free virtual farm assistant built in collaboration with Results Driven Agriculture Research, and this fall, partnered with MaRS on a new national food and agtech mission.
That mission is focused on the supply chain, and while that phrase might conjure prosaic details like trucking routes, Millen argues the supply chain encompasses nothing less than the entire food system.
“The supply chain is where we have the opportunity to have disproportionate economic boosts,” he says, “because there are more touchpoints.”
Canada is perfectly positioned to help the FAO reach its goals, Millen says, and the first step is recognizing how valuable, reliable and sustainable our food system already is, particularly at a time of global instability.
“Agriculture and food uniquely sit at the centre of some of the most pressing global issues,” Millen says. “Human health, economic development, climate resilience. Maybe it’s not been properly understood previously, but the spotlight is on, and it’s a very exciting time to be here.”
This opinion was written by Christina Caron and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 22, 2025.
Over the past 10 years, food prices in Canada have risen nearly 50 per cent faster than non-food items, with many foods posting double-digit increases in the past year.
If you think the price of food has been going up faster than almost everything else, you are right. Inflation rose more than expected last month, according to a Statistics Canada report on Tuesday. In particular, grocery prices are up 4 per cent over the past year. The trend has been pegged to items including beef and coffee.
But this is not new. Over the past 10 years, food prices in Canada rose nearly 50 per cent faster than those of non-food items. And over the past 12 months, many foods have posted doubledigit increases, including coffee (32 per cent), salmon (21 per cent), oranges (17 per cent), bacon (16 per cent), beef (13 per cent) and rice (13 per cent).
However, food price inflation isn’t just a Canadian phenomenon. Food prices are rising faster than other prices in most countries. And real global food prices, which had been trending down for decades, reversed course 25 years ago and have since been rising.
During the past five years, a number of events have generated pressures that contributed to price increases – notably COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. These pressures have been exacerbated by high retail market concentration – in Canada and elsewhere – that makes it easier for grocers to pass on rising costs and then delay price reductions when costs subside.
However, these events do not explain the longer-term rising global trend. So, what other causative factors are at play? Environmental developments, including climate change, have harmed food production in multiple ways, creating upward pressure on food prices everywhere.
Take fish. Global fish prices have tripled since 2001 – a reflection of crashing global fish populations as a result of overfishing, climate change and habitat damage. In Canada, fish catches have plummeted on both coasts, dropping overall by 60 per cent in the past 20 years – 80 per cent for that pricey salmon.
There have also been numerous crop failures around the world for which climate change – evident as drought, storms or extreme temperatures – has been the primary cause. The ensuing shortages have resulted in huge price spikes for many imported food products including Brazilian oranges, Spanish olive oil, California vegetables, Vietnamese coffee, Asian rice and West African cocoa. In Southern Europe, the European Central Bank found that the 2022 heat wave boosted food price inflation by nearly a full percentage point.
Domestic food production has also been affected. Last year, extreme cold in B.C.’s Okanagan region caused severe damage to fruit trees, wiping out most of the harvest and pushing up prices of peaches, cherries and plums. This year, prolonged drought in Canada’s West and the Atlantic region has resulted in higher prices for Alberta beef and Nova Scotia blueberries.
Globally, agricultural productivity growth has slowed significantly since 2010 – a slowdown attributed to drought, heat waves and floods – and is now barely keeping pace with global population growth. A global food supply that cannot keep up with rising demand is a perfect recipe for food price inflation.
Pollinator losses have also pushed up food prices by reducing agricultural yields. Pollination is essential for three quarters of crops, including most vegetables and fruits, nuts, coffee and cocoa. However, populations of wild pollinators – bees, butterflies and birds – have been falling everywhere because of climate change, habitat loss, pesticides and pollution.
For those who are skeptical about pollinator impact, consider vanilla, one of the world’s most expensive food ingredients. Commercial vanilla is now nearly all hand-pollinated – a labour-intensive process that has pushed its price sky-high. Why? Populations of the Melipona bee, the only known species capable of pollinating vanilla orchids, have declined to near extinction.
Soil degradation and erosion are other factors that reduce yields, by up to 50 per cent in some regions. One third of all land has degraded soil with diminished productivity. And the UN Food and Agriculture Organization found that soil erosion has brought global crop yields down by 24 per cent since 1945. Rising food prices are not just a Canadian phenomenon; they are occurring everywhere, and the most pervasive pressures are environmental. Moreover, these pressures are intensifying.
