Future Herd/Open Source Agrifood Building the Open-Source Future of Canadian Agrifood

A Future Herd spectacular event on AI and agrifood

Building the
Open-Source Future
of Canadian Agrifood

A half-day gathering for people who care about where food, intelligence, and collective possibility meet.

OnlineDiscordHalf-dayFour sessions
Why gather

Canadian agrifood is changing quickly. New forms of intelligence are moving through the food system, from the farm and the field to processing, distribution, retail, and the places where food is shared and eaten.

Choices being made now about knowledge, technology, and who gets to shape them will stay with us for a long time. This gathering brings people into the middle of that change: people working across Canadian agrifood and people trying to understand where it is going.

We want to bring together the people whose knowledge and experience can help us understand what open-source AI means for Canadian agrifood.

The host

Meet the Future Herd

The Future Herd is a podcast and a growing conversation about the changes reshaping food and agriculture. It explores how collective wisdom and adaptive leadership can help us navigate a changing food system.

That conversation brings together people with different experiences of the food system—people who work in it, study it, build for it, govern it, and care about where it is going. This event is one way the conversation becomes a shared experience rather than something we only encounter through a screen.

The event will take place on the Future Herd Discord server: a shared online space where the gathering can happen, where participants can find one another, and where the conversation can continue beyond this day. Learn more about Future Herd.

The day

Who→What→How→When

Four ways of being together. One day to see what becomes possible.

01
Who

Power goes to those who show up ready to do something

Canadian agrifood is shaped by people who grow food, build tools, and care for the systems around it. This is where we meet one another—not as an audience, but as people whose experience and imagination belong at the centre of the conversation.

What do you see that others may be missing? What are you hoping to understand or change? Bring your perspective and your questions. The day begins with the people who show up ready to do something.

Across the landscape, the scarcest layer is often farmer agency: not access to a tool, but the ability to shape and benefit from it. This opening session asks what becomes possible when the people closest to the work have a meaningful role in shaping what comes next.

02
What

Intelligence begins on the farm and in the food

From farms and fields to processing and distribution, intelligence is taking on new forms. We will travel across the food system and encounter people already living with these changes.

The examples are practical: OpenSprinkler irrigation, AquaCrop-OSPy crop-water modelling, UN FAO forest monitoring, CoopCycle logistics, and open diagnostic instruments. Together they show capacity being built across the food system, even when the pieces remain unevenly connected.

Together, these examples open a larger question: how might Canadian agrifood gain the capacity to adapt and benefit from new intelligence without surrendering control of the systems that matter?

03
How

The Future Is Something We Practise

A sudden crisis moves through the food system, and the familiar ways of coordinating, deciding, and carrying on are no longer enough. The situation is fictional, but the questions it raises are close at hand.

What would you notice first? Who would you turn to? What would matter most? We will step into the moment together and consider how people and institutions might respond when the pressure is real.

The landscape suggests that openness is layered. It may appear in a tool, a public standard, or a dataset, while the systems around them remain closed. The exercise turns that strategic question into a shared experience.

04
When

The Plot Thickens

After the surprise and the speculation, we gather the threads. The day may have changed how we see the food system, the technologies moving through it, or the people trying to understand it.

One finding stays with us: “The open agrifood layer has achieved robust, peer-reviewed, and production-proven viability across decentralized small-scale interventions, scientific simulation engines, and cooperative logistics, but hits a hard capital and biological enclosure wall at broad-acre industrial control.”

What stayed with you? What new possibility appeared? What question became too interesting to leave behind? We will consider what a more capable and broadly beneficial agrifood future might require.

The research behind the gathering

We are mapping the systems, tools, and institutions shaping open-source agrifood across the whole chain—from production and diagnostics to logistics, markets, and biological resources.

What we are learning 79 verified records ↗
Come as you are

You do not need to be an expert.

Bring a question, an experience, a concern, a possibility—or simply a willingness to pay attention. Speak, listen, ask questions, share what you know, follow the conversation, or stay with it.

Join us to explore the changing relationship between food, intelligence, and collective possibility in Canada.