Imagine swarms of intelligent drones soaring over vast fields, capturing high-resolution images of every crop, while ground-based sensors silently monitor soil moisture, nutrient levels and environmental conditions. It’s a seamless fusion of tradition and technology — where every seed is planted with purpose and every harvest is optimized by data.

This is precision agriculture, not just the future of farming, but the future of food, sustainability and global resilience. And that future will take the spotlight at UCalgary’s upcoming Creating Tomorrow event.

The Fertile Ground of Precision Agriculture

Rising input costs, ongoing labour shortages, the growing impacts of climate change and growing food demand are straining agriculture worldwide. Precision farming offers solutions that go beyond human intuition to improve efficiency, resilience and sustainability.

It has the potential to make agriculture more efficient, faster, and ultimately, more sustainable, says Dr. Farhad Maleki, PhD, whose research explores how AI and imaging technology can transform the industry.

“In Canada, agriculture is a major industry, with around seven per cent of total GDP coming from agriculture-related fields,” says Maleki, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. “This is a big market for innovators, as well as farmers.”

Work like that of Maleki will be the focus of Agriculture 2.0: Fuelling the Future, a showcase featured on April 12 as part of Aggie Days at Stampede Park.

The integration of smart technologies empowers farmers to make faster, data-informed decisions tailored to their land — meaning higher yields, lower costs and more efficient use of resources. This is why Canada absolutely must innovate to stay ahead, says Maleki.

“To stay competitive, we need to invest in AI and integrate it with every industry,” he says. “We need to be a nation of builders and producers.”

Farhad Maleki researches AI-driven methods for precision agriculture, including synthetic data generation and crop segmentation models. Photo by: University of Calgary

Overcoming Potential Challenges

Many farmers are already embracing AI and automation to enhance productivity. However, small-scale farmers and those in remote areas may still face significant barriers, including high upfront costs and limited access to technical training.

“All farmers are incredibly busy during the short and intense growing season,” Maleki says.

“Farmers don’t have the time to spend an entire day learning how to navigate complex software or hardware. The technology must be intuitive, seamless and clearly worth the investment.”

As farms become increasingly digitized, another concern is data security. Large companies manage much of this data, but efforts are underway to keep control with farmers through secure storage and more-transparent policies.

Sustainability is also central. While some worry that AI-driven agriculture might prioritize short-term profits, Maleki argues that family-owned farms are already deeply invested in long-term sustainability. Precision agriculture, he says, can help them stay competitive while maintaining these practises.

“By default, they are sustainable,” Maleki says. “When you own a family farm, you don’t exploit the land for a single season and leave the consequences to the next year — or the next generation. You care for it, because your future depends on it.”

The Role of Farmers in Innovation

For precision agriculture to reach its full potential, however, collaboration is key.

With a farming background himself, Maleki emphasizes that farmers must be involved in developing and implementing these technologies.

“It’s just as critical to engage students at the post-secondary level,” he says, “but lasting impact requires collaboration among researchers, industry leaders and policymakers to ensure these technologies are accessible, practical and scalable across the entire agricultural sector.”

Maleki’s work spans key research groups: Vision Research Lab, the AI Research Hub and the Centre for Precision Agriculture and Sustainability (CPAS).

Event series like Creating Tomorrow and the recent Ag-Tech Days, a CPAS and Innovate Calgary collaboration, offer essential spaces for idea exchange and practical-solution exploration.

“Tomorrow will be bright, no doubt. But we must build it to own it," says Maleki.

Register to join UCalgary on April 12 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Nutrien Western Event Centre in Stampede Park for the first event in the 2025 Creating Tomorrow series, and learn more about the future of precision agriculture.

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