Rethinking Food Insecurity Risk Management in Canada: The Role of Agri-Tech and Accelerators

May 17, 2024

By Tabitha Caswell for Bioenterprise Canada

The most recent Global Food Security Index (GFSI) report by Economist Impact signals a weakening global food system where Canada stands as a key player, holding the 7^th rank among 113 countries on the list. This pivotal position showcases Canada’s potential to spearhead global initiatives and become a leader in the pursuit of global food security.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. With food prices at an all-time high, we cannot dismiss the pressure felt within our borders. Perhaps we must first examine our weaknesses, reinforce our internal agri-food systems, and work to ensure they are resilient enough to serve as a model for international counterparts.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.