Bioenterprise had a long-standing history in Ontario of helping start-ups and emerging companies in the agri-food sector along their growth paths, but there was no one-stop-shop at the national level that could offer the same supports in other parts of the country. 

Why it matters: The 2017 Barton Report identified the agri-food sector as a pillar of Canada’s economic growth, with the opportunity to become a trusted global leader in food exports. Innovation is key to helping Canada achieve the report’s goals. 

“Canada’s agriculture and agri-food innovation ecosystem is highly fragmented and under-funded, and it’s long been our vision to create an environment that is more collaborative, more cooperative, and more national,” says Chief Executive Officer Dave Smardon. 

Bioenterprise launched Canada’s Food & Agri-Tech Engine in June 2020, and according to a recently released update on its progress, the Engine has been growing rapidly since then. 

As of this month, Bioenterprise has built up a presence in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia, and the Engine has attracted more than 130 members and partners across the country.

A team of 10 innovation advisers is available to support Canadian entrepreneurs and businesses. More than 50 emerging and growth-oriented companies have received funding, mentorship and business development support through programs like Investing in Business Innovation and SmartGrowth in Ontario, GreenShoots in Nova Scotia, Alberta Yield and Quebec’s AgTech Acceleration Program.

The Engine also includes a francophone innovation collaboration, a Northern Ontario pilot agri-tech hub, and a national science advisory committee with representation from universities, colleges and corporations across Canada. 

Dr. Mike Lohuis, vice-president of genetics, research innovation at Semex, is part of that science advisory committee. The livestock genetics industry has been disrupted regularly by new technologies like ovum pickup and in-vitro fertilization IVF, genomic selection and semen sexing. 

“It is extremely important for our company to stay at the leading edge of research to prepare for market shifts and capitalize on new research and innovations that could accelerate our business,” he says. 

While Canada has done a good job of funding research and generated many prospects for new product development, the country lags in converting that research into successful businesses, he notes. That’s where a cohesive, collaborative network can help Canadian entrepreneurs grow and be successful. 

“Helping innovators navigate the difficult pre-commercial stages and build know-how around intellectual property, financing, and market research will pay innumerable benefits to Canada,” he adds. 

Dr. Colin Yates is the chair of the Centre for Research and Innovation at Fanshawe College. It’s the institution’s applied research arm that works with companies of all sizes to develop or improve products and services, with a particular focus on food innovation. 

He’s also the co-founder of several Ontario start-up businesses, so he has first-hand experience about the challenges emerging entrepreneurs face in getting a new venture off the ground and sees the Engine as a welcome development.

“It’s brilliant. There is a real lack of support for early-stage ag companies. Canada is a risk-averse nation, and we lag behind in investing in core areas like agriculture and resources,” he says. “If you develop a culture and a central place to go, you can develop an environment that is more conducive to receiving investment. There’s a big agriculture environment across Canada, and this kind of network can lead that charge.” 

According to Smardon, Bioenterprise plans to continue expanding the Engine by adding more collaborative partnerships and filling critical gaps in the innovation space for food and agri-tech. 

“Our services and support will complement the resources already available in the ecosystem and create a significant impact on Canada’s agricultural innovation economy,” he says.

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And although the report’s authors expect a decline in investment this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis has heightened interested in certain types of innovations in particular, including automation and platforms that can connect farmers and consumers online.

Why it matters: There is significant growth potential in Canada’s agri-food sector, but entrepreneurs and innovators need support to get new ideas and business off the ground.

Ontario has a growing collection of accelerators and incubators – organizations that support start-up businesses particularly with a focus on technology. The province is also home to what is believed to be Canada’s only national commercialization accelerator focused solely on agriculture and agri-food, Bioenterprise Corporation.

According to CEO Dave Smardon, the organization has shifted its focus from start-ups to companies a little further along the commercialization path.

“We’ve moved from doing barebones startups, which are traditionally highly labour intensive to organizations like us, to later-stage startups,” he explained. “The research is done, their technology is completed and they are poised for growth.”

That’s particularly the case in Ontario, where Bioenterprise delivers its SmartGrowth program for small and medium-sized enterprises in the agriculture technology sector specifically to support scale-up and expansion projects. Through a grant from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, the program provides matching funding of up to $100,000 along with coaching and mentorship support services.

Companies that come to Bioenterprise for support include a lot of digital agriculture and food processing technologies, as well as innovations based in plant or animal sciences. There’s been a shift away from innovations in agricultural-based energy over the years, though.

“The experience of the pandemic has caused greater interest in food security, traceability and technologies that can be used in place of labour,” he says. “Those are all long-term opportunities, but are starting now.”

