Innovation Spring 2026

The path from to the grocery store for produce is changing as technology finesses the cultivation process. P hoto : AI/C opilot

Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council, two in five employers were unable to fill all the positions they needed during 2022’s growing season. Still, automation does not remove people from farms entirely; instead, it changes the nature of their involvement. The early adopters piloting automation with 4AG’s machines often find that humans are still very much involved in the process. “It's a bit of a shift,” said Gibson. “Yes, we’re removing harvesters from the room, but we’re also adding more technical and more enjoyable jobs.” Kovacs, who regularly works on client sites setting up new control systems for mushroom farms, describes the process as a flurry of human coordination working in tandem with robot coworkers. “The rooms are very clean and well organized, but managing them is intense,” he said. “Dozens of people are moving in and out, climbing onto harvesting carts, reaching into racks, and coordinating growth cycles across multiple rooms. Everything is focused on getting compost into

racks and growing mushrooms as densely and efficiently as possible.” Across this new generation of agricultural systems, growers and engineers are placing a bet that robots will enhance the capabilities of their space, working alongside humans responsible for maintenance, fine-tuning, and development roles. “For businesses that operate 24/7 but without personnel on site in the middle of the night, we’re adding layers of support,” said Valmont,

“We want to ensure the crops get taken care of no matter what.” In this emerging model of agriculture, while machines perceive biological change and make decisions in real time, they act continuously alongside human operators. And by the time a box of mushrooms reaches the supermarket shelves, it is the valued product of the biological processes and the robots that seek to tame them.

Innovation Spring 2026

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