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Founded in 1909, UFA Co-operative Limited is an Alberta-based agricultural co-operative with more than 125,000 member-owners. UFA’s network comprises more than 121 bulk fuel and Cardlock Petroleum locations, 35 Farm & Ranch Supply stores and a support office in Calgary, AB. Independent Petroleum Agents and over 1,200 UFA employees provide products, services and agricultural solutions to farmers, ranchers, members and commercial customers in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.
It takes a certain kind of ambition to do what farmers do. Between the hours and the hard labor, to the public scrutiny and bureaucratic maze running, it's not an easy task. While the agricultural industry feeds millions, quietly tilling and producing behind the scenes, many forget that our food comes from the hands of real people with real stories.
Join us as we share stories from those with Boots on the Ground and unearth unique perspectives on agriculture's biggest conversations. It's time to grab your shovel and get to work. I'm Don Schaefer, and this is Digging In with UFA.
On this part two of our conversation on AI, data centers, and agriculture, we dive back into just how much farmers and rural communities will be affected by the coming swell of proposed data center development in Western Canada. Because of several powerful advantages, including cooler climate and deregulated electricity generation, the region is being primed as a leading hub for artificial intelligence infrastructure in North America. Though intent on resource utilization transparency,
There are still many questions being asked. Who benefits? Who pays? Who bears the environmental cost? Who owns the infrastructure? Who owns the knowledge? How do we balance innovation and stewardship? So let's grab our shovels and keep digging in on AI, data centers, and agriculture.
Water tends to be the biggest talking point in data center resource allocation because of its need to cool data towers on a continuous cycle. As a valuable resource, do farmers run the risk of supply depletion in the long run when working alongside rural data centers.
Returning to the conversation, this is David Gerhardt, head of computer science at the University of Manitoba, and Robert Sake, professional agrologist and CEO of the T1 Technology Corporation. Again, when we talk about water or resources, so so first of all, let's let's just park energy off to the side. We'll we'll assume we have adequate energy. Okay, so so we're now talking about water. And are we are we talking about dry land farms or are we talking about irrigation farms? Again, when we talk about irrigation,
In Canada, that footprint is relatively small compared to the overall acreage in agriculture. And I don't pretend to be an expert on water rights, but there are enshrined water rights in Canada with respect to where we allocate water, how much in what area, and even in Alberta has got enshrined water rights for Saskatchewan downriver. So these things are in place.
And again, I'm not the one to speak about whether or not there's room for AI centers, but if you're thinking about, you know, the South Saskatchewan River, maybe the North Saskatchewan River would be a better place than the South Saskatchewan. I again this gets back down to watersheds, who has access to it. We generally have quite a bit of water in Canada. I think a big part of this conversation has got to be the competing pressures.
That are coming from different sides, right? Like if you have enormous wealth coming from one side, saying we need this data center, and you have enormous public resistance coming from the other side, these are gonna be colliding in this kind of a conversation, right? And part of this comes from like the public is having a hard time understanding the benefit that building a data center gives to them, right? You have a farm, we understand the benefit. They grow food and we need food to like eat and stuff, and that would be a good thing. But the data center, it's a box of computers that somebody else is making money on, right? So
If we could have a bigger conversation about the potential benefits that these data centers bring, we may be able to sort of have these two competing forces come together a little bit and make a make a better, more balanced decision. To me, this brings in, and I don't know if this is where the conversation goes now or not, but the the idea of sovereignty of digital resources. So much of the data centers that are being built today are in the states. So much of the tech that we use is in the states. Like I use Microsoft and I use Amazon and I use Apple and I use
Because all of these things, these are these are massive companies in the States, right, where I dump a lot of money and I get a lot of value back. But if that relationship changes, a lot of folks in Europe are already talking about maybe we need alternatives to some of these technologies. Data sovereignty is the concept that data is subject to the laws and regulations from the region where the data was originally created or generated. Even in the event where data is stored in countries outside of its creative origins.
Which is referred to as data residency, the data is still subject to laws from the country of origin. Right here in Canada, maybe we need alternatives to some of these so that I know that my data in this application lives in Canada and is protected with Canadian laws. If that becomes part of the conversation, the public may be more on board with the requirement for these constructions, and we may have less of a pressure between big money and public sentiment.
Bouncing off of that, David, when you consider data sovereignty, I just attended Canadian Technical Security Conference where we were talking about data sovereignty and in particular the government's thrust right now on investment in the Canadian Armed Forces. And if you're thinking about building infrastructure for the Canadian Armed Forces, a lot of it right now is is fairly isolated. I mean, there are bases out there that have.
Very high restriction, even accessing the internet. So if we're gonna build systems like the Delta system that Ukraine is using for right now, for example, that requires a huge amount of compute power and it requires the retention of data somewhere. And do we really want to abdicate data to AWS and Azure and Google? Do we really want to do that? Or do we want to have more Canadian sovereignty? Again, another trade-off that's a valid issue.
