Feeding the world’s growing population in ways both sustainable and nutritious represents one of the defining challenges of the 21st Century. Meeting this challenge requires not only producing more food, but also the right kinds of food, of high quality, accepted by consumers, profitable to growers, and grown in an environmentally sustainable manner. Controlled environment agriculture, which includes highly efficient greenhouses and vertical farms, represents one key strategy to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Canada has a strong tradition in greenhouse vegetable production and there are opportunities to make rapid advances. Approximately half of domestic vegetables grown in Canada, dominated by tomato, cucumber and pepper, are produced in greenhouses, amounting to an annual farm gate of about $1.5 billion. Indoor farms, innovations in low energy lighting, hydroponics, and environmental controls can promote local, community-run production in remote, northern and indigenous communities as well as in denser urban areas. Despite these successes, we believe that there is still lots of room for improvement. Food can be produced even more efficiently, through advances in lighting technology, energy systems, automation, and plant breeding. In addition, we are passionate about the roles of microbes, how we can control the microbiome to reduce crop disease and increase food safety, and improve overall yield, quality, and growing system health. This is our concept of Healthy Hydroponics. Stay tuned as we develop our story.
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