What are the implications? Real food price increases are not going away. They can be expected to continue as long as the underlying environmental stressors persist. The corollary is that a policy suite targeting the affordability crisis must include action to combat climate change and biodiversity decline.
This article was written by Desmond Tiro and Inaara Gangji, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 12, 2025.
The daily grind of putting food on the table is stressful for people the world over, especially for women, who still provide the bulk of that work. A changing climate adds to the anxiety.
Kaloleni in Kilifi County is one of Kenya’s poorest areas. Women carry buckets of water for kilometres. Homes are mostly built of mud and have no indoor plumbing. Maize plants wither in the heat. “These communities are struggling to grow their crops and have to spend money on food,” said Zul Merali from The Aga Khan University, who has set up a local institute for mental and brain health. “This creates a lot of pressure, particularly on women, because they are in charge of making sure kids and families are fed.”
This farming community is one of Kenya’s most studied populations. Community health workers visit all households every month to check how people are doing. They fill in questionnaires that the government uses to understand needs in rural communities.
Humphrey Kitsao is a community health promoter who looks after 115 households in Kilifi County totall ing 532 people. He’s done this work for 18 years and says he’s seen a lot of change. “People here still farm, but their income isn’t like before,” he told The Associ ated Press. “They have to spend a lot of money on their farms, but often there is no harvest.”
Jasmit Shah is a data scientist at The Aga Khan University’s Brain and Mind Institute who wanted to research the impact of climate change on the mental health of women in Kenya’s farming communities.
“The questions are quantitative: Do you have any suicidal thoughts, and if you do, do you have them every day, several days a week, a few times a month?” Shah said. “Then we asked them a set of about 15 questions related to climate shocks, and looked at the correlation between climate shocks and people saying that they are having suicidal thoughts.”
Shah said the survey of nearly 15,000 women pro duced some concerning signs. For example, he said, it appears that droughts and heat waves are linked with much higher levels of suicidal thoughts.
Elizabeth Amina Kadenge is a 41yearold farmer and mother of four in Kaloleni. At the time of the study, her maize harvest had been wiped out by drought. This year, it was wiped out again — by too much rain.
“It has been very stressful because farming is also my business,” she said. “When I farm the way I know, some of my maize is for food, and some of it is for my business. But if it fails, I have no food and no business.”
This article was written by Jeremy Simes and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 7, 2025.
Red lentils grow in a dry field in June on Quinton Jacksteit’s farm near Golden Prairie, Sask.
It’s the ninth year in a row Quinton Jacksteit’s farm has experienced drought.
The southwest Saskatchewan farmer, who also is the reeve for the Rural Municipality of Big Stick, says his crops are extremely short, and he plans to salvage most of them for animal feed.
“They’re not going to be able to make much of a yield,” he said in a recent interview from his home near Golden Prairie, east of the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary.
“I’m going to scrape through and maybe be able to go another year, but I have a couple of boys that want to farm, and it’s not something that I would recommend to them at this particular time.”
Others are worse off, he added.
“It may be the end for them. That could be a three- or fourgeneration farm.”
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s drought monitor shows swaths of the country have been anywhere from abnormally dry to extremely parched.
Trevor Hadwen, an agriclimate specialist with the department, said southwest Saskatchewan, near the Alberta boundary, has been severely depleted of moisture for eight years. This year, he said, pastures have dried up and ranchers are looking to buy extra hay they can’t grow.
Some have also reduced their herds or moved cattle to green pastures.
“Sometimes, that’s been 300, 400 kilometres away,” Mr. Hadwen said.
“For crop producers, we’re seeing a reduction in yield potential. Crops are maturing much more rapidly than you would hope and will not produce as much seed content.”
Alberta’s Peace River region in the northwest, as well as the province’s southwest corner, are also arid, he added.
In Saskatchewan, Big Stick and neighbouring municipalities have declared states of emergency to spread awareness of the drought. Virginia Maier, the reeve of Enterprise, said her peas likely won’t produce pods.
Nor does she expect her durum to grow without rain.
“Everything is short, everything is dying,” Ms. Maier said. “When [drought] goes on for so many years, it’s starting to get depressing.”
She said costs for fertilizer and other inputs have been high while crop prices are low.
