Cultivator tech incubator joining AIM in 2025

Day two of AIM was kicked off with the announcement of a partnership between tech incubator Cultivator, powered by Conexus, and AIM for 2025.

Cultivator, which has been a regular at the Canada’s Farm Show in Regina, will be moving its demonstration day to Ag in Motion in 2025 said the program’s director, Laura Mock.

Cultivator is a tech incubator program based out of Regina, Sask. One of its key mandates is to connect and support Canadian farm technology companies with investors, programming, industry partners, and other producers. The program has three goals: help develop Canadian ag tech, attract the best tech for Canadian producers, and to work with producers and industry to ensure that the technology will fit with Canadian farming operations.

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Their expansion into AIM is because they see a fit between the show and the accelerator program.

“What’s really attracting us to the show is, I feel like this is probably the biggest and best farm show in Canada, is that fair to say?” Mock said. “The foot traffic, the number of producers we can connect with the number of industry partners, they’re all the same people that we need to come together for these sorts of key interactions in order for tech companies to be successful.”

Cultivator’s members span all kinds of technology innovation, from seed and equipment-focused to deep sea tech, software and artificial intelligence. They’re also looking to expand connections with other countries who are interested in program involvement.

“The goal is by offering world class programming and unparalleled access to industry producer, founder and investor connections, you start to attract all of these founders, to the program and to the show,” Mock said. “The benefit is then it just broadens our reach so that Canadian producers… can see innovation that’s born in a different region that we’re looking at [for] the application in Canada.”

While Cultivator doesn’t provide the funding themselves, they know who can provide it. Mock said this is an important step as less than 0.5 per cent of tech investment across Canada is in Saskatchewan technology, let alone Saskatchewan ag tech. It’s about making the connections and getting Saskatchewan tech noticed.

“The other investors that we’re bringing in, there’s lots from across Canada, and all the big ones that are focused on ag or clean tech we’re working with,” she said. “Global investors that are interested in agriculture [are looking at Canada]. Canada is just such an agricultural powerhouse.”

Hard work is being done between Cultivator and the AIM team to work out details, but producers can expect to see them and some of their innovator members at the show next year. Producers can expect presentations and the ability to see and interact with some of the new technologies from Cultivator’s network.