Conference Dates: March 10-12, 2026
AgriTech North is grateful to have attended Ontario’s longest running agricultural trade show in Ottawa this March 10th – 12th. The Ottawa Valley Farm Show (OVFS), hosted by the Ottawa Valley Seed Growers Association (OVSGA), was started in 1959 and has grown to be a key exhibition of agricultural innovation and technology. The OVFS prides itself as both serving as a hub to bring together, producers, suppliers, and innovators to showcase and collaborate on the latest in agricultural technology and innovation, and also on creating an environment where families and communities can gather and celebrate the agricultural history and heritage of the region.
OMAFA Innovation Alley
We were honoured to be invited to be a part of Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Agribusiness’ (OMAFA) Innovation Alley at OVFS. Innovation Alley served as a space for new and upcoming technologies, products, and initiatives advancing the agricultural sector to be showcased. At our booth. we showcased two of our innovations: our Hydronic Microclimate Control System (HMCS) and our Inflatable Multi-Layer Greenhouse. These innovations were initiated to help secure food sovereignty for communities across northern Canada, but at the event we were displaying how these innovations can be expanded to farmers in more traditional agricultural environments to allow all agricultural operations to be more efficient and self-reliant. This was our second appearance with OMAFA’s traveling Innovation Alley, as we previously showcased our technology at the Northern Ontario Ag Conference held by the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance (NOFIA) in Sudbury in February.
Being able to attend the OVFS was a fantastic and validating opportunity for us at AgriTech North. At the farm show we were able to present ourselves as a part of Innovation Alley where we were able to show off the new innovations in agriculture to farmers and regulators and see how other technologies shown off across Innovation Alley were all contributing to a better and more self-sufficient Canadian future, we were able to hear how the agricultural industry across Ontario and across Canada is reacting to different trends and find out how our technologies helped fit into those trends, and from conversations with attendees and other presenters we were able to leave the conference with several solid next steps on what we can do to further the mission of AgriTech North.
Highlights from Innovation Alley
OMAFA’s Innovation Alley at this year’s conference showed a wonderful range of new technologies across the agricultural industry that are bringing the future to Canadian Agriculture. It was an exciting place to be at the conference as it included many exciting booths as well as a robot dog running up and down the hallway. Presenters at Innovation Alley were aligned with bringing solutions to attendees that were allowing farms to be more self-sufficient and help farms avoid external systems creating problems.
Innovators at Apidae System’s booth presented their solutions for sensor integration via their universal data logger allowing farms to have a “Bring Your Own Sensors” approach to data collection. Allowing farmers to be able to integrate all relevant sensors to a single location, instead of having to work within a patchwork of sensors and programs only compatible with individual manufacturers' catalogs. Apidae System’s technology is directly relevant to our AgriTech North customers implementing our Inflatable Multi-Layer Greenhouses, as their data logger is a perfect fit for small and remote controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) producers particularly as it allows users to add sensors as needed and integrate them seamlessly instead of being limited to a single-sensor ecosystem.
Presenters at Energrow’s booth presented their technology that allows farms to press and process soybeans, to produce oil, and soybean meal directly on their farms; avoiding several additional logistics hurdles. It was great to see these innovations and how they helped farmers directly without tying them down into one solution ecosystem or pushing them into a specific supplier or purchaser monopoly. While Energrow is specifically for field crops this fit the theme of self-sufficient design that Innovation Alley supported. These neighbors at Innovation Alley fit right alongside our innovations, that focus on allowing farms to operate year-round without, relying on external supply chains. Attendees who came to Innovation Alley for these self-sufficient solutions were particularly interested in our Hydronic Microclimate Control System (HMCS) and the capability of the hydronic HVAC units to be safely maintained, repaired, and replaced all by the customer directly without relying on external refrigerant techs or specialized education programs.
Our other neighbors in Innovation Alley were the presenters at Area X.O who run a research and development complex at Ottawa’s famous Central Experimental Farm. Presenters there included folks presenting the complex itself as well as many of the solutions and partnerships that had been developed at the complex. With so many innovators developing new solutions in a small location it was excellent to discuss how our technologies might be able to support one another both now and in the future.
We were also honored to be in Innovation Alley when The Honourable Trevor Jones of OMAFA visited. Minister Jones stopped by our booth to learn more about AgriTech North and was happy to see our innovative CEA technologies and our focus on developing solutions for food security for all Ontarians.
Industry Trends at OVFS
With over 360 Exhibitors and 13,000 attendees at OVFS, it was great to be at this conference just to hear about the current and future state of the agricultural industry in the Ottawa region and beyond. While the majority of the farm show was aimed at field crops, there were certainly some themes that persisted across the farm show for presenters and attendees. There was a large focus on finding ways for Canadians to be more self-sufficient with our agricultural future. There were several presentations about the rapidly changing soybean global trends, as well as discussions about what farms could do to process their own crops when long term trading partners and customers were becoming less reliable. In this climate we had many attendees interested in our innovations, particularly our Inflatable Multilayer Greenhouses. Attendees were happy to hear about the greenhouses for the greater thermal insulation that they offered as well as the security of greenhouses built for 50+ year operational life spans. It seems that with the unstable global agricultural market, our solutions offering dependability, high insulation, and flexibility to work with a large range of crops are all features that are valued highly in the agricultural sector at this time.
The other trend that was clear from OVFS was the increased interest in CEA from traditional agricultural field croppers. Many farmers we talked with, had hoop houses or seed starting greenhouses that were a smaller part of their business, but with the less reliable climate, they were interested in expanding their greenhouse capabilities. There was an interest in how our high insulation Inflatable Multilayer Greenhouse innovations could be used year round to insulate from heat and cold, and interest in how our greenhouse and Hydronic Microclimate Control System (HMCS) could be used together to create extreme and even tropical conditions inside our greenhouses.
Looking Ahead
We are happy to leave the OVFS with a better perspective on the current state of the agricultural industry and several new connections to develop into partnerships and customers. It was good to hear that the technology that we are developing for creating food security and sovereignty in remote northern communities is applicable and appreciated in southern farms for its robust and self-sufficient design. It appears as if we continue to pursue designs focusing on being resilient against non-dependable supply chains; we are not just developing for the far north, but for the agricultural sector as a whole.
