AEM Announces New Govt. Affairs Director in Canada, Plans to Open Ottawa Office

Oct 09, 2025

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) has announced its plan to open an office in Ottawa in 2026 – a significant milestone in its commitment to supporting more than 100 member companies in Canada. The investment, according to an Oct. 1 news release, furthers AEM’s goal to be the leading voice for North American equipment manufacturers, which power critical sectors such as agriculture, construction, forestry, mining, and utilities.

To lead these efforts on the ground, AEM has hired Alexandre Mattard-Michaud as its new Director of Government Affairs in Canada. Based in Ottawa, Mattard-Michaud brings over twenty years of experience in Canadian government and parliamentary affairs. He will be responsible for representing AEM’s member interests and championing the industry’s top policy priorities with lawmakers and regulators.

The equipment manufacturing industry in Canada supports more than 152,000 workers and contributes $41 billion a year to the national economy.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.