Growing the Future

Four operators in Western Canadian agriculture spent thirty days building with AI, then sat down to tell Dan Aberhart what actually changed. An independent agronomist carrying sixty-plus harvests of judgment, a six-thousand-acre farmer who calls himself a nine who never finishes anything, an entrepreneur scaling a plasma-activated-water nitrogen business, and a Saskatchewan farmland realtor running a team of thirteen all walked into the same AI cohort a month earlier. What they bring back: a satellite-imagery call that stopped an unnecessary reseed, a combine deal an AI advisor told them to walk away from, an agent built at four in the morning that caught financial red flags nobody assigned it to find, and a hard-conversation coach one of them didn't know he needed.

 

Topics and Timestamps

0:00 -- Cold open: the AI cohort joke

2:51 -- Welcome to Growing the Future Productions Live

4:15 -- How this started: 60 days from signal to launch

7:08 -- Meet the panel: Robert, Joe, Chris, Tim

15:16 -- What business problem each of them was actually trying to solve

20:20 -- What the personal operating diagnostic revealed about each of them

30:00 -- Talking openly about AI skepticism and confidentiality

35:39 -- Robert: the gopher-field call satellite imagery corrected

40:34 -- Joe: the combine deal, the AI advisory board, and slowing down emotional decisions

42:51 -- Chris: building diagnostics and agents for the whole team

43:52 -- Tim: the AI tool built to help him have hard conversations

45:57 -- Tim: strategic blueprints and running land-value scenarios

48:24 -- Where each of them takes this next

55:06 -- Cohort 2 details: dates, seats, price, and the guarantee

56:02 -- The real vision: a course with a room, or a room with a course

57:53 -- Closing words from the panel

59:57 -- Sign-off

 

Resources Mentioned

GYFOS (Growing Your Future Operating System) Cohort 2 -- application at growingthefuture.ca

Personal Operating Diagnostic (built from Kolbe, CliftonStrengths, and Enneagram assessments)

AgriTrend -- the independent agronomy mentorship network Robert Woolf came up through

Nitride Corp / Green Lightning -- plasma-activated water, a nitrogen source

Pioneer Seed and Covers & Co. -- Joe Larre's seed businesses

Hammond Realty -- Saskatchewan farmland brokerage

 

Connect with the Panel

Robert Woolf CCA -- Crop Innovations Inc., independent agronomy

Joe Larre -- MJM Ranches, St. Walburg SK (Pioneer Seed, Covers & Co.)

Chris Nykolaishen -- Nitride Corp

Tim Hammond -- Hammond Realty

 

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

YouTube: Growing the Future 

Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast 

LinkedIn: Growing the Future

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

Half of Saskatchewan is watching the canola fill pods. The other half is still sitting in water. 30% of the cropland in the province rated moisture surplus at the time of this conversation, and the ministry's own word is that flooding is the number one source of crop damage in Saskatchewan this year. Yellowing fields, drowned-out low spots, pulses going backwards. The decision framework for in-season nutrition changes when you're not sure which half of the province you're in.

Greg Patterson has been doing tissue analysis at A&L Canada Laboratories for decades. Darren Fischer is a technical advisor with Crop-Aid Nutrition who was in the fields in real time during this conversation. This is what they said on July 13, 2026, with the season in exactly the condition it was in.

What's Inside

- Two seasons on the prairies at once: what each one means for your in-crop nutrition decisions right now

- A farm-walk report from Darren Sander at Sander Farms near Sovereign, Saskatchewan -- his fungicide and foliar strategy mid-season

- Why you should never apply a fungicide without pairing a foliar with it, and why that's even more true in a wet year

- Potassium as the yield driver in both wet and dry conditions: for every pound of nitrogen the crop needs early, it needs three of potassium

- How to read a tissue report: the fuel-gauge analogy, what dropping levels actually mean, and why a great crop should drive you crazy

- The phloem connection: how potassium and boron work together to move photosynthates through the plant, and what happens when boron is low

- The nitrate accumulation trap: when it looks like a nitrogen problem but it's actually a potassium and boron imbalance

- Boron in Western Canada: why we're afraid of it, why that's costing yield, and what the research on microbial activity actually says

- Foliar selection by condition and crop stage: which product when, and how to think about tank mixing with herbicides and fungicides

- Handheld tissue testers vs. lab analysis: what the correlation data actually shows

- The fastest way to get a tissue sample to the lab: paper bag, Purolator envelope, 24-hour turnaround

- The economics: how to think about a $5-6 foliar pass when you're already sending the sprayer out for fungicide

- Frost risk in a late year: why well-fertilized crops mature faster and reduce your window of exposure

If you want more from Greg Patterson on soil biology and tissue analysis, the Engine of the Soil series is where he goes deep -- look for those episodes in the GTF Podcast back catalog. And if shallow rooting and soil health in a wet year is where your season is, that same series has the framework.

Resources Mentioned

A&L Canada Laboratories -- alcanada.com (plant monitoring program, tissue analysis, 24-hour turnaround)

Crop-Aid Nutrition -- cropaidnutrition.com (foliar products, educational videos, crop tour program)

Ag in Motion -- Crop-Aid Nutrition at Booth 381; A&L Canada Laboratories on site

 

Connect with Greg Patterson

A&L Canada Laboratories -- alcanada.com

Call the lab and ask for Greg, Beth, Mike, or Chris -- they take questions and find answers

A&L technical reps in the field are trained directly by Greg

Connect with Darren Fischer

Crop-Aid Nutrition -- cropaidnutrition.com

1-866 number and email on the website -- ask for Darren Fischer by name

Crop-Aid Nutrition on YouTube -- educational videos on foliar timing and application

 

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

YouTube: Growing the Future

Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast

LinkedIn: Growing the Future

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

Cory Doctorow has spent 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation watching the same story repeat across industries: a digital lock gets built in, a legal framework gets constructed around it, and the people who depend on the machine lose the right to fix it. He coined the word for how this happens. Enshittification is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.

