Quotes

"I no longer go to work like when I was 20 years old. My body feels more and more tired. I'm not going to be able to do the same [work], I'm going to have to dedicate myself to other tasks."

"When they tried a machine that cut the lettuce, the lettuce was cut upwards and they tore it apart, the one with hearts [romaine]... Then I had to fix it. So, people are always going to be needed."

"Agriculture has always been close to the heart of Pinduoduo since its inception. Investing in smart agriculture is an extension of what we do and guided by our goal of promoting digital inclusion."

"Farmers own their own data — full stop. They can choose to share their data with others and request that their individual farm data is deleted."

"The agriculture industry is faced with the challenges of time, costs, constrained operational windows, and a dwindling labor force. Autonomy will become an integral part of farmers' operations everywhere... We believe that Autonomy and Automation technologies are fundamental to the future of farming. They cover all farmer segments and drive real world benefits."

"There's a huge appetite [for local products] and I think it requires not just us, but a number of people to step their game up to do what we need in Canada."

"Started by farmers for farmers" — founder Matteo Vanotti's framing of xFarm Technologies' origin story (2017).

"I could smell the acrid stench of pesticide from afar and I thought maybe my unmanned aircraft could help... At least drone spraying would limit the farmers' exposure to the chemicals."

"Agricultural drones have become essential farm equipment around the world. Thanks to research-based policies and a clearer process for operator training, adoption among young people and women has grown significantly."

"Is Amazon going to be our food producer 50 years from now, or Microsoft — or are we still going to have small farmers that provide for their local communities, grow culturally relevant crops, and have resilient community food systems?"

"AI adoption in Canadian agriculture and food is not constrained by technology availability, but more by systemic weaknesses."

"Europe can lead in advanced AI on its own terms. EUROPA will build a frontier European AI model in all 24 EU languages, showing that we can match the best while staying true to our values. This is about strengthening Europe's ability to shape AI's future with openness, trust and strategic autonomy at its core."

"Using open source and developing digital commons are the obvious solution — and something farmers, who invented the mutual model and cooperation, know how to do."

"To understand how AI works, we need to move from a culture of proof to a culture of probability, while reducing the margin of error to almost zero. Farmers tolerate very little margin of error."

"Unicorns do not exist in agriculture. The French agri-tech industry is not doing well, and funding from private investors remains insufficient."

"MCP started as an internal project to solve a problem our own teams were facing. When we open sourced it in November 2024, we hoped other developers would find it as useful as we did. A year later, it's become the industry standard for connecting AI systems to data and tools, used by developers building with the most popular agentic coding tools and enterprises deploying on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. Donating MCP to the Linux Foundation as part of the AAIF ensures it stays open, neutral, and community-driven as it becomes critical infrastructure for AI. We remain committed to supporting and advancing MCP, and with the Linux Foundation's decades of experience stewarding the projects that power the internet, this is just the beginning."

"While some people describe openness as a 'spectrum,' OSI sees Open Source as a binary gate threshold. Just as Linux and BSD represent different licensing models but both qualify as Open Source, AI must meet a minimum set of criteria to be considered genuinely Open Source. Many models claiming to be 'Open Source' actually impose usage limitations based on user numbers, commercial applications, or other criteria."

"Manifestations of open are seen in our agricultural heritage, owned by all and fabricated over generations. The boundless mixing of genetic materials seen in open pollination boosts the overall vigour of plants and regenerates the abundance of nature. There is also a long history of open in many traditional cultures around the world. Local knowledge, often collectively inherited, shared orally, and passed over jurisdictional borders and geographies, is the backbone of traditional agriculture and biodiversity preservation as farmers save and trade seeds — and it's been at work for centuries. It is impossible to imagine claiming any presumptive ownership of our agricultural heritage; yet copyrights, patents, and breeders' rights hinder the spread of indigenous seeds and continually fail to protect local knowledge."

"The Ag Data Transparent certification is based upon the Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data, a set of guidelines for companies collecting, storing, and analyzing farmer data."

"AI adoption in Canadian agriculture and food is not constrained by technology availability, but mostly by ecosystem factors."

