Vive Crop Protection receives $2.3M to enhance lab capabilities

Mar 05, 2025

On March 4, Vive Crop Protection was one of seven companies in southern Ontario receiving development funds in the amount of $2.3 million. Founded in 2006, Vive Crop Protection is an agri-tech company that develops precision chemistry solutions based on existing active ingredients for pesticides using its patented “Allosperse” nano technology for the crop protection industry.

The Honourable Ruby Sahota, Minister of Democratic Institutions and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), along with the Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of Transport and Internal Trade and Member of Parliament for Oakville, visited Gastronomous Technologies (Gastronomous). Minister Sahota also met with representatives from the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN), a national not-for-profit organization that connects the Canadian food ecosystem to fresh insights, ideas, and technologies to grow their business and increase their innovation capacity.

Minister Sahota announced more than $9.3 million for agri-food companies and organizations: Agrocrop Exports Ltd., CATTLEytics Inc., Eastern Ontario Agri-Food Network, Original Foods Limited, VEL Bars and Vive Crop Protection, supporting their growth, productivity and competitiveness in the agri sector across southern Ontario.

“By investing in food innovation, we’re strengthening Canada’s food ecosystem, creating jobs, and advancing technologies that will shape the future of the sector and unlock productivity,” said Dana McCauley, CEO, Canadian Food Innovation Network. “With this funding from FedDev Ontario, we’re empowering foodtech entrepreneurs to turn their bold ideas into commercial success for themselves and the food companies who are their customers."

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators