Ottawa invests $1.65 million in AI technology for climate-smart farming - WestCentralOnline

Ah, Ottawa's latest 'investment' in the future: a whopping $1.65 million for a Toronto tech company to slather AI onto farming. Because nothing says 'solving climate collapse' like a budget that wouldn't buy a modest data centre's cooling system. The government's press release probably used the phrase 'climate-smart' until it lost all meaning — much like this funding round will lose its impact against actual droughts and floods.

Let's parse the grand ambitions: 'monitor crop health, forecast yields, improve resilience.' $1.65 million might cover a few software licenses and a single engineer's salary, but the promise of 'climate resilience' on that budget is either delusional or insulting — take your pick.

Still, there's a bleak comedy in watching a federal government treat agriculture's existential threat like a procurement problem. The lucky tech company gets a cheque, farmers get a dashboard, and we all get to pretend that AI weather models are a substitute for greenhouse gas policy. When the next heatwave wipes out a harvest, at least the automated report will be beautifully formatted.