Just as it has for most of its history, the ample and multi-leveled agricultural and agri-food sector of Canada continues to play a fundamental role in the country’s economy.
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Experts predict that all agricultural and agri-food exports from Canada will reach a value of $75 billion by 2025. In fact, the sector employs one out of every eight Canadians and in 2016 generated $111.9 billion – 6.7% of the country’s GDP. It is also significant to note that export sales have reached a new high at $56 billion, which makes Canada the fifth largest exporter of agri-food products globally.

Canada is continuing in its efforts to grow the output of the sector. It has a semi-privatized and semi-federalized approach to agricultural development. These two groups play a dual role in funding research and development, applied research and commercialization in the market.

With federal programs like the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (a five-year, $3 billion investment program launched by the federal government), Canada is looking to prompt new agricultural innovations such as new crop varieties, livestock breeds, nutrient management practices, tilling methods and farm machinery, as well as advancements in biotechnology, precision agriculture, communication and information technologies.
Select Canadian companies in the agri-tech sector have enjoyed the benefits of this program since the beginning of last year (funding began April 1st, 2018). However, it is unknown how many startups will benefit from the program compared to established corporations. The program is devoted to supporting Canadian agriculture in three ways: growing trade and expanding markets, promoting innovative and sustainable growth and a diversity initiative.

An example of Canada’s post-secondary institutions leading the charge in the agritech sector is Olds College. In the summer of 2018, Olds College officially launched the Olds College Smart Farm, an exciting new initiative that will see the College transform its existing farm operation into a farm of the future by incorporating the latest technologies aimed at improving productivity while increasing efficiently and sustainably of resources. It is a place for innovation, validation, demonstration and scaling of smart connected agriculture technology through industry partnerships such as Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) (recently part of the $100 million in funding from the Government of Alberta to invest in high-tech industries), Decisive Farming, Intelliconn, Raven Bay, Stream Technologies, Weather Innovations Consulting and Zedi solutions.
While the Canadian government’s stated goal is to prompt growth and innovation in the sector, some may still be curious if it will really be enough to compete globally when much smaller countries like Israel have a significant lead when it comes agrifood tech startups.  

Canada faces heavy competition from top players such as the US: according to AgFunder. Canada’s agtech startup’s raised just 3.4% of funding dollars in 2018 ($577m), accounting for 3.4% of deal-flow (49 deals) in 2018, while US startups raised 48% of funding dollars and 39% of deal-flow – with a population of 37 million next to the US’s 327 million it puts Canada behind on investment in the space.
However, Canada is home to some of the strongest, most prominent and leading agtech companies globally; let’s have a look.

Genetics and Breeding – Genetics and breeding companies typically devote their time to the breeding of plants and bacteria with improved traits to help plant growth. There are a number of companies that use genetic technologies to accomplish this. A few examples of Canadian genetics and breeding companies are Agrisoma, Frontier Agri-Science, Linnaeus Plant Sciences, Okanagan Specialty Fruits, and Smart Earth Seeds.
Featured company: Agrisoma is the company behind the first transatlantic flight that was powered by bio jet fuel. This biojet fuel replaced 30 per cent of the fossil fuel with fuel made from a type of mustard seed.

Farm Management Platforms – These companies make use of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics to offer farmers solutions on daily farm issues (in the areas of precision agronomic, crop management, risk management, etc.). Decisive Farming, Farm At Hand, Farmers Edge and Siga are a few examples in this sector.
Featured company: Decisive Farming’s patented MFM data platform, recently selected as a finalist for the 2019 Vision to Reality (V2R) Awards in the Visionary category, provides a crop farmer the ability to make better decisions on all critical operational functions. By connecting farm service and technology providers in one platform, crop farmers are able to deliver top-quality products more efficiently than ever before. Through strategic partnerships with leading distributors across the agriculture value chain like INTL FCStone, the platform has over five million acres representing 1.5 billion in annual production and is being used on 40 different crop types in North America.