And then throwing on top of all of that, we talk about resource scarcity for AI centers. The United States consumes 500 gigawatts of energy per year. And it's estimated that they've got to increase that by double or more for the upcoming AI centers. Well, Elon Musk just announced that they're going to be putting their AI centers in space at a cost that's way cheaper. The technology is way simpler than their.
internet technology satellites. So we're talking now about limiting the ability or endorsing the ability to build data centers on the ground when very quickly those data centers a year ago nobody was talking about data centers in space and now it's a regular conversation. However, back to sovereignty, I think we have a legitimate discussion point there that Canada needs to consider carefully.
Data sovereignty and the importance of data safety and housing is critical in considering where centers live and the legality behind them. From a national safety perspective,
Does an increased emphasis on data security help the long-term concerns surrounding data centers, or does it continue the AI race by insisting on rapid forward momentum as a matter of national security? It's important to consider the aspects of the how and the why when discussing such unknown long term effects. Let me lob this ball to David. So by recognizing that the AI infrastructure is a long-term
Resilience investment the countries that lead that capacity in that resilience investment will have a stronger economy, more productive agriculture, and better health care.
So Dave, that there's a lob for you and take it from there. To me, the real challenge here is that the the impact of these data centers, like we're talking about, there are many and varied benefits to all of this kind of technology, all the good reasons to build it out. It is a few levels removed from people's day-to-day experience, right? Like the day people's regular people's day-to-day experience with technology is you you turn on your phone, you doom scroll for a while, you you call your friends, you play some games, and there isn't really a good sense of how that stuff happens under the hood, right? The the little
This this little box is just magic. It just does everything I need it to do and it's great. But there's so much that is required, so much infrastructure and and financial and everything that's required under the hood to make these things happen. And people don't really have a good sense of the bargains that they make every day with their own data, with their own implementations. When I go onto these social media networks and I'm I'm scrolling around, the data that's being collected about who I am, where I am, how I'm holding my phone, how far my phone is from my face, how long I pause.
Or don't pause or scroll, all of that stuff is data. It's all going straight south to Cupertino or somewhere in Seattle or wherever these people are based, and it's being used to decide exactly which advertisement will most likely affect my purchasing power.
But this is just the normal way we do things today, right? There isn't a sense that that's a thing that people can protest against because it's part of their day-to-day life. But if they see an icon of this in the real world, a physical data center, that represents the wealth accumulation and loss of agency and all of the stuff that these digital platforms represent, that's a place you can point to and say, I know there's something bad. That represents my feeling about the thing that's bad, so I'm gonna go and hold up a sign against the thing that's bad. And it just simplifies the conversation.
Down to almost meaningless information because there is very little connection between the data centers that are being proposed and built in Canada versus all of the real concerns that we have about the way that we interact and are mediated by technology today. It's almost too complicated to simplify it down to, you know, to a simple little 30-second clip that says, here's what you should be mad at, here's what you should be not mad at, here's the people to go and yell at, here's the people to go and give flowers to. It's really
It's it's far too complicated for a simplification like that. And I think that's one of our biggest challenges is how do we simplify it down to say d this is the reality of the way we're interacting with technology. Here's why a data center would actually be a good thing for you for the things you care about. If you could just play king of the world for a day and you could think about where on earth you'd like to place data centers.
Canada comes up pretty high on the list. I mean, you'd argue maybe Norway, Finland. You sure to hell wouldn't argue Russia. And we have land, we have cold air, we have natural gas, we have water. The footprint relative to the agriculture land base in Canada is tiny. And coexistence isn't just realistic. It's obvious we should be doing this. Now we need to be thoughtful about the outcomes, but
If you were king of the world, placing data centers in Australia, Western Australia, doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hot there. Arizona doesn't make a lot of sense. But Canada makes a lot of sense. When you think about us pounding our chest about being an energy superpower, we should be also thinking about pounding our chest about being an AI data superpower for the very reasons I said. I agree entirely. I think there's enormous value there. And as long as we can see a a
A simple line between the value that is extracted from
the resources and land that are required to build that data center coming back to the Canadians who exist here. I think that opens up the conversation significantly, right? There was the data center in in southern Manitoba, Ildeshain was proposed a 350 acre, two natural gas power plants, private company coming in and saying, just like you say, Canada's a great place to build this stuff, stable economy, stable government, cold air, right? And it has it's now not gonna happen because there wasn't enough benefit to the people of the province, and there was
Enough resistance from the people of the province for the province to say, you know what, we're not going to do that. We're going to do something else instead. I think this is a conversation that the country really needs to have very seriously. And, you know, what drives decisions? Well, it's emotion. There's a fear or there's pleasure. And so if if you're thinking about a positive outcome, it requires work. If you want to go to the lowest common denominator, it'd be fear. So it's a hell of a lot easier for so many people to say,
No, then yes. If you're considering government bureaucra bureaucrats, they never lose their job by saying no, but taking a chance is hard. Taking a chance is hard. So as a country, we need to decide. You know, are we just going to drop to the the fear factor and say no? Or are we going to educate ourselves to understand what the true numbers, what the what the true impact, what the true opportunities are.