The pandemic has also accentuated the lack of capital available to early stage companies, with Smardon noting that many angel investors and angel organizations have taken a hiatus from doing deals. That has a direct impact on start-ups, particularly those in need of matching funds to take advantage of opportunities like SmartGrowth. It’s something Bioenterprise hopes to be in a position to address over the next three to six months.

Bioenterprise currently also has offices in Vancouver and in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and through its programs and services, has helped launch more than 1,000 products and created more than 2,600 jobs since its inception in 2003.

Some of its past clients include Vive Crop Protection, Greentronics, Agri-Neo, Soma-Detect and Agri-Brink.

Bioenterprise is now also a hub that supports and is connected to Ontario’s existing innovation ecosystem, which includes Ontario Centres of Excellence and the province’s network of Regional Innovation Centres, like Mars in Toronto, Communitech in Waterloo and Oshawa’s Spark Centre.

Although they don’t specialize in the ag sector like Bioenterprise, some centres do have clients in the agri-food sector. Local Line, an online local food sales and delivery platform, for example, had its start at Communitech.

The Spark Centre is currently home to Korechi Innovations, the company behind a farming and turf care robot called RoamIO.

“We provide incubation space for start-ups, we have an extensive network of industry partners and investors, and we have expert advisors in many areas so we can help start-ups get on their feet,” explains Spark Centre President and CEO Sherry Colbourne.

For Korechi, Colbourne was able to make an introduction to the artificial intelligence centre at Durham College to support further development of its autonomous system. Clients with food innovations can be directed to the nearby Ontario Agri-Food Venture Centre in Colborne, for example.

“The most important thing we do is make connections for people – they don’t know where to go, can’t get people to open the door when they’re so unknown,” she adds.

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The CEO of Bioenterprise, a non-profit organization that since 2003 has helped more than 2,500 companies commercialize agricultural technology, recognizes the value of competition to drive innovation, but he also sees how a lack of co-ordination can delay bringing new ideas to market.

For one thing, it leads to duplication, Smardon said in a recent interview.

“Currently what we have is a highly fragmented landscape across the country,” says Smardon. “There’s a fair amount of duplication of resources. We have a fairly large number of players, incubators, accelerators, or some other form of service providers, but they are grossly under-financed or resourced.”

Why it matters: There is no shortage of innovation to support Canada’s continued growth as an agricultural exporter, but a fragmented approach is leading to duplication and delays in commercialization.

A decision last fall by the Ontario government to pull foundational funding from Bioenterprise as well as for Ontario Agri-Food Technologies and Oilseed Innovation partners, two of its co-tenants in the University of Guelph’s research park, has prompted a movement to create a larger organization to oversee agriculture technology commercialization.

The loss of funding for the three non-profit organizations is an opportunity to build something bigger, says Malcolm Campbell, vice-president of research at the University of Guelph.

“OMAFRA voted with its funds,” he said of the drop in funding for the three Guelph-based non-profits. “They are in the same office together, so it surprises me they didn’t conjoin programs and build out the ecosystem from there. Someone needs to step up and fill that gap.”

The new organization’s reach doesn’t need to stop at Ontario’s borders.

Smardon looks to the example set by Communitech for internet and data-based technology in Kitchener-Waterloo and the MARS Discovery District for medical sciences in Toronto.

Communitech is considered the gold standard for technology incubators, although Samantha Clark, who works in public relations for Communitech says they think of themselves as a community incubator. At Communitech’s building in Kitchener, startup companies and corporate enterprises come together to collaborate, improve their businesses and access technology. It works with others, like the University of Waterloo in its community, and across the country.

An agriculture and agri-food incubator could do the same, co-ordinating funding, companies and services so areas of the country get the service they need.

“The goal is not to eliminate the organizations that exist across the country,” says Smardon. “The key is to partner with them, increase their capacity and resources. We can do that through partnerships.”

Several organizations, including the University of Guelph and Bioenterprise have partnered with other organizations in separate submissions in a competition to form a national hub for agriculture and agri-food innovation.

The federal department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) put together expert “tables” of leading sectors make recommendations on what is needed for those sectors to flourish. The agri-food table recommended the creation of a centre of excellence for agri-food innovation. ISED is currently evaluating proposals for that centre of excellence.

It could serve as the over-arching co-ordinator for agriculture and agri-food technology growth and solve some of the duplication and confusion around agriculture technology commercialization.