Crop protection and Nutrients –companies that produce biological or chemical substances used for protecting crops from pests & diseases, and providing nutrient to enhance plant growth and health, including technologies that are nontoxic and environmentally friendly. Some examples of Canadian start-up companies are Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies (which recently acquired the Seattle based company Multiform Harvest on Jan 2, 2019), Concentric Ag, Terramera, Thymox Technology and Vive Crop Protection.
Featured company: Terramera announced it successfully acquired Stem Shock™, a promising platform technology from Cotyledon Consulting Inc. for developing natural RNA-based precision herbicides that target damaging weed species.

Machinery and Robotics – These companies supply the robotics, machinery, and equipment that agricultural workers rely on to automate farm work, harvest and; subsequently, sort crops. Cleanseed and DOT Technologieshave focused more on farm machinery. Other companies that fall into this category include: Inno-3B and Northstar Robotics.
Featured company: DOT Technologies partnered with New Leader Manufacturing and are collaborating on the world’s first autonomous dry spreader that will be utilizing the DOT Power Platform.

Irrigation and Water Management – Startups dedicated to promoting water and soil conservation through advanced management of water. Companies innovating irrigation methods and water efficiency such as Agricast, Hortau, Rachio, Skaha Remote Sensing and SkyDrop.
Featured company: Hortau closed a $20 million equity funding round that will help fuel irrigation management product development, company growth and continued international expansion.

Post-Harvest – Solutions to reduce losses in storage, packaging, treatments, climate management technologies, and the selling of goods.  For example, Agexchange Group and Farmlead provide grain marketplaces for farmers.
Featured company: Farmlead announced a partnership with Family Farms Group Canada, which provides a wealth of business, agronomic and risk management expertise, enabling Farmlead’s membership to better manage their operations, and drive growth and prosperity for future generations.

Farm to Consumer – Companies focused on shortening and simplifying the supply chain by connecting the farm to the end consumer. Many Canadian companies have sought to achieve this through the use of digital platforms. Such as Carbon Credit Solutions, Renterra, Localize Your Food and Meatme.ca.
Featured company: Carbon Credit Solutions is a world leader of measuring, reporting and verifying greenhouse gas emission reductions in the agricultural sector. Recently, they won the 2018 Alberta Business Awards of Distinction of the Alberta Best of Business award.

Novel Farming Systems – New types of greenhouses, urban farming, hydroponic and aquaponic growing systems including AVA Technologies, Lettuce Lads, Renterra, TruLeaf and Verticorp. Most of this group is focused on sustainable and more efficient growing systems.
Featured company: From a simple hydroponics hobbyist’s setup to a complete farming system for controlled environment agriculture, Lettuce Labs’ patented high-density hydroponic solution significantly improves current indoor production through lighting efficiencies that increase yields.

Livestock and Poultry – Technology for raising farm animals and pets. GrowSafe Systems Ltd. is great example where the company provides RFID-based automation solutions for the beef industry. Other companies include Feedlot Health Management, Integrated Traceability Solutions, Prevtec Microbia and SomaDetect.
Featured company: Dairy Farmers of America invested in SomaDetect, a dairy technology start-up that will help farmers utilize AI to more closely monitor the health of their herd and improve milk quality.

Waste Tech – These companies focus on the reduction of harmful substances and reuse of materials within agriculture for example, NuWave Research, CRB Innovations, Hop Compost, Livestock Water Recycling and Lystek International.
Featured company: Livestock Water Recycling was selected as a finalist for PwC Canada’s 2019 Vision to Reality (V2R) award in the visionary category, recognizing to create a technology that would give farmers a tool to treat livestock manure in a way that would eliminate the need for lagoon storage.

Aquaculture – These companies develop technologies that enable the more efficient rearing of aquatic animals or the cultivation of aquatic plants for food. Some of the Canadian companies that fall into this category include AgriMarine, Open Ocean Systems, ReelData, Rocky Mountain Shrimp Company Inc., and XpertSea.
Featured company: Currently the XpertSea Growth Platform is sold in 48 countries. The company previously raised $10 million in Series A funding in 2018 to bring more data driven insights to farmers so they can be more efficient with their production.

