As per Bennett Jones LLP:
Vertical farming is gaining momentum in Canada, driven in large part by changing consumer tastes, the need for greater sustainability and advanced technology.
In grocery stores and restaurants, Canadians are demanding more fresh local produce year-round. The world’s changing climate threatens the reliability and sustainability of some food supply chains. Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) technology and innovation continue to improve at a rapid pace. Canadian governments and agencies have introduced new policies and funding to support vertical farming, both in the countryside and in cities.
NASA has been working in vertical farming for a long time, but its popularity on Earth has been growing in tandem with concerns over population, supply chain issues, urban sprawl, and the impacts of climate change.
In recent years, vertical farming/hydroponic companies have sprouted in Canada, including:
- TruLeaf, the Bedford, Nova Scotia-based designer of “efficient vertical farms” engineered primarily (but not exclusively) for mass markets,
- GoodLeaf, a TruLeaf subsidiary and Canada’s largest vertical farming company, who last year expanded their facilities from Halifax, Nova Scotia and Guelph, Ontario, to include new indoor operations in Calgary, Alberta and Montreal, Quebec; and
- UP Vertical Farms, Canada’s first fully automated, high-density vertical growing operation producing ready-to-eat, non-GMO greens at its Pitt Meadows, British Columbia location.
Vertical farming would appear to make sense in Canada. In a recent Globe and Mail article, Bahram Rashi, UP Vertical Farms’ co-founder and CEO, said “More than 97 per cent of all leafy greens [lettuce, kale, spinach, etc.] in North America is grown in California and Arizona fields… Canada imports more than 90 per cent of the greens we consume, and that’s just wrong.”
Vertical/hydroponic farming would appear to be the key to managing this concern. Mr. Rashi said that one acre of vertical farming can produce as much lettuce as a 350-acre open-air farm because the produce life cycle is shortened in multi-level operations, and with controlled LED lighting, there’s no competition among plants for sunlight.
Governments across all levels in Canada have cast their lot with domestic vertical farms. Canada’s federal government launched the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP), a 5-year agreement between the federal and provincial/territorial government that provides $1 billion in programs and activities, $2.5 billion in cost-shared programs, and an AgriScience Program to accelerate innovation in the agriculture and agri-food sector. Provincially, British Columbia improved its Agricultural Land Reserve Use Regulation to allow for more vertical farming; Alberta’s 2023 budget proposed a top-up to the province’s Investment Growth Fund (a vertical farm operation was the first project to receive funding); and in Quebec, the provincial government announced more than $100 million to double the size of the province’s greenhouse operations by 2025.
While vertical farms have the potential to offer Canadians a regular supply of tasty greens outside traditional imports, the industry does have issues that must be addressed. These operations are energy-intensive and do best in regions with lower energy costs. Operators also need to abide by building codes, prompting some municipalities to develop a framework for urban agriculture. And while certain pesticides have been registered with Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency for greenhouse growing, they haven’t yet been assessed for use in vertical farming. (More about these issues can be found on Bennett Jones’ website.)
Although several vertical farming companies in Europe and North America have declared bankruptcy or gone into receivership, some industry professionals feel the sector’s upheaval is leveling off. From Canadian Grocer:
“I look at it similar to the way the internet bubble was, or even the cannabis [sector]. Everybody thought they could come into the field and make money on it, and some of them were able to raise crazy amounts of money,” says Mark Lefsrud, an associate professor in bioresource engineering at McGill University. “I will not say they had a good business plan.”
Companies with products and/or services of use to the vertical farming sector may find opportunities in the Canadian market. Watch our blog for more updates on this sector.
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