The Ontario Agricultural Conferences are coming up quickly, and there’s lots of turbulence to fill all three events with timely sessions.
“I think it just became obvious for us because you just have to pick up any news or listen to anything. It’s everything. Let’s put it this way — agriculture is facing a lot of unprecedented uncertainty, right?” said Albert Tenuta, co-chair of the Southwest Agricultural Conference (SWAC).
Tenuta pointed to weather extremes, marketing ups and downs, increasing production costs and unpredictable geopolitics as contributing to farmers’ uncertainty.
WHY IT MATTERS: The Ontario Agricultural Conferences are the leading farmer education event for crops in Ontario.
“The Ontario Ag Conferences, SWAC, Midwest, as well as Eastern Ontario are designed to help growers, industry, navigate through this uncertainty,” with a theme of Thriving in Turbulence.
Dealing with that uncertainty is threaded through more than 50 sessions at SWAC. It’s the first of the three Ontario agronomy conferences held early each new year. It takes place Jan. 5-6, 2027, in Ridgetown.
The Midwest Agricultural Conference is in Waterloo on Jan. 16 and the Eastern Ontario Crops Conference takes place Jan. 26 in Kemptville. Virtual sessions will be available until March 31, 2027. Registration is now open for all three events and the virtual sessions.
Hybrid delivery
SWAC is known across North America for its integration of in-person and virtual programming and the experts it draws from across the continent.
Jacob Shapiro is the featured speaker on Jan. 5, 2027 at the Southwest Ag Conference.
Photo: Courtesy Jacob Shapiro
At SWAC, Jacob Shapiro is the feature speaker on Jan. 5. Shapiro, an American speaker on global geopolitics, will bring growers some understanding of the global gyrations that affect farming.
Science communicator Dan Riskin is the Jan. 6 feature speaker. Riskin is a PhD scientist who now works in television, video and communicating science.
“He has got a knack, a wonderful knack for taking complex science issues, theories, results in that, and putting it in a way that anybody can understand,” said Tenuta.
Dan Riskin is the featured speaker on Jan. 6, 2027 at the Southwest Ag Conference.
Photo: Courtesy Dan Riskin
Session options
The rest of the conference sessions deliver a broad swath of agronomics and marketing topics for crops, including drones, maximizing yields in soybeans and wheat, managing herbicide-resistant weeds, reducing grain drying costs using alternative drying methods, the popular end-of-day expert answer sessions and many more.
Many of the sessions are also available virtually.
Six on-demand sessions will open for viewing on Jan. 5 on topics ranging from corn and nitrogen rates, better use of yield maps, and making soil health decisions.
Matt Underwood during a presentation at the 2026 Southwest Ag Conference. Photo: John Greig
Group effort
Tenuta said conference planning is a group effort, with committees of producers and experts working on lists of potential topics, which are whittled down to the most relevant for that year.
“We’ve got about 150 to 200 topics that are already built up for next year and the year after.”
Speaker and session details are available online. Follow all of Farmtario’s coverage of the Ontario Agricultural Conferences.
“The conferences bring together leading researchers, the latest agronomic research, the economic outlooks, farm management strategies, expertise — all of those to help the growers make better-informed decisions, not only for the coming season but even beyond that,” said Tenuta.
