WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO WISCONSIN: Wisconsin businesses offering products or services for vertical farming may find opportunities.
Vertical farming is becoming big business in Canada, and it’s expected to reach new heights in the next few years.
Vertical farming involves growing crops in vertically stacked layers, sometimes in former warehouses or in greenhouses, with controlled artificial light, humidity, and temperature, and often with no soil. According to Farm Credit Canada (FCC), the global vertical farming market was reported at $4.8 billion in 2022 and is expected to leap to as much as $33 billion by 2030. In Canada, vertical farming was valued at $850 million in 2021 and is expected to grow to $1.3 billion in 2028, FCC said.
Bonafide Research reports that the vertical farming market in Canada is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 21% between 2022 and 2027, citing projections by the Canada Vertical Farming Market Overview, 2027.
The report says the demand for more organic produce, the difficulties resulting from the effects of climate change, and the high production levels that controlled agriculture is able to obtain have pushed the favorability of vertical farming.
“Canadians are demanding more fresh local produce year-round,” said a report by Bennett Jones, a Canadian law firm.
In recent years, vertical farming in Canada has seen developments such as these:
• TruLeaf opened GoodLeaf Farms, a full-scale, commercial, vertical farm in Guelph, Ontario, and began supplying microgreens and baby greens to retail locations and restaurants throughout the province. In 2023 and 2024, GoodLeaf opened similar farms in Calgary, Alberta and Saint-Hubert, Quebec.
• UP Vertical Farms is an automated production facility in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia that opened in 2023 and could produce more than 6 million bags of greens a year, its owners say.
• Lenny Louis, CEO of Visions Greens, a vertical farm in Welland, Ontario that started in 2022, told the Globe and Mail that his facility’s 4,000-square-foot footprint can grow an amount of food that would cover more than 12 acres on a conventional farm.
With the price of farmland up more than 20% since 2022 and Ontario reported to be losing an estimated 319 acres of agricultural property to development every day, low-energy, pesticide-free growing is one solution, the Globe and Mail article said.
Wisconsin businesses with ag tech and vertical farming technologies could find opportunities in Canada.