“I think we’ll be OK, but there are others saying, ‘Do I just get out and sell the land and rent it and just be done with it?’ ”
In the province’s northern agricultural region, a dry spring is expected to cut hay yields by 50 per cent, said Christine Strube, who farms and ranches northwest of Prince Albert.
Ms. Strube said a recent decision by the province and Ottawa to allow farmers to sell their regular crops as animal feed without getting dinged on insurance will be helpful.
“The key thing now is that we just get some consistent rains throughout the summer,” she said.
Mr. Jacksteit said additional changes to crop insurance are needed, including a per-acre payment or a program that would allow farmers to salvage seed without getting penalized on their coverage.
“We’ve just gotten into a state where expenses are climbing and at the same time, our insurance coverages have dropped to a point of where they no longer cover the cost of that farm,” he said.
“We’re not trying to be beggars or anything like that. We’re just trying to make the government aware that our programs aren’t working.”
Saskatchewan’s Agriculture Ministry, in a statement, said the province is willing to work with Ottawa to discuss how they can enhance insurance programs. It said there are options available for farmers who choose not to divert their crops to feed.
Mr. Hadwen said the summer weather outlook is not favourable for drought-ridden regions.
“There’s still a little bit of time to recover for some areas, but other areas are probably in for it for the summer,” he said.
Environment and Climate
Change Canada’s forecast predicts a warmer-than-usual summer with uncertain precipitation levels. Bill Merryfield, a research scientist with the weather office, recently said human pollution has been a key influence on hotter summers.
Tinder dry conditions have also created the fuel needed to start hundreds of wildfires across the country, forcing thousands in Manitoba and Saskatchewan to flee their communities earlier this spring.
As of Friday, Manitoba has reported 60 active wildfires, with residents of Lynn Lake now being told they’ll have to evacuate for a second time. Saskatchewan has reported 65 active fires, with five communities under evacuation.
Don Connick, who farms near Gull Lake in southwest Saskatchewan, said long-term planning is needed to deal with persistent drought.
A director with the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, Mr. Connick said farmers should consider changing how they graze cattle and create a network to supply hay to those in short supply.
More research and water retention ponds also are needed, he added.
“[Drought] is happening year after year after year,” he said. “Crop insurance has been very helpful in this, but again, they have limitations as to what they can do.”
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 1, 2025.
Tamara Rebanks, Director, Weston Family Foundation, says the Weston Family Foundation is proud to support teams working at the forefront of sustainable agriculture.
Canada, a nation often perceived as a land of agricultural bounty, faces a critical vulnerability: its heavy reliance on imported fresh produce. With as much as 80 per cent of its produce sourced internationally, Canada’s short growing season leaves the country exposed to global supply chain disruptions, climate change and geopolitical instability.
In 2022, the Weston Family Foundation recognized the need to strengthen domestic food security.
In response, the Foundation launched the $33-million Homegrown Innovation Challenge to bring together Canadian farmers, growers, academics and entrepreneurs to collaborate on novel solutions for year-round food production in a sustainable and cost-effective way.
The goal was to dramatically reduce Canada’s dependence on imports focusing on fresh berries as an ideal test crop while ushering in a new era of sustainable, technologically-advanced agriculture.
Fifteen multidisciplinary teams from across the country were selected to enter the three-phase Challenge and given $50K to develop their ideas. Eleven of these teams progressed to the second phase and were given $1-million each to develop proof-of-concepts of their ideas. Four teams have now been selected for the final phase, the Scaling Phase. Each will receive up to $5-million to scale-up their projects over the next three years. At the end of the Challenge an additional $1-million each will be awarded to the technology breakthrough winner and the overall Challenge winner (both awards could be won by the same team).
“Canada’s growers and innovators are stepping up to meet urgent challenges in our food system with bold, local and cost-effective solutions,” says Tamara Rebanks, Director, Weston Family Foundation. “The Weston Family Foundation is proud to support these teams working at the forefront of sustainable agriculture. These are ambitious, real-world solutions that have potential to transform how we grow food year-round and build a more secure, self-sufficient future right here at home.”
The four finalists are all developing innovative approaches that will bring systematic change to indoor growing practices by integrating considerations such as environmental sustainability, renewable energy, production reliability and long-term economic value.
