Sustainable farming advocates have long taken issue with pesticides, but eco-friendly crop protection products are often more expensive, shorter-lived, and slower-acting than their harmful counterparts.
What if farmers could instead use precision chemistry to drastically reduce the use of harmful pesticides and fertilizers while still protecting crops?
“It’s always been incredibly important to me that technology can be a force for good in agriculture.”
Darren Anderson, Vive
That’s the goal of Vive Crop Protection, a Canadian AgTech company promoting a “development-over-discovery” model to help farmers gain maximum crop protection while using minimal amounts of chemicals. The company has received $2.3 million in investment from Ottawa through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) to help it expand its capacity.
In October, Vive Crop announced it had closed a $10-million USD ($14-million CAD) oversubscribed funding round, with investments from Emmertech, iSelect Fund, BDC Capital, and Farm Credit Canada through its investment arm FCC Capital.
At the time, FCC said in a statement that it was excited to support companies that are ensuring Canada’s food supply is more sustainable and more productive.
“Now, [a] farmer, instead of driving through the field twice, they do it once, and you get home that much earlier in the day, and you and I both know how valuable that would be to be done your work that much faster,” Vive CTO Douglas Baumann told BetaKit.
“Precision” chemistry for better plant protection
The theme of greater per-farmer productivity echoes broader Canadian agricultural trends. While the Canadian economy has shrunk since 2019, agriculture has stood out.
Agriculture employs one in eight Canadians—over 2.3 million people—and accounts for nearly seven percent of Canada’s GDP. Despite fewer farmers overall, output has stayed strong thanks to innovations like better machinery, automation, and soil chemistry.
Founded in 2006, Vive has become part of Canada’s agritech story.
“It’s always been incredibly important to me that technology can be a force for good in agriculture. And I’ve always been looking for opportunities to use technology to help us improve the footprint that agriculture has on the planet,” Vive CEO and co-founder Darren Anderson said.
Vive’s nanotechnology-based delivery system was developed during the co-founders’ studies at the University of Toronto.
Patented as Allosperse, the system ensures active ingredients like fungicides, insecticides, and fertilizers are delivered exactly where needed, whether on the plant or in the soil. That reduces reapplication, cuts waste, and boosts productivity.
“When Vive creates a fungicide, otherwise known as an antibiotic in the pharmaceutical world, we need to keep that on the plant, because that is where it’s doing its job,” Baumann explained.
With seven products on the US market, plans to expand across 200 million Canadian acres by the end of 2025, and the opening of its “precision-chemistry” lab earlier this year, the Mississauga-based company is growing fast.
“We can optimize and improve how that active ingredient stays where it’s supposed to in the face of wind, rain, UV degradation, all of those things.”
Baumann compares it to sunscreen losing effectiveness after 90 minutes.
“So that long, lasting protection in the face of wind and weather and everything that mother nature can throw at the crop, that’s an example of effectiveness,” he continued.
Allosperse also enables combinations that previously weren’t possible, such as fungicides and fertilizers, Vive says. Farmers save time while reducing overall chemical use.
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Anderson noted that by focusing on existing crop-protection chemistry, Vive is also advancing sustainability.
“Anytime you’re improving effectiveness or efficiency, you almost always end up getting sustainability benefits along for free,” he said.
In 2023, Vive commissioned Pinion, a consulting firm focused on food and agriculture, to evaluate its sustainability impact.
Pinion analyzed Vive’s internal data and over 500 field trials, running comparisons against industry-standard products.
The study found that use of Vive’s products reduced water use by up to 20 gallons (76 litres) per acre, reduced the use of synthetic active ingredients by an average of 54 percent, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent.
All images courtesy Vive Crop Protection.