Foodtech – The Foodtech sector is a growing segment of the startup space that’s aiming to improve or disrupt the global food system. These are a few of the companies that represent the sector: Dockside Pet Products and Services, Enterra, Fresh Prep Foods, Foodee, and Mazza Innovation.
Featured company: Enterra Feed Corporation, an insect production company, completed a major global funding round that will allow it to go ahead with the construction of three North America production facilities, including an 180,000-sqaure-foot, $30 million warehouse facility near Calgary Alberta in 2019 and another new facility in British Columbia by 2020.

IoT – Internet of things in agriculture includes the use of sensors, and other devices to collect data on all farm actions and events. Agrimatics, Be Seen Be Safe, GrainViz, Intelliconn, OPIsystems and Precision Weather Solutions are just a few of the start-up companies in this sector.
Featured company: GrainViz, in collaboration with GSI, a core brand of AGCO will provide an opportunity to improve grain quality by changing the way grain is monitored and managed through exclusive technology.

Pest Management – Research trials, product registration support, pest management strategies, and other ways to help Canadian growers protect their agricultural crops from the negative impacts of weeds, diseases and insect pests. Start-up companies involved in this sector include BioTEPP, Ecoation Innovations Solutions, HeadsUp Plant Protectants, My Green Space and Semios.
Featured company: For the second consecutive year, Semios was named to SVG Ventures’ THRIVE Top 50 annual ranking of the world’s leading scaling and visionary agriculture technology companies. Semios recently secured $9.9 million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada in support of its big data initiative to improve crop yield while reducing the use of chemicals and water during production.

Remote Sensing – Companies providing field-level analysis using drones/airplanes or develop large-scale macro analytics using globally available satellite data. Companies include Aeryon Labs, Deveron UAS, Draganfly Innovations, Practical Precision and Resson.
Featured company: Deveron UAS was awarded an AI for Earth grant from Microsoft to help further their efforts in AI and making recommendations and predictions using agricultural data. AI for Earth is a $50 million, 5-year program that will provide Deveron UAS with Microsoft Azure computing resources and AI tools to accelerate work on utilizing in-season imagery and AI to apply nitrogen fertilizer to corn.

Moving ahead, it can be expected that a country like Canada whose economy has been so heavily focused on agriculture since the country’s inception will continue to be focused on its biggest opportunity of how it can turn raw agriculture commodities into value-added goods.

Author: Remi Schmaltz, Co-founder and CEO, Decisive Farming, a company dedicated to increasing farmers’ profitability, sustainability, and technology ease-of-use by providing a single integrated platform that is the farm’s primary operating system. The complete solution covers the three core farm functions; Farm Management to improve performance, Precision Agronomy to increase yield and Crop Marketing to grow farmer revenue. Decisive Farming’s platform currently has over 5 million acres representing 1.5 billion in annual production and is being used on forty different crop types in North America. The company is headquartered near Calgary, Alberta and has strategic partnerships with the leading distributors across the agriculture value chain.

AgFunder News

Not a lot of things get me riled up these days. I don’t know if it is because I am older and have seen (and experienced) a lot over my 48 years but this weekend I was legitimately pissed. And it all started sitting in my car out front of my Taekwondo gym waiting for the instructor to arrive, so I could get my daily dose of kicking.

A friend of mine sent me a text encouraging me to read an article written by LiisBeth, a group that claims it is “the world’s only dedicated voice and advocacy organization for the entrepreneurial feminist movement”. I had time to kill so I launched the link and read the article. It was brutal. It was not focused on advocating for women. It was focused on crapping all over the first organization in the world that invests a lot (and I mean A LOT) of capital to advance tech companies with women in the C-suite.

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) launched the world’s largest Women-in-Tech Venture Fund just under two years ago. And, the person who stepped into the arena to take on this fight is Michelle Scarborough. I cannot even imagine the amount of blood, sweat and tears Michelle and her team have shed to get this program off the ground while everyone else has been watching from the sidelines or merely lying dormant.  

And what does this LiisBeth group do? They decide to critique the one gladiator that has the courage to take on the first of what will be many, many fights. They start the article by saying “we are watching”. Yeah right. If they are really “watching”, they would not be watching her. They would be watching all the nay-sayers and silent ones wishing this feminist movement would just go away. They would be fighting alongside of her and helping her win. Instead they tell her to step aside and start over.  

