Digitalization of Canadian agriculture: opportunities and barriers

The impact of digital technologies on Canadian agriculture is growing: artificial intelligence, drones, robotics, satellite positioning, and connected sensors are changing the methods of crop monitoring, machinery management, and production decision-making. In 2024, the country's agri-food complex provided employment for 2.3 million people and generated CAD 149.2 billion, accounting for about 7% of Canada's GDP. Primary agriculture accounted for CAD 31.7 billion and 223,000 jobs.

According to Statistics Canada data for 2021 (as of 2020), 50.4% of Canadian farms (95,713 holdings) used at least one of the eight selected technologies. The most common were soil testing (32%), automatic guidance (26.8%), variable-rate fertilizer and chemical application (16.1%), and GIS mapping (13.2%). Meanwhile, drones were used by only 3.6% of farms. Certain areas demonstrate rapid growth: the share of farms with automatic guidance increased from 20.5% in 2015 to 26.8% in 2020, and the use of fully robotic milking machines among dairy farms rose from 8.9% to 20.2% over the same period.

Nevertheless, the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute characterizes the digital ecosystem as fragmented. The level of technology adoption is directly related to farm revenue: in the category of holdings with revenue from CAD 1 million to 1.99 million, technologies were used by 86.9% of participants, whereas in the group with income from 1 to 9,999 CAD, this figure was 20.6%. Barriers include poor rural connectivity, unclear return on investment, and data management issues. According to the Institute's estimates, available digital tools are capable of generating between CAD 750 million and 1.5 billion in additional annual net income over the next decade.