Ultimately, the Homegrown Innovation Challenge seeks to move Canada from a position of food vulnerability to one of robust, localized food security, leveraging Canadian talent and resources to transform how food is produced, both nationally and, potentially, globally.
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 1, 2025.
Imagine biting into a perfectly ripe, locally-grown strawberry in the dead of winter, its sweetness undiminished by distance or seasonal constraints. This vision could become a reality thanks to a project spearheaded by researchers at the University of Guelph and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).
The project, titled “Autonomous Net-Zero Greenhouse Strawberry Production,” is scaling a hybrid greenhouse-vertical farming system that promises to revolutionize how, and where, our food is grown.
Dr. Youbin Zheng, a professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph, highlights the core challenge: “Normally we produce strawberries in the field, and we only can get them produced locally in summertime.”
In collaboration with Dr. Xiuming Hao and Quade Digweed of AAFC, the team is tackling the energy demands of winter growing head-on. The system integrates three key technologies to reduce emissions, maximize yields and optimize cost.
Firstly, a dynamic AI-powered lighting control system uses realtime electricity pricing to optimize when and how to use lighting on crops.
“We use LED lighting during the night when the cost of electricity is the lowest,” says Dr. Zheng, noting that this low-cost power is primarily sourced from emission-free nuclear and hydro energy in Ontario.
Secondly, a net-zero greenhouse-vertical strawberry production system with smart AI-driven climate control maximizes space and energy efficiency. By utilizing multi-layered growing, researchers can achieve yields three to five times higher than conventional single-layer greenhouses.
Heat generated by both sunlight and LED lighting is recycled using high-temperature hot water heat pumps and stored for later use in heating annd dehumidifying the greenhouse, further reducing energy consumption.
Finally, the Autonomous AI-Driven Rootzone Management System (ARMS) A precisely manages water and nutrient delivery, preventing waste and pollution ARMS uses AI to predict plant nutrient needs based on growth stages and environmental conditions, recycles and reuses nutrient solutions, and eliminates discharge into the environment. Healthier, more resilient plants mean less need for pesticides.
While the initial focus is on strawberries due to their seasonal import reliance and the industry’s need for alternative crops in the face of changing tariffs, Dr. Zheng emphasizes the broader applicability.
“These three technologies can be used separately or in combination for growing strawberries to start with and modified for other plant production in a controlled environment,” he says.
The project is currently in its scaling-up phase, moving from small-scale demonstrations to commercial-sized greenhouses. The integration of the three technologies under real-world conditions is the next critical step.
Ontario farmers seek ways to protect agricultural land from development
This article was written by Noor Javed and was published in the Toronto Star on April 20, 2025.
When Charles Stevens looks out from his Clarington area farm, he can see the rows of homes being built less than a kilometre away on what was once prime farmland.
Stevens, too, has had his share of developers knocking on his door with lucrative offers for his 164acre farm called Wilmot Orchard, which specializes in growing 11 different types of blueberries and a variety of apples. To developers, the farm is the ideal location for new housing, due to its proximity to Highway 401 right on the edge of the GTA.
The sixth generation farmer bought the farm in 1976 to establish an apple orchard and blueberry farm, and comes from a long line of dairy farmers who settled in the area in 1810. Stevens said despite the offers, he’s never wanted to sell his property with its Class 1 farmland — considered the best in the country for food production — and he was always looking for a way to thwart the development threat entirely.
He found one. This month, Stevens finalized the process of adding a conservation easement to the title of his property, ensuring that the land and food production continues in perpetuity — or 999 years to be exact.
“There’s all kinds of land we can settle on in Ontario and pave over. Why are we paving over the best farmland we have?” said Stevens. “If we continue the way we are going, we won’t have any farmland left at all,” he said, explaining that his farm’s proximity to Lake Ontario means that tens of thousand years ago, it was likely under water — making the soil exceptionally rich. “My numberone reason for doing this was to save this precious land and resource — which is increasingly limited in Canada.”
Across Ontario, in the face of development pressures and a growing belief that government is doing little to protect highquality farmland, an increasing number of farmers are looking for ways to take farmland protection into their own hands, through the use of farmland easement agreements added to the title of the land as a way to both protect it and ensure it remains agricultural.
The aim for many farmers is to ensure that the land remains viable for food production for generations to come — especially in light of the tariffs in the U.S.Canada trade war, supply chain interruptions as seen during the COVID19 pandemic and climate change.
