How women like Kaitlyn Kitzan are helping shape the future of Canadian agriculture
By Tabitha Caswell
When Kaitlyn Kitzan walked into an ag-focused session at a major technology conference in 2022, she noticed something unsettling.
Scanning the crowd, she didn’t recognize many familiar faces. Tech developers were talking about what farmers needed, yet it seemed very few people in the room had actual farming experience. The disconnect nagged at her until she finally stood up and asked, “Is anyone else here a farmer?”
Not a hand was raised, and it told her everything she needed to know.
For Kitzan, a Saskatchewan farmer, business owner, and member of the Canadian Farmer Innovation Alliance (CFIA), that moment reinforced a belief that has shaped much of her work since: if innovation is meant to solve problems on farms, farmers need to be part of the conversation from the very beginning.
“How are we developing something for an end customer if they’re not in the room?” she recalls thinking.
It’s a simple question, but one with major implications for Canada’s agri-food sector.
As the world celebrates International Year of the Woman Farmer, Kitzan’s story offers a timely reminder that the future of agriculture depends not only on new technologies, but on all the people who understand how those technologies must work in real life, in real seasons, on real farms.
A life rooted in agriculture
Kitzan grew up on her family’s grain and cattle farm in Saskatchewan, where agriculture was part of everyday life from an early age. Whether bottle-feeding calves, riding in the tractor with her dad, helping with harvest, or eventually running the combine on her own, she was surrounded by the realities of farm life.
But farming was not always Kitzan’s plan for the future. For most of her childhood, she expected to become a teacher and was convinced it was her destined path.
During her teenage years, however, international travel and exposure to conversations around global food security began to shift her perspective. Visiting developing regions and witnessing food insecurity firsthand sparked something deeper than career planning—it gave her a new sense of purpose.
Like many young people determined to make a difference, Kitzan was driven less by limitations and more by possibility. While attending the World Food Prize Foundation’s Global Youth Institute, she began connecting the dots between farming, innovation, and hunger in a way she never had before.
“I realized agriculture is the solution to global hunger,” she says. “It just clicked for me.”
What had once felt like a familiar part of everyday life on the family farm suddenly became something much larger: a pathway to solving real-world challenges. Within a short period of time, she changed course entirely, shifting her focus from education back to agriculture, convinced the sector could play a meaningful role in shaping a more food-secure future.
That pivot led her to the University of Saskatchewan, where she studied agribusiness and became deeply involved in student leadership, agriculture events, and industry networking. Her early career included knowledge transfer work with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, where she began to think critically about how information moves through the sector—and whether it is always reaching farmers in the most meaningful way.
Farming has changed
Today, Kitzan’s work spans several worlds. While still involved in her family’s farm, she also runs her own consulting business, supports agri-tech companies, contributes to policy conversations, and continues to advocate for stronger connections between farmers, innovators, and decision-makers.
That mix of roles reflects what modern farming has become.
Farming today is not only about production. It is also about business strategy, risk management, technology decisions, market pressures, policy, succession planning, and long-term resilience.
“The decisions farmers are making now are much more complex,” says Kitzan. “There are more seed varieties, more fertilizer options, more crop protection products, more technology, and much higher land costs. The decisions my brother and I have to make are very different than the decisions our parents once had to make.”
For Kitzan, that complexity is exactly why farmer perspectives matter so much in innovation.
A new technology may look promising in theory. But on the farm, adoption depends on practical questions: Does it save time? Does it make money? Has it been tested in similar conditions? Is it simple enough to use and maintain when the pressure is high and the window to act is short?
“Here in Canada, we have one growing season, a few months each year when we need to get things right,” she says. “It’s not like some other industries where you can keep testing and improving every week. There is real risk when farmers adopt something new.”
Innovation is more than apps
Kitzan is clear that she believes innovation has an important role to play in agriculture. But she also believes the sector needs a broader understanding of what innovation really means.
“Agriculture technology doesn’t just mean apps,” she says.
On her own farm, some of the biggest innovations have come through equipment, seed, fertilizer, crop protection, and practical tools that reduce labour or improve decision-making. Digital platforms can be useful, she explains, but only when they solve real problems and fit into how farms actually operate.
That practical lens is something Kitzan brings into her consulting work with ag-tech companies. She often finds herself asking questions that may seem basic but are essential:
Are you asking farmers for their time during harvest?
