Publications

This scoping review aims to systematically assess and synthesize current digital technologies and methodologies used in Canadian crop production research, including remote sensing, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and automation. The review examines how these technologies address key agricultural challenges, such as crop monitoring, pest management, irrigation, and soil health, while also exploring the perspectives of Canadian farmers, industry stakeholders, and policymakers on the opportunities, challenges, and ethical considerations associated with digital technology adoption in agriculture. The analysis centers on Canada’s unique agricultural landscape, which combines ambitious sustainability goals with a sociopolitical framework that influences the innovation and integration of Digital Agricultural Technologies (DATs). As a significant food exporter, Canada faces region-specific barriers to DAT adoption, shaped by regulatory considerations, data governance, and privacy concerns. The review highlights that, while Canadian public sector-led research and innovation funding supports DAT development and testing, the widespread application of these technologies remains limited, with many still in experimental stages. By focusing on the technical and socio-technical dimensions, this review contextualizes DAT adoption as influenced by institutional, regulatory, and social factors unique to Canada, including emission reduction targets and data sovereignty. Using a sectoral innovation system framework, this study integrates technical data with social science perspectives to identify barriers and drivers impacting DAT diffusion in Canada, proposing a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to address challenges. This nuanced analysis offers insights for policymakers and stakeholders, underscoring the need for continued research and cross-regional validation to support sustainable DAT integration. Notably, while findings are specific to Canada’s crop production sector, they lay the groundwork for future policy directions and highlight gaps in international comparison that could inform Canada’s approach to DAT development.

Background: The world’s governments have agreed both global and national actions to address the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. This raises the importance of understanding to what degree national action so far has been effective. Answering this question is challenged by variation in data availability and quality as well as disruptive events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate the association between a survey of self-reported action based on the first Global Database for Tracking Antimicrobial Resistance (TrACSS) survey and trends in multiple indicators related to the DPSEEA framework leading up to the survey. Methods and findings: We apply regression methods across 73 countries between actions in 2016 and the trend in indicators of health system development (drivers), antibiotic use (pressures, ABU), absolute rates of resistance (state, ABR) and relative rates of resistance (exposure, Drug Resistance Index, DRI) from 2000 to 2016. We find that action is consistently associated with improved linear and categorical trend in health systems, ABU, ABR and DRI. Reductions are associated with relatively high levels of action (0-4) for ABU (median 2.8, 25-75% quartile 2.6-3.3), ABR (3.0, 2.4-3.4), and DRI (3.5, 3.1-3.6). These associations are robust to the inclusion of other contextual factors such as health system and socio-economic status, human population density, animal production and climate. Since 2016, a majority of both Low-Middle Income Countries (LMICs) and High-Income Countries (HICs) report increased action on repeated questions, while one third of countries report reduced action. The main limitations in interpretation are heterogeneity in data availability and the recency of action. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of national action to address the domestic situation related to antibiotic resistance and indicate the value of both incremental changes in reducing adverse outcomes and the need for high levels of action in delivering improvements.

Antimicrobials are medicines that are designed to kill a variety of organisms, most notably disease-causing bacteria. They include antibiotics and other anti-bacterial substances. Unfortunately, bacteria may develop resistance to antimicrobials, and this poses a major threat to human health in the 21st Century: the discovery of new antimicrobials has slowed down, but resistance to existing ones is continuing to increase. If antimicrobials lose their effectiveness, millions of people will die from illnesses that can currently be treated. Any use of antimicrobials can stimulate resistance if the context enables resistant bacteria to multiply at the expense of non-resistant ones. The over-prescription and misuse of antimicrobials increases the likelihood of resistance spreading, so this needs to be tackled by public health systems. Unfortunately, this is not just a problem for human health: antimicrobials are also prescribed to food animals (like cows, pigs, sheep and chickens), and some antimicrobial resistant bacteria can move between animals and people. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in agriculture therefore poses a double risk to humans: reduction in the effectiveness of antimicrobials and disruption to food security. The over-prescription and misuse of antimicrobials increases the likelihood of resistance spreading, so this needs to be tackled by public health systems.