So thanks LiisBeth for watching the one group trying to make a difference and not watching the hundreds of others that have no intention of ever changing. What you have shown us is that you are not a feminist and you certainly are not Lisbeth Salander, the character you aspire to be. You are just a mean “girl” who delights in being a bully from the bleachers hissing at the gladiator trying to change the world.

My call to those of us out there who have been fighting the real fight is to recognize that the really hard fights are just that. Hard. Mistakes will get made along the way. We will stumble and get marred because that is what needs to happen to make real progress. BDC, Michelle Scarborough and certainly not the female entrepreneurs they have backed need you to criticize them. For that, I give you a rating of “WTF”.   

​The tech sector and private capital industry will never get out of the starting blocks and jump over the first, second and third hurdles of this race if we have “supposed” supporters on the side lines with trip wires watching and criticizing our every move. We need cheering, encouragement and hope.  

We need the women and men in this industry to rally behind one another so major change can happen. Not just to improve the gender mix but to build a more inclusive industry with people from all different orientations, backgrounds and ethnicity. You don’t do that by critiquing the ones that are trying to figure it out.

So LiisBeth and the other nay-sayers out there. Piss off. You aren’t badass. You are pathetic.

​Author: Whitney Rockley, Founder & Managing Partner of McRock Capital

Tencent, the 20-year-old consumer Internet giant operates China’s dominant social media platform, WeChat, with over one billion monthly active users. The company announced it will begin focusing on industries seeking deeper business integration with internet technologies given the huge potential of the industrial internet.

“We believe that the first stage of the mobile internet, the consumer internet, is drawing to a close and the second stage, the industrial internet, is kicking off. With the digitalization process ongoing, the main battlefield of the mobile Internet has moved from the consumer internet to the industrial internet,” said Tencent Founder and CEO, Pony Ma.

The culmination of many technological advancements over the past 100 years has led to the power of today’s mobile Internet. A combination of affordable compute power, data storage, software applications and connectivity has created a powerful Consumer Internet. Along the way it has created some of the most valuable companies in the world like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent and Alibaba.

Tencent’s founder believes the next phase of the mobile Internet is the Industrial Internet. Building off the technology of the Consumer Internet, the Industrial Internet is adding two important advancements. One, it’s connecting and digitizing the vast physical world of machines, equipment and infrastructure. This advancement has largely been the efforts of the past 5 years. The second major advancement is around next generation data analytics commonly referred to as Artificial Intelligence (AI). The way to conceptualize the relationship between the IoT and AI is like the body and the brain. The IoT, connecting data from physical devices, is akin to the body and software driven analysis and decision making, AI, is analogous to the brain.

As with the evolution of the Consumer Internet, the more people that are connected to the network, the more valuable the software application layer becomes. Likewise, as massive amounts of data are connected to the network from physical assets, the potential for AI to unlock new value is massive. It will create new competitive forces in every industrial sector, unlock new revenue streams and create entirely new business models.

Tencent has announced plans to expand into smart services for transportation, manufacturing and urban development. Their new direction is also in line with China’s wider ambitions to lift its industries up the value chain and better compete globally in emerging technologies, such as AI.

Tencent will also form a new technology committee that will create an internal platform for the sharing of fundamental technologies within the company and apply them to different industries. This should help Tencent rapidly build an ecosystem for supplying new technologies such as cloud computing, big data and AI tools to industries undergoing digital transformation.

What we are witnessing is the battle for the future of businesses. As technology innovation continues its accelerating path forward, only the existing industrial companies that execute an aggressive digital strategy will survive as a new breed of tech-savvy Industrial Internet companies emerge.

Author: Scott MacDonald, Founder & Management Partner of McRock Capital

“Humans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.” 
— Dr. Robert Ford in “Westworld”

“Westworld” is an HBO series about a Western-theme futuristic park, where its visitors are enabled to live their fantasies with robotic “hosts.” The hosts, while looking and acting human, are programmed to operate within a narrative. Any “host” who behaves differently from their storyline will be considered an error and needs to be fixed or dismantled. The hosts become victims in the world that’s supposed to be theirs.