“We’re busy.”
What happens if a farmer needs support from the field?
“Farming doesn’t stop for long weekends or summer holidays. If you can’t help us fix it now, we need to be able to fix it ourselves.”
Will this technology work in Western Canadian conditions? What about Eastern Canada?
“Show us the proof.”
Does the tool solve a problem farmers actually prioritize?
“Novel tech is fun, but farming isn’t a game.”
Answering questions like this can help distinguish a novel idea from a useful innovation.
Why the CFIA matters
Kitzan joined Bioenterprise Canada’s Farmer Innovation Alliance because she saw an opportunity to help bring more farmer voices into the innovation process.
“What excited me about the CFIA was that farmers were going to have a voice and not only be included, but lead discussions,” she says.
The CFIA was created to help strengthen the connection between innovation and on-farm adoption by ensuring farmers have a stronger role in shaping, testing, and informing new solutions. For Bioenterprise Canada’s Food & Agri-Tech Engine, this work is part of a broader effort to build better pathways between innovators and producers, identify and support the most promising solutions, reduce barriers to adoption, and build a more resilient Canadian food system.
For Kitzan, the value of a farmer-led innovation group is not that all farmers will agree. In fact, the differences are part of the point.
A technology that does not work for one farm may be highly valuable for another. A mixed farm in Saskatchewan may have different needs than a horticulture operation in Ontario, a sheep farm in Nova Scotia, or a grain farm in Alberta. Bringing those perspectives together helps innovators better understand where a solution fits, where it does not, and what must change before it can scale.
“I want to connect with other farmers and discuss technology,” says Kitzan. “Maybe I’m critical of something because it won’t work on my farm, but it might work really well for another farmer in a different region or sub-sector, and that conversation matters. Different perspectives matter.”
Women, work, and the future of farming
As the world celebrates the International Year of the Woman Farmer in 2026, Kitzan is thoughtful about what that recognition should mean. For her, it’s not about fitting women into one narrow image of agriculture.
Aside from farmers, women in ag are also business owners, policy leaders, veterinarians, agronomists, finance professionals, researchers, salespeople, caregivers, bookkeepers, operators, and entrepreneurs. Their roles look different across farm types and sizes, communities, families, and regions—and all of them matter.
“Women in agriculture don’t need to fit one certain role,” says Kitzan. “If you want to be out in the field running the equipment, great! But feeding the team is critical too, so if you want to be in the kitchen and cooking meals, this is also great! Every single role on the farm is valuable.”
On her own family farm, those roles are evolving through succession planning with her parents and brother. Currently, Kitzan focuses heavily on the business side of the operation, including bookkeeping, payroll, programs, management, and data, while also helping with hands-on farm work when needed. One day you’ll find her in the office. On another day, out on the combine.
She says one of the most important lessons in farming is recognizing that different contributions carry different kinds of weight, and every role, together, makes the farm successful.
Feeding Canada and the world
Kitzan’s passion for agriculture still connects back to the same idea that changed her path as a teenager: food security.
She sees agriculture as one of Canada’s most important industries—not only for rural communities and farm families, but for the country’s broader economy, trade relationships, and long-term national security.
“For me, this is one of the best industries to be part of,” she says. “Agriculture plays such an important role here in Canada and around the world.”
That role is becoming more important as Canada faces shifting global markets, climate pressures, labour challenges, and growing questions around domestic food production and supply chain resilience.
For Kitzan, the answer is not innovation for innovation’s sake. It is innovation shaped with farmers, tested in real conditions, and connected to the practical realities of producing food. It is also about showing the next generation that there is more than enough room for them in agriculture.
“There are so many opportunities in this sector,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in ag finance, sales, veterinary medicine, farming operations, or something else. All different skills are needed to keep things in motion. We all come together within this industry.”
And across borders, languages, and production systems, she says, that shared purpose is easy to recognize. Kitzan says we might not speak the same language, but we can all “talk soil, animals, and plants.”
“A farmer in a foreign country might be planting rice, and I might be planting canola, but we’re both growing plants to feed people. The ultimate goal is the same.”
That, for Kitzan, is the heart of agriculture. And it is why farmers must remain central to the future of innovation in Canada’s food system.
Learn more:
Canadian Farmer Innovation Alliance (CFIA)
Kitzan Strategic Solutions