Farmers and the industry have gathered across Ontario in the past several weeks during the most-intense farm events season of the year.
I attended the London Farm Show and the week after, the Ottawa Valley Farm Show. Here are a few things I heard and observed.
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There’s lots of concern about the price of fertilizer, as the cost of it jumps due to the war in Iran.
That will be a challenge for farmers who haven’t booked their nitrogen, especially urea, for this year’s growing season.
Fast-rising oil prices also mean increased production costs for farmers in the spring, if the war doesn’t end soon.
While input costs have risen, oil prices dragged crop prices up with them for a couple of weeks, before they dived again and some farmers told me at the farm shows that they took advantage of the rally to sell some 2025 crop and forward contract some of their 2026 crop.
Drones spraying highly anticipated
You can almost feel the excitement vibrating for the potential arrival of drone spraying of pesticides, hopefully to be approved this spring.
It’s expected that the Pest Management Regulatory Agency could approve drone spraying under the rules that regulate aerial spraying. That will bring Canada into alignment with major competitors like the United States, Brazil and China.
In China, about a third of the farm acres that need to be sprayed is applied by drones, said Mike Verhoog of Drone Spray Canada at the Ottawa Valley Farm Show.
There are some risks to watch for if you are legally able to jump into the drone spray game this growing season.
Best practices for the application of many pesticides are still being figured out. I hear there are lots of people without a lot of agronomic experience trying to get into the custom spraying business.
Some drone dealers have told me that they haven’t sold drones to some people who had questionable expertise.
There will likely be a glut of capacity, so be careful who you hire.
Ontario’s advantages in the tech world
San Francisco has software, Boston has mechatronics and manufacturing, but southern Ontario has both, says Jana Tian, one of the founders of Upside Robotics, which is manufacturing 80 of its fertilizer micro-dosing robots in Waterloo.
The company’s founders, who both come from outside of Canada, have become evangelists for the capacity to build agricultural technology in southern Ontario. There is agronomics, engineering and mechatronics capacity at universities and colleges and farmers not far outside of the cities to test the technology.
