Surrey council has endorsed a draft 2026 Surrey Agritech Strategy that aims to advance the city’s “early-stage agritech ecosystem to its next level of maturity.”
City manager Rob Costanzo explained to council that the strategy’s priorities are to support Surrey’s development as a “recognized centre for agritech that will strengthen the broader regional food system.
“Collectively, they aim to strengthen support for local producers, enhance economic resilience, and facilitate connections between Surrey-based agritech companies and provincial, national, and international markets.” he told council in a corporate report.
Council passed a resolution in December 2024 for city staff to develop such a strategy on partnership with Surrey’s Innovation, Investment and Business Committee as well as post-secondary institutions and industry partners.
The next step is for city staff to implement the strategy, with this phase focusing on three strategic priorities involving Surrey’s Economic Investment Services work plan concerning agritech assets and engagement; industry building, branding and policy; and farmer and producer-first agritech adoption.
In simpler terms, the aim is to build a framework that will help strengthen the sector by encouraging collaboration between innovators, researchers, farmers, and food producers. This involves launching a campaign to highlight farming technology already being used in Surrey and sharing “practical lessons through peer-to-peer learning.”
Costanzo noted that agriculture continues to be a “significant” land-use and economic sector in Surrey as roughly a third of the city’s land base – 8,700 hectares, nearly 12,500 acres – is in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) with 55 per cent of that actively farmed. Crops produced in Surrey include blueberries, feed for livestock, vegetables grown in fields and greenhouse produce.
Surrey also has more than 50 food and beverage processing companies, Costanzo added, along with many distributors and “logistics companies, forming an established food-processing cluster.”
Councillor Harry Bains noted that farming is “hard, and when you’re farming it’s really hard to innovate and incorporate technologies into what you do so this strategy seeks to do just that while connecting our farming community with our institutional community, our business community, making sure that technologies are available and ready for our farming community.”
Councillor Mike Bose, coming from a long-line of local farmers, said farmers in Surrey have been leaders in innovation for 130 years. He noted that setting up a strategy with a focus on advancing technology within the city and utilizing our educational institutions was “something that was planned by the provincial government in the late ’80s, early ’90s” but was “never enacted.
“So now we’re actually getting involvement with our educational institutions to help farmers advance our technologies even further and quicker,” Bose said.
Meantime, Costanzo’s report indicates the draft strategy plan was shaped by “broad engagement” with more than 100 businesses and 25 community groups providing insight through interviews, surveys and “targeted outreach.”
“A key component of the consultation process included roundtables held during the Mayor’s Forum on the Future of Agriculture in Surrey on November 21, 2025. These sessions brought together representatives from industry, academia, non‑profits, and government to validate findings and refine key priorities,” Costanzo explained. “The strategy will be presented to the Innovation, Investment, and Business Committee on April 8, 2026.”