Driving Regenerative and Sustainable Agricultural Practices With Precision: Croptimistic Releases White Paper

Mar 24, 2026

SASKATOON, SK – Croptimistic Technology Inc. has released a white paper, Driving Regenerative and Sustainable Agricultural Practices with Precision, highlighting how the future of regenerative agriculture is in the hands of precision ag.

Drawing on decades of agronomic, soil, and hydrological expertise, the paper shows how field-scale insights empower farmers to increase productivity, strengthen soil health, and reduce environmental impacts. Unlike frameworks that avoid detailed farm-level data due to cost or difficulty, this framework focuses on high-resolution farm data measured on the ground using today’s technology.

Croptimistic’s Regenerative Agriculture Framework outlines two foundational pillars, each with three key principles to focus on: Soil Health and Agricultural Productivity (focusing on soil organic matter conservation, erosion prevention and soil cover, and fertility optimization), and Integration with Agro-ecosystems (focusing on biodiversity enhancement, integrated pest management, and plant available water management).

"As a sustainability professional, I'm excited to share our vision of regenerative agriculture and to highlight how precision agriculture can meaningfully guide sustainable practices." said Bonnie Dobchuk, Croptimistic’s Director of Sustainability.

Best known for its product SWAT MAPS, the company has long specialized in developing proprietary zone maps that enable farmers to achieve optimal results with precision agriculture technology. Croptimistic’s technology driven approach offers a practical path to regenerative food production that supports farm profitability today while protecting the land for future generations. In the white paper, Croptimistic brought together our experienced science team including Phillip Harder, Ph.D., Wes Anderson, and Joel Ens, Ph.D.

"As a hydrologist, I’m excited to link precision agriculture with sustainability and its hydrological foundations, helping identify where agricultural practices influence water resources. This knowledge is essential to advancing regenerative agriculture,” said Phillip Harder, VP of Data Science.

"I'm proud to share examples of regenerative agriculture in action in this paper. Our team at Croptimistic, our farm clients, and our partner network around the world are demonstrating advanced sustainability practices backed by science, facilitated with the SWAT ECOSYSTEM." said Wes Anderson, VP of Agronomy.

Joel Ens, Croptimistic’s soil science expert said: "It’s easy to prescribe ‘sustainable practices’ and be surprised when outcomes vary by field or region. When we recognize agriculture as a variable ecological system, we can work with its natural variability and better realize benefits for both farmers and the environment."

Click here to see more...

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids