CANADA - CALGARY: Local Produce Options Expand With Vertically Farmed Greens
Elizabeth Chorney-Booth
Feb 20, 2021
Pictured is a package of sunflower microgreens produced by ALLPA in Calgary on Thursday, February 11, 2021. Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI /Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia
Over the years, the local food movement has grown from a handful of agriculture advocates touting the importance of supporting local farmers to a large-scale demand for everything from meat to chocolate that’s been produced and, when possible, grown here in Alberta. With Canada’s Agriculture Day being this Tuesday, it’s as good a time as any to celebrate homegrown products, be it artisanal honey or good ol’ Alberta beef.
Yet, as we look outside at our February weather, it’s obvious that some of our favourite foods simply can’t grow in abundance here. Greenhouse technology allows farmers to grow local cucumbers and tomatoes alongside wheat and canola fields, but greenhouses take up a lot of real estate. A new breed of urban farmer is using vertical farming techniques to grow crops like microgreens and baby kale on a much smaller footprint, right inside the city limits.
Pictured are some of the microgreens produced by Allpa in Calgary. Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI /Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia
The newest local player is Allpa Vertical Farms. The company is headed by three young entrepreneurs who used their shared interest in food, sustainability, and engineering to build a vertical farming operation. It involves vertically stacked levels of plants, grown indoors, usually in a warehouse or shipping container. The lighting, irrigation, and soil are carefully controlled so that crop yields aren’t reliant on exterior factors like weather and sunlight.
Allpa specializes in microgreens, growing radish, broccoli, sunflower, and arugula sprouts that can be bought by the tub at the Italian Centre Shop and all Sunterra locations. Since microgreens only take about 11 days to go from seed to harvest, the Allpa crew can grow their greens to order, making for less food waste.
From left: Andrey Salazar and Guillermo Borges, Allpa co-founders, with Zakk Tambasco, head of production, with their products. Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI /Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia
“The company (began) with an internal conflict I had between climate change and farming,” says founder Andrey Salazar, who grew up on a coffee farm in Columbia and has studied physics and electrical engineering in Calgary. “I wanted to combine my background as a farmer and my practical skills as an engineer, so I went to my garage and started building the equipment.”
Allpa is far from the first vertical farming outfit in Calgary. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Deepwater Farms had developed a huge following among restaurant chefs with its greens grown via a vertical hydroponics system. The company was originally conceived as a closed-loop aquaponics operation, raising fish and using the fish waste to fertilize plants. Food safety regulations have prompted the company to decouple the two systems, but it continues to sell both indoor-grown baby kale, arugula and beet greens as well as barramundi and tilapia.
It’s been a successful model. Before COVID-19, the majority of Deepwater’s business was with restaurants seeking products previously unavailable from local producers (you don’t see a lot of barramundi swimming around Calgary), all of which came to a screeching halt last spring. The company was able to pivot and is now doing a booming retail business, with their products available in 80 retailers, including all Calgary Co-Op stores, select Safeway and Sobeys locations, Blush Lane and Community Natural Foods, among many others.
“We work with some of the best restaurants in the area and that’s how we started,” says Paul Shumlich, Deepwater’s founder and CEO. “Now we’re 99 percent selling to retail, which we’re very grateful for.”
Reid Henuset and Paul Shumlich of Deepwater Farms pose for a photo in the city’s first commercial aquaponics farm on Tuesday, November 20, 2018. Al Charest/Postmedia Al Charest/Postmedia
Vertical farming methods are hardly dominating in Alberta – with so much farmland we obviously have other options to grow food, along with a reliable flow of food grown in warmer climes. But it is taking hold in other parts of the world and Calgary has the potential to be a leader in vertical farming technology. The Harvest Hub is a local tech start-up developing soil-based indoor farms, with a focus on green energy and diversification of crops, which will allow urban farmers to go beyond microgreens and leafy greens. Founder Alina Martin says Harvest Hub has had success growing crops like saffron, zucchini, carrots, and bell peppers in its Calgary test farm. Once they hit the market, technological innovations should make vertical farming more feasible for urban growers.
“Vertical farming is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, but most people in Canada don’t understand it,” Martin says. “As much as we romanticize the idea of having your food growing just down the street, the challenge here is the cost. You can’t be in downtown Calgary growing basil and make money. The infrastructure costs will kill you.”
While Martin suspects that Harvest Hub’s business will largely come from outside of Calgary (the company is working on addressing food insecurity in communities in Canada’s North), she does believe vertical farming is the way of the future on a global scale. While we may not have locally grown saffron in our cupboards in the immediate future, it is nice to have access to that Calgary-bred barramundi and handfuls of affordable microgreens for now.
Elizabeth Chorney-Booth can be reached at elizabooth@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at @elizaboothy or Instagram at @elizabooth.