Digital agriculture tools have the potential to strengthen Canadian farm businesses, improve environmental sustainability, and boost Canada’s economy. In order to realize this promise, it is critical to increase the adoption of agtech at the farm-level.
This drives EMILI’s work on Innovation Farms. In addition to collaborating with close to 30 innovators to demonstrate, test, and validate new technologies during the 2025 growing season, EMILI is hosting a series of field tours and other events at Innovation Farms to share knowledge, answer questions, and inspire collaboration.
So when the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI) approached EMILI in January 2025 about collaborating on a project to better understand how public policy could better support the development and adoption of digital agriculture technologies, EMILI colleagues Dan Lussier and Kyle Volpi Hiebert were quick to jump on board.
(Report published May 2025)
The pair were contributing authors alongside CAPI Research Associate Elisabeta Lika and CAPI Managing Director Tyler McCann on the recent report, The Future is Digital: Digital Agriculture and Canadian Agriculture Policy.
This research was informed by an examination of the current policy landscape in Canada, a survey of global peer countries, and stakeholder interviews.
What they discovered is a fragmented ecosystem that has often been too focused on the potential benefits of technology, rather than farm-level realities. And at the same time the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership and its suite of federal and provincial programs ignored digital agriculture as an area of focus.
Shifting focus away from the benefits of technology and onto the practical challenges and payoffs for farmers is essential to driving meaningful change, the report found.
“Our findings confirmed what EMILI has been seeing and hearing in the projects we are working on at Innovation Farms; to realize the full potential of new technology solutions, it needs to be first and foremost designed to meet the needs of farmers,” said Lussier.
The report makes the following recommendations to improve the rate of digital agriculture adoption on Canadian farms:
- Make digital agriculture a national priority by identifying it as a core pillar in the next FPT agreement and establish a 10-year digital action plan for the Canadian agriculture sector;
- Establish digital agriculture hubs to connect farmers, technology developers, ecosystem organizations, and provincial and federal governments;
- Launch a coordinated program suite that supports infrastructure, commercial-scale technology testing and encourages early adopters;
- Facilitate the development of markets that leverage agriculture data to deliver tangible value to farmers;
- Implement a comprehensive national data strategy making it easier for agtech tools to integrate with the broader digital economy.
“As the digitization of the economy continues to accelerate, it is imperative that the agri-food sector leverages digital technology to drive productivity and sustainability,” said Lussier. “This is a critical policy conversation as discussions related to the next agricultural policy framework (2028-2033) that will replace the current Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership (S-CAP) are starting now.”
On Thursday, June 19, CAPI and Real Agriculture hosted a webinar that dives deeper into the report findings. Dan Lussier participated in the webinar, and EMILI is thankful to CAPI for the opportunity to engage in a robust discussion on what it takes to make Canada into a global leader in digital agriculture.