And start to think about yeses. As a Canadian citizen, when I look at the energy sector, when I look at the agricultural sector, when I look at this AI data sector, I think it requires careful thought, careful debate, and not just pounding on our chest saying, not in my backyard. Though many celebrate its acceleration and many fear its unknown consequences, AI doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. Whether you're for, against, or
Somewhere in between, it's important that we see clarity and transparency in how AI and data center expansion will affect not just communities where developments take place, but the land itself. For those who are either afraid or vehemently against expansion, how do we discuss the realities of these things to provide clarity over a need to sway opinion? For those that are powered by the forward momentum of AI and the seemingly endless possibilities therein.
How do we discuss the rightful fears and the realities of these long-term effects? We have to bridge the gap and meet where beers are addressed. Safety is paramount and sustainability is accounted for. So whenever I give talks like this, I will have a slide that says, like, where do you stand on AI? Hope and fear, right? And my answer is always yes. I am both very hopeful and very frightened of this stuff. And I think so. For me, step one is to acknowledge
That these anxieties are real and reasonable, right? If we just say you should embrace AI because it's great, and if you don't like it, then you're a Luddite, this is not gonna help, right? This is not not a not a useful part of the conversation. So acknowledge that this stuff is moving fast and it is scary and it's out of our control. Somebody else somewhere else is making these decisions and we're not always in agreement with the way that these decisions are made. So acknowledging the anxiety and the fear, I think, is the first step. And to me the second step is always to give
real examples of tangible outcomes from AI that could not be done without it and benefit everybody. There's great examples of like drug discovery. There's great examples of you know social improvements. There's a lot of really good stuff that's happening in the AI sector. And because so much of the negative conversation is around like stealing of people's jobs and stealing of people's content and artwork and all that kind stuff, acknowledge that and show some good value in other sectors and say like, yes, this is a complicated conversation, but this stuff is
We wanna find good uses of this stuff as opposed to just saying no and then and then going and living in a forest. I think that the answer to how to create more constructive dialogue other than just hundred and forty word on Twitter. but what I'm trying to drive at here is is I just used AI and when UFA asked me to appear on this podcast, I really didn't understand where it was going. But judging from what I'm seeing here.
United Farmers U UFA has 120 to 127,000 members. Well, those members are farmers. And so this podcast is an example of what it takes to have constructive dialogue. How are you going to reach the people? How are you going to create informed decision making? Well, you have to reach them in a conversation that matters and and is not based solely on fear on social media.
So when you guys asked us to appear on this podcast, I went, Well, that's really interesting. Here you have an organization that is 125,000-ish farmers that is members, and hopefully this conversation will be played in the sprayer while they're spraying the crop or in the pickup truck and shared amongst their neighbors so that
There can be a more intellectual, higher level discussion rather than just fear rhetoric. Are you approaching this discussion as an ignorant person? And I mean that in the truest sense, it as in an uninformed person, not as in a belligerent person. Are you approaching this discussion from a framework of ignorance? Are you approaching this discussion from from somebody who is well informed? You still might disagree to David's point, you still might disagree.
I was on a having a different conversation and a different show, and a phrase that has been used in this context is resistance is futile.
Right, this stuff is coming, it's gonna transform everything, you're either on board, right, or or get out of the way. I resist that kind of conversation because yes, this stuff is coming, but it is entirely appropriate for regular people to ask, is this gonna benefit me or not? And if the answer is no across the board, then yeah, you should get out and and protest the construction of a data center in your backyard or something like that. I don't think it's as simple as that, but I also don't think it's as simple as to say the
That people who are protesting the construction of data centers are uninformed Luddites. It's a reasonable fear, and we need to be talking reasonably about what is the balance between benefits and risk of this technology. I would leave it there.
A major part of this conversation is context and nuance. When talking about choosing locations for new data centers, surveys, considerations, and a concentrated effort on land specificity is critical to finding long-term solutions. For instance, in Sturgeon County, Meta's $13 billion AI facility and data center expansion has recently broken ground specifically to utilize existing industrial zone land that does not interfere with prime farmland or competing.
Farming resources. To bounce off what David said, that's quoting Star Trek and the board. There's also the front end of Star Trek, which is to boldly go where no one has gone before. And we are on that journey right now. And Canada has once in a generation opportunity to be the preferred destination of AI infrastructure in North America. As I've said, cold climate, energy, and stable governance. not all governance right now is stable. And
The land use concerns are manageable with smart policy. Watching this investment flow south while we debate this is actually a risk to our prosperity, and that includes agricultural prosperity. Thanks very much for inviting me to participate in this conversation. It's been informative and enlightening, and I really appreciate the opportunity. I applaud UFA and and the efforts of this podcast to try to have discussions like these because
This is the framework from which better decisions can be made. And good on you for your work. Thank you for having us as as guests.
At the end of the day, we look to our resiliency within ourselves and our communities to make our collective futures as bright as possible. All it will take is conversations like these, some vulnerability, and a little digging.
Thanks to the support of UFA Cooperative, we're able to share stories from those who live and breathe agriculture. Thanks to Robert and David for giving us insight into the realities of data centers and a conversation around such a polarizing topic. For more information on today's episode, please visit UFA dot com. And with the listeners like you, we'll continue to dig a little deeper here on Digging In with UFA. I'm Don Schaefer. Thanks for listening.
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