The University of Guelph has partnered with the Ontario Centres of Excellence, the Ontario Dairy Network and the Enterprise Machine Learning and Intelligence Initiative (EMILI) in Winnipeg to form the Canadian Agri-Food Ecosystem — Digital (CAFE-D) Network.

Campbell sees it as the Communitech of agriculture, based in Guelph, but connected across the country to organizations and companies working in agriculture technology.

“Incubators,” places where entrepreneurs can go to get help navigating finance, regulations and to build their networks, have proliferated.

Smardon says municipalities have made incubators part of their economic development strategies. Government funding flows from the federal government, to provinces and then to municipalities, so economic development funding has resulted in regional resources being creating — including for agriculture.

In addition to OAFT, Bioenterprise and Oilseed Innovation Partners, the City of Guelph is also delivering agriculture and food startup programs. The University of Guelph has licensed the successful accelerator program from the University of Waterloo. It also has the Gryphon’s Leading to the Accelerated Adoption of Innovative Research (LAAIR) program, in which researchers are selected to learn more about moving their technology from research to commercialization.

Across the country, the other leading agriculture universities are in the innovation game, along with other regional players like AgWest Bio in Saskatchewan and the PEI BioAlliance.

Few are forced or choose to be formally connected.

The end result is experiences such as that of IntelliCulture, a Waterloo-based startup with an app that helps farmers manage their tractors and trucks. The founders were all students at the University of Waterloo and so ended up in the well-formed pipeline for digital entrepreneurs there. Cole Powers, one of the founders, says they benefitted from being part for the Velocity Garage, a program for early innovators. The challenge for them was to connect to the agriculture network, funders and businesses they needed to take their product to the next stage.

They eventually connected with groups in Guelph, like OAFT and BioEnterprise, but there wasn’t one simple point of entry, and transition, like companies moving from Velocity to using Communitech’s resources. A single entity would have saved IntelliCulture ground work, says Powers.

Campbell says that there needs to be one point of entry. When an entrepreneur or investor walks through the door, there should be a clear process in which a navigator is assigned to make sure the innovator is moved to the correct resources and organizations that can help them.

Campbell says that there needs to be a physical presence, a nexus he calls it, where organizations, researchers, funders and entrepreneurs meet in one building.

“I would argue that we need a physical entity, a space that is the national headquarters, or ground zero for agri-food innovation in Canada,” he said.

The entity would still be highly connected to rural Ontario and Canada through other organizations and facilities.

Tyler Whale, president of OAFT isn’t so sure a building or “mausoleum” is needed. Create the hub to connect the rest of the players and pieces, he says. Agriculture is so decentralized across the province and the country, that one building isn’t needed.

Whether it involves a building or not, connecting innovators to farmers will be a key function, and one that would be made more efficient with one point of entry.

“Innovators have to be in touch with the buyers,” says Whale. There’s no sense innovating for farmers if the business idea will take too much time on the farm or costs too much, he says.

Is agriculture different from other technology sectors? The answer is yes in several ways including:

• The time to market is slower, as there are many different size and shapes to farms, and farmers are cautious about new technology until it shows a definite return on investment.
• Regulations are different. Agriculture and food is highly regulated and regulations in some areas are stricter than other jurisdictions.
• The sector is diverse and geographically focused. That means that entrepreneurs may have to change their project depending on regions in Canada — which is already a smaller market.
• Agriculture hasn’t been ‘sexy’ to investors, although that is changing.
• Government hasn’t traditionally seen agriculture as an engine for growth and so it hasn’t seen its share of innovative funding models that other sectors have seen. That too appears to be changing.

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RiteTrace is the latest application for the potato industry from Greentronics, which has also developed a boom height control system for potato harvesters that can be used on sprayers, as well as a yield mapping system and other tools.

Why it matters: Record-keeping is critical for on-farm food safety programs like CanadaGAP, so traceability technology can help growers quickly respond to potential problems in their crop.

RiteTrace automatically collects yield data as a crop is being harvested and maps where each load comes out of the field. Each truck load is also mapped as it goes into storage allowing growers to precisely locate each load and follow it through its marketing cycle.

“Food safety and knowing where your product has come from gives you traceability and accountability,” said Kate Vander Zaag, who grows potatoes in the Alliston area on a family farm with her husband, son and son-in-law and was one of the first to try the system. “If we have trouble in a bin, we can see where it comes from; if we have excellent quality, we can tell what field or what part of a field that came from.”

In preparation for their CanadaGAP audit – the program requires growers to be able to trace their product back to the field and provide a harvest date – the system has virtually eliminated complicated manual record-keeping. Instead, reports the Vanderzaags need are generated automatically as harvest is progressing.

