CAAIN is seeking applications towards the creation or development of smart farm networks across Canada.

Objectives

The CAAIN Smart Farm Network Competition intends to:

  • Provide Canadian agricultural producers and innovators an unbiased assessment of how agtech innovations can benefit their farms
  • Provide a platform for smart farms or smart farm networks to evaluate emerging agricultural technologies under commercial conditions
  • Promote the adoption of new agricultural technologies that will benefit the competitiveness and profitability of the Canadian agricultural sector.
  • Foster mutually beneficial collaborations between Canadian smart farms through sharing of best practices and leveraging of complementary knowledge and expertise
  • Foster collaboration between organizations in Canada’s agtech community
  • Support the growth of new companies, scale up efforts, and talent creation in Canada
  • Create experiential learning opportunities in building the skilled agtech workforce
  • Build a repository of research and evaluation data that can be anonymized and shared among smart farms and, possibly, the broader research community

As part of this competition, CAAIN will support the smart farm’s or smart farm network’s evaluation of specific technologies of the network’s choosing. Evaluations must consider the scientific, technical, economic, environmental, and social benefits of the emerging agricultural technologies within a Canadian perspective.

Project Term

This program has a projected start date of June 2024. Successful networks must complete all proposed activities no later than September 30, 2026.

Competition Process

Application Stage

Date

Project Application Form (PAF) Deadline Jan 12, 2024
Full Project Proposal (FPP) Draft Deadline Feb 16, 2024
Full Project Proposal (FPP) Deadline Mar 15, 2024
Revisions to FPP Deadline Apr 26, 2024
Final Decision June 2024

For More Information

To learn more about this competition, please download the Program Guide.

To Apply

Interested parties are invited to request a copy of the Project Application Form by emailing garson.law@caain.ca.