Twelve Ontario Agri-Businesses Receive Funding Support

Jun 25, 2025
By Jean-Paul McDonald
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

Recipients supported for bringing innovative approaches and technology to ensure quality food for Canadians and the world.

Bioenterprise Canada has announced the successful recipients of the second call for proposals under the Ontario Agri-Food Research Initiative (OAFRI) Commercialization Stream. Twelve organizations across Ontario will receive support to bring innovative agri-food solutions to the market.

The twelve successful recipients include:

BH Frontier Solutions (Markham)
Crop Defenders (Windsor)
Energrow (Listowel)
Gowans Feed Consulting (Waterloo)
Grain Data Solutions (Hamilton)
Heartee Foods (Ottawa)
Prisum Coatings Canada Inc. (Holland Landing)
Sparkform Technologies (Windsor)
The Semex Alliance (Guelph)
Upside Robotics (Waterloo)
Vive Crop Protection (Mississauga)
WaterPuris (Vaughan)

The program is part of the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership and provides up to $150,000 in non-repayable funding per project. With up to $3.4 million allocated to the commercialization stream, the initiative supports market validation, product development, and economic growth in Ontario’s agri-food sector.

“Ontario’s agriculture and agri-food sectors are using innovative approaches and technology to bring quality food to Canadians and the world,” said the Honourable Heath MacDonald, federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. “This support will help them access the resources they need to move their great ideas one step closer to market.”

“Investments in programs like OAFRI protect and strengthen our agri-food sector and help Ontario’s agribusinesses be even more competitive and resilient,” said Trevor Jones, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness. “By bridging the gap between research and market and turning ideas into innovations, commercialization is crucial for a strong agri-food sector.”

“These are very challenging times for Canada’s agri-food sector,” said Dave Smardon, President & CEO at Bioenterprise.

“The economic and political environment is causing financial uncertainty for many. And yet, it is times like these that often create opportunities to assess our businesses and embrace the adoption of new innovations that can drive greater competitive advantage. Through the OAFRI program’s commercialization stream, twelve new innovations will receive funding and will make their way into Ontario’s agri-food sector. Innovations such as these can reduce costs, increase productivity and build greater efficiency in Ontario’s agri-food businesses making them more competitive and more resilient to unforeseen market conditions.”

The program aims to transform research into usable technologies and services, creating market-ready products that support food security and industry sustainability. It also focuses on protecting Ontario’s capacity to produce food and creating new trade opportunities.

Bioenterprise Canada delivers specialized services aimed at accelerating the growth of small businesses in the food and agri-tech sectors, driving innovation and economic development in these vital industries.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”