In agriculture, the mechanism is called parts pairing -- a chip that decides who is allowed to fix your equipment and what components can connect to it. The data your tractor generates is a second layer of the same argument. And the remote immobilization of stolen tractors in Ukraine is a third. Cory's position is that all three are the same issue, that the law enabling them passed in 2012 after 6,132 Canadians said no and 53 said yes, and that farmers are one of the most effective political forces in this country when they choose to use it. This is not Growing the Future's verdict on any equipment manufacturer.

What's Inside

- What enshittification means and why John Deere became Cory's clearest example of it outside tech platforms

- Parts pairing: how a chip on your equipment determines who can fix it and what components can connect to it

- How data generated by your tractor was being siphoned -- and why data ownership and right-to-repair are the same underlying issue

- Honeybee, a Saskatchewan head-end manufacturer, cannot connect their products to Deere equipment because of digital locks, not any technical limitation

- Canada's Bill C-11: the Copyright Modernization Act passed in 2012 after 6,132 Canadians opposed it and 53 supported it

- Digital sovereignty: from Ukraine's remotely immobilized tractors to what happens if that switch gets turned toward Alberta

- Why voting with your wallet does not work in a monopoly, and what the Grangers' fight with the railroads in 1890 has to do with where we are right now

- A specific call to action: CCLA, Open Media, and the EFF -- and why farmers are one of the most effective political forces in this country when they choose to be

Also discussed: Cory's new book "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI" -- Number 1 Canadian bestseller, New York Times list, and in the same week enshittification was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

 

Resources Mentioned

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI -- Cory Doctorow (Number 1 Canadian bestseller -- available at Indigo and McNally Robinson)

Electronic Frontier Foundation -- eff.org

Open Media -- openmedia.ca

Canadian Civil Liberties Association -- ccla.org

pluralistic.net -- Cory's daily newsletter

Honeybee -- Canadian head-end manufacturer, Saskatchewan

Agri GPS bridge -- referenced by audience member Jim Hale as an example of third-party ag tech workaround

 

If you want to hear more from the GTF back catalog on what it costs when farm equipment goes down, start with: Matt Yanick's episode: Downtime: The ROI Killer. 

And if the data question from this conversation stays with you, Wade Barnes' Farmers Edge series looks at who owns what comes off your farm.

 

Connect with Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

craphound.com

Book: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI -- Indigo, McNally Robinson, and all major booksellers

 

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

YouTube: Growing the Future

Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast

LinkedIn: Growing the Future

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

In agriculture, being busy is practically a badge. Ask anybody how they're doing and you'll get some version of underwater. So how does a 25-year-old fifth-generation grain farmer from Churchbridge, Saskatchewan, who also writes federal grain policy, finishes a master's thesis, teaches university, and referees hockey across the country, have more room in her day than most people do? Kate Sauser has ADHD, a system she built around how her brain actually works, and a tattoo on her wrist that reads "everything in time." This is the episode where she explains it.

 

Resources Mentioned

Albert Einstein: "Time is relative, its only worth depends on what we do as it is passing"

Billy Joel: "Vienna" -- "Slow down, you're doing fine. You can't be everything you want to be before your time."

Google Calendar -- Kate's primary scheduling tool

ChatGPT -- Kate uses it for daily task planning, meal planning, and workouts

 

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

YouTube: Growing the Future

Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast

LinkedIn: Growing the Future

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.

One refinery south of Edmonton will process a million tonnes of canola feedstock this year, more than 10% of Canada's entire canola crop at a single facility. The US renewable fuel standard needs another 2.7 million tonnes on top of that, and Indonesia is moving toward a 50% biodiesel blend requirement. In the 2000s, corn ethanol turned a $2.50 crop into a $9 crop in under a decade. Growing the Future's foremost live briefing examines whether canola is about to run the same play, and what the structural demand shift already means for Prairie land values.

 

Topics and Timestamps

0:00 -- Opening: the renewable diesel demand story and the canola-as-fuel structural shift

3:00 -- Sponsor acknowledgments and panelist introductions

5:00 -- Is canola food or fuel, and does the distinction matter?

6:00 -- Shaun Wildman: calorie analysis and why food affordability is not the argument

9:00 -- Quick Dick McDick: Saskatchewan's 24 million canola acres and the case for playing both markets

13:00 -- Ryan Bonnett: the corn ethanol parallel and how US biofuel policy drives domestic demand

14:00 -- RIN credits and the 12-cent-per-pound penalty for Canadian-sourced canola in US markets

16:00 -- Indonesia's B50 blend requirement and what global feedstock scale actually looks like

18:00 -- Local processing expansion: Cargill in Regina, LDC and Richardson in Yorkton doubling capacity

22:00 -- The bottleneck: crush capacity is the ceiling, not canola production

27:00 -- Scale check: the US diesel market and how much canola it would take to move the needle

28:00 -- EPA rates canola second-best vegetable oil for US renewable fuel programs

32:00 -- Saskatchewan's carbon advantage: 67% lower footprint through zero-till canola

36:00 -- US winter canola expansion as a future risk to Canadian market share

39:00 -- Could canola's price floor shift from $500 to $700 per tonne?

45:00 -- Prairie land values: what the renewable diesel demand shift means for buyers and holders

48:00 -- Large land acquisitions, the Minette deal, and what it means for the next generation of operators

52:00 -- Closing round: one takeaway from each voice in the room

 

Connect with Growing the Future

Website: growingthefuture.ca

YouTube: Growing the Future

Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast

LinkedIn: Growing the Future 

Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.