The AgTech Breakfast at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025 showcased innovators in Canadian agricultural technology hoping to connect with farmers.
Representatives delivered short pitches on their companies’ innovations to a crowded tent at the show in Woodstock on Wednesday morning.
Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness Trevor Jones opened the event with words about the importance of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show as an innovation showcase.
“From the Innovations Pavilion to the Dairy Innovation Center, more than 20 local innovators and startups are right here, sharing their expertise in helping Ontario farmers stay competitive on a global scale,” he said.
Read Also
Spornado wins Innovation in Agriculture Award for fungal spore detection technology
Spornado, a horn-shaped air sampler empowers farmers by detecting fungal spores before symptoms arise, enabling proactive disease management across a range of crops, ultimately enhancing yields and reducing reliance on fungicides.
Metos Enhanced
The first presenter was Avi Bhargava, CEO of Metos Enhanced, a solution delivering field insights to farmers.
Bhargava said Metos “delivers field insights to farmers and aggregated insights to agronomy teams.”
“As a farmer, they get to see which fields require crop protection, nutrient application, and when. We’re providing information on dynamic growth staging, insect pressure, disease forecasting, which is adaptive in real-time.”
He added the system learns more every season and gets more precise over time as more farmers use it.
Landwise Analytica
Next was Landwise Analytica, an instant land-assessment platform. Co-Founder Patrick McMillan said the system allows farmers to purchase land in areas they haven’t grown in before when looking for property in other regions.
“Everybody in here probably knows a farmer or two has moved from Ontario to the greener pastures of Quebec or Alberta looking for cheaper land.”
“To meet farmers having to move to areas that (they’ve) not traditionally farmed in previously, we’ve developed a system which can assess any plot of land, Canada, U.S., at any time, in just a few minutes.”
Users can select the boundaries of a field they’re interested in and receive a list of crops that have previously been grown there and even estimates for yields of new crops. This is done with satellite imagery and soil and landscape variables.
BioNorth
Chief Business Officer Robert Poulter presented for BioNorth Solutions, a producer of biostimulants, which aims to “clean land and to help the plants and crops grow better on it.”
Poulter said the product has been shown to increase corn production by 13 bushels per acre on corn and 16.5 bushels for soybeans.
Saiwa AI
The next presentation was from Kate Withers of Saiwa AI, a company with the goal of solving the problem of difficult data extraction.
Farmers can upload data like drone videos and the system creates a file “where you can zoom in and out and take a look at what’s happening in your field or your greenhouse in greater detail,” she said. From here, users can generate maps that can be used by their ground sprayer.
Upside Robotics
Upside robotics was next, as CEO and cofounder Jana Tian presented what she described as “little Roombas for corn farmers.”
The company’s autonomous “little cute robot” aims to combat the expensive problem of fertilizer waste.
“What our robot does is essentially the spoon-feeding,” Tian said. “We go into the crops, almost on a weekly basis, and we do small applications of fertilizer into the crops while dropping them right next to the roots.”
She said in trials across Ontario in 2024, the robot has reduced nitrogen rates 50 to 70 per cent.
CredoSense
CredoSense CEO Abdul Halim spoke about how his company is “setting the new standard for plant health diagnostics.”
He described CredoSense as measuring “true” crop health.
“What I mean by ‘true’ is when I go see a doctor, if the doctor looks at me and says, hey, you look pale, you probably have jaundice,” said Halim. “When we say true crop health, we definitely include those proxies plus the bloodwork.”
He referred to it as the only solution on the market that can detect proxies of crop stress as well as the true crop health.
Spornado
Spornado CEO Kristine White also presented on the company’s early alert system, which one an Innovation Award prior to the show on Monday.
For more coverage of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025, visit our landing page.
