As farmers plan for the 2026 growing season, many are making deliberate decisions about which technologies to leave on the shelf.
Despite a steady stream of agricultural innovation, from biological inputs and precision equipment to artificial intelligence, adoption across Canadian agriculture remains uneven. The reasons are not rooted in resistance to change, but in cost pressures, unclear returns, infrastructure gaps, and the growing role of scale in determining what technologies make sense on a given farm.
While basic guidance systems and GPS technology are now commonplace, more advanced tools such as variable-rate application, AI-driven analytics, and data-intensive platforms remain far less widely used. Research and farmer experience suggest the issue is not whether innovation works in theory, but whether it works on a specific farm under real-world conditions, when margins are tight.
Multiple Canadian studies point to cost and uncertain return on investment as the primary reasons farmers hesitate to adopt newer technologies, particularly capital-intensive digital tools. Research cited by Food Systems Canada and the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute shows that while awareness of emerging technologies is high, adoption drops sharply when benefits are difficult to quantify or take years to materialize.
“Technology costs money, and margins in agriculture right now are squeezed pretty tightly,” said Mark Reusser, a director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, as well as a grain and oilseed farmer himself. “A lot of farmers are sitting around the table asking what they can afford to invest in today, when they’re not making as much money as they’d like to be.”
Rising equipment prices have compounded that pressure.
“The cost of new equipment has gone up substantially in the last couple of years,” Reusser told The Observer. “When that happens, farmers start asking what they can buy used that will do roughly the same thing at a lower cost.”
While buying used equipment can reduce capital strain, it often means sticking with older technology rather than investing in newer systems. This lateral move keeps farms operational but does not always improve efficiency. For some producers, long-term planning adds another layer of complexity.
“New technology takes years to pay for,” Reusser said. “You have to ask whether you’re going to be around long enough to recoup that investment, or whether you’re putting money into something you’ll never fully get back.”
Beyond cost, infrastructure remains a limiting factor in parts of Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. Policy analysis has linked slower adoption of digital agriculture tools to gaps in broadband access, inconsistent policy signals, and fragmented support systems.
For farms without reliable connectivity, cloud-based platforms, real-time monitoring, and AI-driven decision-making tools are often impractical, despite their potential benefits.
Those limitations contribute to uneven adoption across regions and sectors, reinforcing differences between farms that can easily integrate digital tools and those that cannot.
Technology uptake in agriculture is far from uniform. Dairy and poultry operations have adopted automation and monitoring technologies at a much higher rate than many other sectors. Robotic milking systems, climate-controlled barns, and sensor-based monitoring are now common in many operations, offering labour savings, improved consistency, and operational flexibility.
“In poultry barns, climate control systems can adjust conditions every 30 seconds,” Reusser explained. “That’s something a person simply can’t do as well manually.”
Greenhouse operations, particularly in southwestern Ontario and the Niagara region, are also moving quickly. Reusser described seeing AI-guided robots sorting produce by colour, size, and shape – work previously done by multiple employees – during a visit to greenhouse facilities last fall.
“That level of automation is happening because labour is expensive and sometimes hard to find,” Reusser said. “It’s about saving money and improving efficiency.”
By contrast, some livestock producers and mixed farms gravitate toward mature, proven technologies. They are more cautious about newer tools they view as less relevant or harder to integrate into daily operations.
Even when technologies are affordable, trust remains a key factor shaping adoption decisions. Farmers are often skeptical of tools promoted through research trials or sales demonstrations that do not fully reflect on-farm realities. Weather variability, soil differences, and operational constraints can all affect performance.
“Research tends to be done in ideal conditions,” Reusser said. “When you get to a farm, you’re dealing with reality.”
That skepticism should not be misinterpreted as outright rejection, however. Many farmers test new technologies on a limited scale, observe what peers are doing, and adapt based on results.
Targeted incentives have proven effective in accelerating adoption when payback is clear and immediate. Reusser pointed to past utility programs that subsidized LED lighting retrofits in barns, significantly reducing energy costs and shortening payback periods.
“I wouldn’t have done it as soon without that incentive,” he said. “The payback was maybe a year and a half, and I’ve benefited every year since.”
Research suggests similar incentive-based approaches could help de-risk adoption of newer digital tools, particularly when combined with extension support and farm-specific performance data.
While much of the discussion around agricultural technology focuses on what happens in fields and barns, Reusser said some of the most significant automation gains are occurring just beyond the farm gate: in processing, packaging, and distribution.
“Everything that farmers grow needs to be modified or processed before it reaches the consumer,” Reusser explained. “A consumer doesn’t want your bird – they want chicken in a package.”
Automation and artificial intelligence are already reshaping those downstream sectors, particularly in poultry and dairy, where consistency, volume, and labour efficiency are critical. The potential for automation varies widely, however, and is far more feasible in some parts of agriculture than others.
In grain and oilseed production, Reusser said adoption is often less about entirely new tools and more about size.
“Years ago, you could make a living off 100 acres,” he said. “Today, if you’re growing corn, soybeans, or wheat, you probably need hundreds or thousands of acres.”
That shift has changed the equipment farms rely on.
“The equipment you use on 2,000 acres is different than what you use on 100 acres – not always different in technology, but different in size,” Reusser said. “A tractor that might have been 50 horsepower years ago is now closer to 150 horsepower because it has to pull bigger equipment and do the work faster.”
In poultry production, scale presents similar pressures.
“It doesn’t make sense for a processor to pick up 500 chickens,” Reusser said. “They want 5,000 or 50,000. The same goes for feed delivery. They’re not sending a 40-tonne truck for a small number of birds.”
Those dynamics are reshaping the structure of Canadian agriculture. Large, highly efficient farms continue to expand, while smaller operations increasingly survive by specializing, producing niche products, processing on-farm, or targeting local markets with higher margins.
“What you’re seeing is a hollowing out of the middle,” Reusser said. “Medium-sized farms are either getting much bigger or disappearing altogether.”
Whether that trend ultimately benefits the sector remains an open question. What is clear, he said, is that farmers respond to market signals.
“If the market says you need more acreage, farmers will acquire it,” Reusser said. “That’s how agriculture has always adapted.