It is fascinating how similar our human world is to the Westworld. Together as a society, we create plots for each individual, based on our race, our background, our genders, elements that we are born and raised with and are unable to influence. Let me tell you my original narrative: I was born in a Southeast Asian country, in a middle-class family, and in a generation that had yet to escape from the influence of Confucianism. I have the look of a plain Jane according to our culture, and a typical smooth upbringing with parents who loved and protected me from everything. I was expected to stay with them until I married (typically by age 25), after having children I would step away from my career to take care of my children, my husband and later, my parents. It was the best life that I was taught to wish for. Then I started to wonder why life had to be that way. I had lived so long in a circle of people with the same mindset, who accepted their designed narrative without questions. I had known at the time, that if I wanted to see other possibilities for my story, I had to break out of that loop. And that was why I moved away, to a city I never lived in, and then to a country half the world away from my homeland.

The loops are everywhere. Social expectation and people’s opinion influence our values. And when the voice of the crowd is honeyed and close enough, it tightens the loop around our minds. Truth is, the more privileged we are, the harder it becomes to challenge our status quo. A life with comfort and approval creates the illusion of belonging; it keeps us away from questioning our reality. That is the worst loop we could ever live in.

I remember the first night in a city 700-miles away from my hometown, I lay on the floor of a cold and almost empty room, worrying about my next day at the new job. I missed the safe and warm feeling of my bed, the routine pleasure of my old life; and I wondered if I had made a mistake.

There were days when I stayed late, looking out of the window from a fancy office on the 57th floor. A big city with blinding lights layered on my shy reflection. In a moment, I could see both beauty and ugliness, both clarity and doubt. And I did not know what to believe in.

No matter who we are, we will continue to encounter the loops. Whenever we get out of a circle, there is another one wrapping in. Society today encourages people to change for a satisfying life. We share stories about those who make it through, and how much better their lives become. Yet, by doing so, we create another formulated plot of happy ending, in which we tend to ignore the parts that involve constant pains, conflicts, and adversity. Indeed, all those untold sufferings are the essential forces that drive us to expand our thoughts, and eventually break us free.

There is no happy ending. In fact, there is no ending. I started to realize now, that the adventure to challenge our being is an eternal journey inward. Each of us may still be generalized into an archetype by the outer world, but it is the freedom of our minds that gives us courage, makes us alive, and enables us to write our own unique stories.

So, observe and think by yourself. Don’t let the world distract you. Don’t let people tell you about your narrative. Stay conscious. Ask questions. Challenge the rules.

Nothing could ever hold us back.

Author: Ha Nguyen, Vice President, McRock Capital

I nearly crawl out of my skin when I hear someone say the words “don’t be afraid to fail and fail fast”. As an entrepreneur those words trigger me because anyone who has faced real failure will know it hurts in unimaginable ways.

As an entrepreneur, I lost count of the sleepless nights I had in the first few years of starting our business. My son, who was 10 years old at the time, kept asking, with hopeful eyes, whether we had secured our funding yet. I had to repeatedly say “close” when I knew we were still miles away. I woke up in sweats worried that I was approaching failure personally, professionally, and financially. I knew that if my co-founder and I had failed, the wipe out would have been devastating. That fear of failure drove us to ignite our imaginations so we could figure out how to succeed. Had we “failed and failed fast”, we would NEVER be where we are today.

Being creative in difficult situations and adapting when things are trending poorly is not a moment in time worthy of the failure title. These moments are the exact opposite. They are the moments that define a person’s success. So, when I hear someone say, “don’t be afraid to fail and fail fast”, I know that they are not an entrepreneur.

If you use that expression, I would encourage you to change it up. For those entrepreneurs facing failure, challenge yourself to think even more positively. Have the courage to change tact and try new approaches. Push yourself to do better and better each day so you can get back on track. A positive mindset is everything and the word failure shouldn’t enter your vocabulary. Please stop glorifying the F word. Be afraid to fail and fight hard and long to find success.

That is my wish for entrepreneurs pursuing the crazy dream of changing the world.  

Author: Whitney Rockley, Co-founder & Managing Partner, McRock Capital