What’s the right balance between embracing innovation and caution?
Get it wrong in one direction and the farm stagnates and can’t keep up. Get it wrong in the other direction and the farm is chasing pipe dreams while the bottom line bleeds.
That was the fundamental conundrum panellists brought forward at the Ag Tech Breakfast this year during Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show near Woodstock.
WHY IT MATTERS
Early adopters carry the risk of proving a technology before the rest of the sector buys in. An Ontario farmer’s warning about farms that stop investing applies well beyond robots.
Speaking Wednesday morning farmers Don Bender (BenderBrook Farms near Tavistock) and Evert Veldhuizen (Veldale Farms near Woodstock) both said it’s a question they’ve both pondered.
Which opportunity do you take?
“That’s a question we ask ourselves all the time — which opportunity do you take?” Veldhuizen said. “There’s a lot of cool stuff out there, and ideas, to make producers’ lives either more efficient or easier.”
He says the basic questions he asks are:
- Will it will help the operation?
- Will it advance Ontario agriculture?
He also says they challenge themselves to innovate. He’s seen other farms where innovation and investment has stopped, possibly because it wasn’t clear if there was a successor in place.
“It’s really hard to get back on track,” he said. If those farms do later want to continue, they find themselves in a deep hole that requires a lot of digging to get out of.
Willing to walk away
Bender said he’s always willing to be the first person to try something, but he also keeps a close eye on what the innovation is returning to the farm.
“Sometimes you’ve got to be willing to walk away,” he said. “Sometimes you want to keep making it work, and make sure it works.”
Patience for early-stage tech
Both farmers are working with Upside Robotics, of Waterloo, which is using small robots to microdose field crops with nutrients.
Tanya Franklin, Upside Robotics’ vice-president of agronomy and strategic partnerships, also attended to panel to support the producer presentations.
She noted that early-stage ideas like Upside Robotics’ system do require some patience to come to fruition.
“New technology is new for a reason,” she said. “There’s nobody we can look to that’s already done it to say ‘this is how you do it.’”
For more on how to navigate the technology adoption question, see the Oct. 6 print edition of Farmtario. Read our full coverage of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2026 here.
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