“In an ideal scenario, we wouldn’t see the farmland loss we are experiencing, and there wouldn’t be a need for conservation easement agreements, ” said Martin Straathof, the executive director with the Ontario Farmland Trust (OFT), an organization whose goal is protecting and preserving local farming and farmland. “But with constantly changing governments who can change policies and enact new regulations, there should be more done to protect our food sources … but isn’t being done.”
He said southern Ontario is home to some of the best soil in the country, yet is also at the epicentre of a deepening housing crisis.
“Some think one solution is to build a bunch of housing on our prime farmland. But that’s essentially trading one basic necessity for another — and it doesn’t put us any further ahead.”
Conservation easements are a voluntary legal agreement initiated by the landowner that determines what is permitted on the farm and future uses. The conditions of the easement are tied to the title of the land, and are monitored by a conservation organization to ensure compliance. In that, easements are different from a will, because they don’t direct ownership, but clarify how the land should be used long after a landowner is gone.
Straathof said the Conservation Land Act gives conservation organizations “the authority to hold conservation easements” and use this tool to “protect land for agriculture uses.”
The Trust was started in 2002 by a group of farmers, academics and land use planners. And in 2024, the OFT was incorporated as Canada’s first provincewide agricultural land trust. Over the past 20 years, the trust has protected 26 farms at a rate of “one or two a year.” But in the past few years, the organization has seen interest and inquiries from farmers “skyrocket,” he said.
The trust is currently working on 10 conservation easements, and has a list of over 70 landowners “who have reached out to us with an interest in protecting their properties.” Limiting factors in getting through the waitlist: the process can take around two years and costs thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Straathof said the farmers’ interest in protecting their farms has increased due to the province’s handling of the land use policy during the ongoing housing crisis. Last term, the government pledged to build 1.5million homes by 2031, but historic low housing starts have largely put the goal out of reach.
To move things along, the government implemented numerous changes to land use planning, many of which had an impact on the protection of farmland. Among them: the increased use of minister’s zoning orders to fast track housing in agricultural zones, easing of regulations around opening up new aggregate pits in rural areas, and pressures to expand urban boundaries — and urban sprawl — across the GTA.
But Straathof said the increased interest also comes down to the fact 40 per cent of farmers in Ontario are set to retire by 2033, and the majority don’t have a succession plan in place. A conservation easement provides them with a guarantee that their life’s work will continue, he said.
It took the Stevens family two years to go through the process of adding the easement to the title of their land. Stevens said the goal is not to be restrictive but to anticipate all the ways food production could change centuries from now.
“We can do anything, such as put a greenhouse on the entire property, as long as it’s used for agricultural food production,” said Stevens, adding that his land is surrounded by the Greenbelt but outside of it. “What this process does is that it locks your land into the zoning of agriculture.”
And he says while “the Greenbelt is political, this process isn’t.”
The province did not respond to questions about whether it has noticed an increase in conservation easements in recent years.
Conservation easements have been used in other provinces, as well. Last year, a conservation agreement was established by landowners of the McIntyre Ranch, the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited Canada to protect a 55,000acre ranch in southern Alberta for perpetuity.
The easement, believed to be the largest in Canadian history, ensures the grassland will continue as a cattle farm, but it is also home to more than 150 species.
Katherine Dean, who was involved in the creation of the Ontario Farmland Trust, said it was inspired by the success of robust farmland trust organizations in the United States.
She said that while protecting farmland can be seen as a noble cause, it can also come at a financial cost to farmers, as agricultural land is often valued less than developable land. Some farmers sell that land to developers to pay for their retirement. However, those who give their land for conservation — either through easements or other donation programs — receive generous tax credits in return.
Dean said when she sold her Niagaraarea farm to local farmers — which had conservation easements on the title — it was for “a considerable value lower than the market price.”
Stevens said he made his decision with the blessings of his daughter Courtney, who now runs the operations of the Wilmot Orchard.
“I am personally honoured to carry on this family legacy, and to do that we need to have a way to push back against developers physically knocking on our doors and asking if we want to sell our land,” said Courtney. “We know how good the soil is, and this was the way we could see to best protect it.”
She said the family has peace of mind knowing that even if the property is sold down the road, it will always continue as a farm.
“Our primary motivation is that farming on this great land will continue. It’s not just about a family legacy. It’s more than that.”
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