Kate and her husband Peter first started working with Greentronics founder Bill Menkveld – whom they know from their university days – years ago when they were looking for a yield monitor to put on their potato harvester. This ultimately resulted in Greentronics’ RiteYield system, which generates field-specific yield maps and offers potato growers running yield totals for bins, fields, varieties, and test plots.

The original yield monitoring system designed by Menkveld and his brother Bert, an electrical engineer, about two decades ago was ahead of its time. Software was clumsy, and computers were slow without the large storage capacity needed to handle the vast amounts of data being generated. It wasn’t until 10 years ago that they picked up the technology again and ended up bringing it to market.

About 15 years ago, Menkveld received a request for a height control system for a potato harvester boom that would maintain boom height and minimize tuber bruising. This eventually moved beyond just the potato industry and evolved into their popular RiteHeight system to manage boom height in sprayers.

“We felt confident we could introduce it on sprayers and it was a success right away with farmers in general; it was no longer tied to the potato industry,” said Menkveld. “Our goal was to come up with a system that a grower could install himself; that was important to us that all he would need is what we provide in our box. By keeping it very simple and universal, it allows growers to use it themselves and understand how it works.”

And although RiteTrace is currently just for potato growers, Bill has received inquiries from grain growers in Canada, the U.S. and Australia about how the system could work in their industry.

Seed funding from Bioenterprise has helped Greentronics with some development work on RiteTrace, as well as marketing, attending trade shows and conducting market research with growers. The ag tech accelerator has also been helping the company with a patent application for the traceability system.

“Greentronics is exporting internationally and they have a lot of good products,” said Doug Knox, vice president, technology with Bioenterprise. “They are the on-the-ground precision ag guys and interest is high especially if they can move into that cloud environment.”

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Foods treated with Neo-Pure are now sold in major grocers across North America, including Loblaw, Whole Foods, Costco and Trader Joe’s — and new technology for treating wheat flour is in the pipeline.

“Most food products go through some kind of preventive treatment to eliminate microbes such as yeast, mould, coliforms, and pathogens like Salmonella and E.coli. Dry foods, however, don’t lend themselves to conventional treatments because those treatments can change the taste, appearance, and nutritional profile of products like seeds, nuts and powders,” said Agri-Neo President Rob Wong, one of the company’s three co-founders.

Milk, for example, is pasteurized and fruits and vegetables undergo a chlorine wash, but for dry foods, there is no industry standard for microbe control. The only consistent measure for food safety to date is sampling.

“Every truck of chia seed, for example, is tested for microbes, but several small samples from a whole truckload won’t necessarily catch everything, so you do see a lot of recalls of dry foods,” he added.

Neo-Pure is a wettable powder that is combined with water and misted onto dry food products at processing. Once Neo-Pure comes into contact with a microbe, it destroys it instantly by breaking it down and then biodegrades completely — without changing the taste, appearance, or nutritional profile of the food it is treating, according to Agri-Neo.

The company got its start in Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District a decade ago and launched Neo-Pure in December 2014.

Today, Agri-Neo has offices and production facilities in Etobicoke with a growing team focused heavily on science, engineering and technical knowledge in food safety and microbiology. Its customers are food companies across North America, as well as a large sesame and chia seed producer in Paraguay. It is also making inroads to the European market.

“Ultimately, we want to help safely feed the world and in addition to dry foods like seed and nuts, we want to look at food categories where existing solutions are not meeting needs well,” said Wong.

“Ready-to-eat, like eating pumpkin seeds out of a package or putting chia seeds on salads, is a very important category, but we’re also looking at spices or dehydrated vegetables,” he added.

The application system Agri-Neo has developed for its customers to apply Neo-Pure has a footprint of about 1,000 square feet and can treat about 6,600 pounds per hour.

According to Wong, Agri-Neo is getting ready to launch a new technology specific to wheat flour in the next 12 to 18 months. Although most people assume flour will be baked before it is consumed, that’s not always the case. Wong cited examples like refrigerated or frozen cookie doughs, and cake or pancake mixes where the batter can be sampled before cooking or baking.

“At the end of the day, wheat flour is a raw product,” he said, adding the new technology could also be applied to products made from more traditional row crops, including corn meal, rice flower and oats to minimize or eliminate possible food safety issues.

“Do well by doing good is a broader theme for us, so if you can make food safer but in a way that doesn’t hurt the food’s integrity, that’s pretty powerful,” he said.

Over the years, the company has received support from Guelph-based Ontario Agri-Food Technologies as well as agribusiness accelerator Bioenterprise, and federal and provincial government programs.

– With files from AgInnovation Ontario

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