"The First Nations Data Governance Strategy is a community-driven, Nation-based national strategy that recognises the inherent right of First Nations to govern their own data. Plans regional information governance centres (one per region) operationalise OCAP® principles at scale."

"CARE Directs Us Home" — warns against treating the CARE Principles as a static compliance checklist. Reasserts CARE as high-level guidance designed to direct researchers toward the distinct, community-specific protocols of the Indigenous Peoples involved.

"The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance are people and purpose-oriented, reflecting the crucial role of data in advancing Indigenous innovation and self-determination. These principles complement the existing FAIR principles encouraging open and other data movements to consider both people and purpose in their advocacy and pursuits."

"This recommended practice supports the appropriate disclosure of Indigenous Peoples' relationships and/or links to all data."

"The publication of this national strategy is an important milestone for Canada's AI ecosystem."

"We are an independent data platform that believes in agricultural innovation with heart and soul — but only if you, as a farmer, can make the most of it."

"OADA will create a secure data ecosystem that enables data security, privacy and interoperability for the entire agriculture industry. OADA will achieve this through an open standards software effort to establish secure data exchange protocols."

"Many common practices in agricultural data governance have fundamental limitations to achieving data justice. Overcoming these limitations will require structural change, including new laws and regulatory frameworks, novel governance structures, capacity building, and solidarity across movements."

"Open-source technological solutions are revolutionizing agrifood systems not simply as a technological phenomenon. It democratizes access to innovative tools and fosters collaborative approaches to address global challenges. It is an excellent example of Open innovation, a collaborative approach that brings together external ideas, technologies, and resources to solve problems more effectively. It is a way of working to create better solutions that enable farmers, researchers, and policymakers to freely adapt through a more inclusive and equitable approach to agricultural innovation."

"AI is already having far-reaching effects on employment and job security, job design, work organization and the task composition of work, and workplace monitoring, data extraction and management."

"The CLC believes that transparency and public consultation are essential and indispensable elements of an effective and adequate regulatory framework for the development and application of AI."

"Our Local Unions strive to ensure that members are consulted on the introduction of new technologies, and that employers are transparent about the impacts these technologies might have on jobs."

"The new world of work must not be imposed. Workers must help to define it and control it. The new world of work must mean good jobs."

"I've read the terms and conditions. But giving some of that information to the person that I'm having to buy a three-quarter of a million-dollar machine from just doesn't sit quite right."

"It is incomprehensible for a farmer what he is sharing and collecting in terms of data. It's good to have an independent party that monitors this. You don't want data to just end up with another party undesired. They could have a different interest. I often see that an entrepreneur shares his fertilization or accounting data with, for example, the purchaser of milk or potatoes. But those parties only require that once. The lines don't have to be open all the time."

"If we didn't invest in new technology, there wasn't going to be succession. That's what it came down to."

"It's unbelievable how many agencies can request and view my milk production just like that. Good thing that with JoinData, us farmers can now decide for ourselves who is allowed to look."

"We reject a view that seeks to reduce labour costs by maximizing the use of technology (robots, automation, self-driving tractors, etc.) and adopting a ‘just-in-time’ approach to the employment of Temporary Foreign Workers."

"Only 2% of vines damaged with JO, compared to over 10% with tractor drivers."

"Performativity and Non-Disruptive Disruption in Silicon Valley" — the structural framing of agrifood tech venture capital pitch as non-disruptive disruption. Agrifood tech investor claims of disruption without the structural labour-displacement that disruption would imply; the pitch structure is performative (the disruption is the pitch, not the deployment).

"Open source AI has reached a turning point. It's no longer about expanding access to models; it's about who has the power to shape, audit, and improve them. Without investment in the infrastructure, tooling, and governance around open models, we risk locking in a system where only restrictive, closed AI can scale – and that doesn't serve the public interest, or sovereignty over tech policy decisions."

"Canada's AI strategy stops at city limits."

"Canada's AI strategy stops at city limits."

"Move from AI-for-agriculture to Green-AI-for-agriculture, where computational sustainability is integral to mitigation and adaptation."

"You need hands to cut lettuce. Think about a robot with a knife. That's not happening... It's just so delicate. It's a really hard nut to crack."