Canadian farms are changing in two directions at once – opening their gates to the public and wiring themselves up with new technology – and both shifts are creating the same underlying challenge, according to Greg Laidman (pictured), AVP of national farm portfolio at Co-operators: operations are evolving faster than ever, making regular coverage reviews increasingly important.
Diversification is accelerating across the sector, Laidman said, as more operations add agritourism, on-farm retail, and event hosting alongside traditional farming. Each addition changes the liability picture in a meaningful way, and the shift begins the moment the public is invited onto the property.
"When you introduce the public onto a farm, you're really adding new exposures," Laidman said. "Think about things like slip-and-falls and food-related risks. There's a broader third-party liability that's now going beyond the traditional farming operation."
That shift, in his telling, effectively moves part of the risk from a private agricultural setting into something closer to a public-facing business – a category the underlying farm policy was never built around. The challenge isn't any single activity so much as how quickly those activities tend to escalate.
"What may start as a small farm stand can grow into tours and can go into events, seasonal attractions," Laidman said. When that growth outpaces the paperwork, a gap opens between what's actually happening on the farm and what's reflected on the policy.
"If all those things that are changing aren't fully disclosed, or if they're not regularly reviewed, then that's when we can see gaps emerging," he said.
Laidman pointed to "agribusiness" as a term that has become common industry shorthand but can mean very different things from farm to farm. "The level of risk can vary very significantly depending on how those new activities connect back to the farm's core operation and how much of the public interaction they're really bringing onto the farm," he said.
That same principle – coverage struggling to keep pace with a fast-changing operation – shows up again, in a different form, when the subject turns to technology. Precision agriculture, GPS-guided equipment, sensors, and drones have made farms more efficient, Laidman said, but also more interconnected, and in some ways more vulnerable.
"Those all introduce new exposures," he said. "Whether we think about equipment breakdown, system failures, data loss, cyber-related risks, those weren't really part of the conversation a decade ago."
The consequences of a failure are also broader than they used to be, he said, because a single technology breakdown can now ripple across multiple parts of an operation simultaneously – during planting, harvest, or the kind of timing-sensitive work involved in preserving livestock.
"A single technology failure could affect multiple parts of the operation at once," Laidman said.
On the insurance side, that has meant a sharper focus on understanding technology dependencies, business interruption exposure, and equipment values that are now higher and more specialized than in the past. Regulation is part of the equation too – drones, for instance, can require operators to satisfy both aviation and agricultural rules simultaneously, adding a compliance layer that didn't exist for most farms a decade ago.
"The pace of innovation is fast, and coverage needs to keep up with that," Laidman said. "We really need to make sure that what's on the policy reflects how that farm actually operates today."
Across both diversification and technology, Laidman's answer to closing the gap is the same: ongoing dialogue rather than a one-time policy update. He said Co-operators work with clients continuously to track how operations are evolving, whether that means a new revenue stream or a new piece of connected equipment, and to determine whether existing coverage still fits.
"We really pride ourselves on working closely with our clients to understand how their operations are evolving and really help determine if there is a solution that fits," he said.
Laidman was clear that both trends are ultimately good for the sector, even as they complicate underwriting. New revenue streams and new technology make farms stronger and more competitive – but only if the insurance keeps up with them.
"Technology is a huge enabler. It helps farms better monitor operations, improve decision-making, and reduce some traditional risks. But it's also reshaping risk, and the insurance approach has to look to evolve with that," Laidman said. "The same is true of diversification – it's great for the farm, but it does require making sure that the liability side can keep pace with what's happening on the ground."
