This Q&A appears in the 2026 BetaKit Most Ambitious issue. Read more stories of the Canadian tech innovators strengthening our autonomy, security, and prosperity here.
Canada is one of the few countries that produces more food than it consumes. We’ve turned that surplus toward the global market; Canada consistently ranks among the top 10 countries most valuable to the global food supply chain, with agriculture comprising seven percent of the national GDP and accounting for one in nine Canadian jobs.
But Canada’s position as a global agricultural powerhouse has slipped over the past decade from fifth place to ninth, alongside a slowdown in agricultural productivity and investment.
With food production around the world needing to jump by more than 50 percent by 2050, a strong national agriculture sector is vital for both Canadian prosperity and global food security. Justine Hendricks, president and CEO of Crown corporation and agricultural financier Farm Credit Canada, thinks the country can unlock billions in opportunity through innovation.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with the big question: can Canada feed the world?
We can. And we’ve got the potential to gain more ground. Canada, just by sheer size, offers potential. The Dutch are in the top three in the world, and they’re smaller than the province of Quebec. But the bigger you are, the more complicated it is.
Canada’s productivity has continuously been in the positive, but the downside is that those productivity gains have been happening at a declining rate. At the height of our productivity, the ag sector was at about two percent. Today, we’re sitting at just below one percent. One of the big motivations of Farm Credit Canada is to get back to that two percent.
If we were to get back to that two percent, we could unlock something like $30 billion of net farm income over the next 10 years.
Why have our productivity gains slipped?
We see a direct correlation between innovation and productivity. How do you generate innovation? It’s often by investment, and technology plays a big part in that.
Compare the ratio to our neighbours south of the border—how they invest in agtech compared to Canada. You should brace yourself: it’s a 23-to-1 ratio. That is part of the reason why we haven’t been able to innovate as much or as fast. There hasn’t been enough investment going into agtech.
Why is it so important to make Canadian farms more innovative?
If you want to improve your productivity, you’ll want to get more yield per acre.
A primary crop producer has one chance a season. If your prime as a producer lasts 30 years, you have 30 chances over your entire career to make the right decisions to maximize that output. It’s not about farming operators being reluctant to adopt technology; it’s the risk it causes for them. Because they only have 30 chances.
There’s another element: the average Canadian farm operator is about 56, and we’re anticipating that between now and 2030, a third of them will want to retire. That alone represents about $50 billion of assets.
If you want to go into agriculture, it is a capital-intensive venture. That is a huge issue because a young farmer looking to buy in faces significant cost.
You gotta get the entrepreneur and the investor in the same room so that their realities can commingle. Entrepreneurs have tons of great ideas. We’ll say, “Have you talked to a farmer?” We gotta get those ideas out of the lab; we gotta get them commercialized.
The stakes sound really high for farmers. What about the stakes for Canada in general?
The world is hungry for Canada right now. So it’s very much our opportunity to step up.
Canada, on average, has more trade agreements with other nations. So we have this net advantage and opportunity—within the ag and food sector, there’s probably $12 billion in additional trade we can go and get.
Increasing that productivity will bring prosperity to Canada. It’ll create better jobs and higher incomes, and the chain goes on.
Does having a strong agricultural sector contribute to Canadian sovereignty?
Food is an interesting commodity—none of us can survive without it. There are not a lot of nations that produce more food than they need. It’s a privilege to be in that position. It not only contributes to our sovereignty, but I would suggest it can also contribute to our relations with others around the world.
What a generational opportunity. The ag and food sector can solve four major world problems: health, hunger, climate, and be a huge driver of economic growth. It starts in Canada.
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