Goodleaf Farms is Canada’s only network of indoor vertical farms, and they are showcasing their revolutionary farming practices like rock stars during their current Good for Life Tour.
In collaboration with Sobeys, Goodleaf has a 53-foot trailer featuring a replica vertical-farming demonstration that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the farm grows its crops year-round. Visitors can explore the trailer, enjoy smoothies, sample a variety of fresh microgreens, and taste samples prepared by Sobeys chefs featuring Goodleaf microgreens.
The event offers a unique experience to try out a blender bike, a sustainable way to make a smoothie in which participants ride a bike powering a blender.
The Good for Life tour began with the trailer’s attendance at the National Home Show in Toronto at the Enercare Centre on March 14 and will continue through May in cities across Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
According to Jeff Garlow, Goodleaf’s chief marketing officer, the event is an opportunity for the company to raise awareness of vertical farming as an important step toward food sovereignty in Canada.
“If you look at Canadians and certain parts of our food categories, we actually really do need independence. If you look at fresh leafy greens or produce in general, it can literally travel thousands of miles by truck from either Mexico or the U.S. So, imagine if there was a solution to grow fresh produce or fresh leafy greens in our situation, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So that was primarily the reason that we wanted to tell our story,” Garlow explained.
“On top of that, when food travels on trucks, you lose nutrition, you lose shelf life, and we travel about 10 times less to get fresh products on the shelves, versus Mexican or U.S, or wherever you get produce from. We’re also a Canadian company, which we’re very proud of – it’s a Canadian solution.
“If you look at it from a sustainability standpoint, we use 97 per cent less water and 95 per cent less land than traditional farming’s soil-grown methods.”
Garlow noted that microgreens are generally harvested within six days, and the fast turnaround makes it imperative to put them on the shelf quickly for consumers.
“It’s just like human beings: when we’re young, we’re full ofenergy and health. That’s no different than microgreens. So, when we harvest [them] in six days, then we are at peak nutrition. So, they’re actually up to 166 times more nutritious than their mature counterparts,” said Garlow.
In 2024, Canada imported $539M of lettuce, 92 per cent of which came from the United States, making Canada the second-largest importer of lettuce in the world. Goodleaf Farms founder Gregg Curwin saw Canada’s lack of locally grown greens as an opportunity to launch Goodleaf Farms.
The company was founded in 2011 as a research facility in Halifax. Inspired by Japanese indoor hydroponic technology, Curwin opened Goodleaf’s first large-scale vertical farm in Guelph in 2019.
“We have three farms. One is at St. Hubert in Montreal, the other is in Guelph, and the other is in Calgary. And our two farms in Montreal and Calgary are really large facilities. They’re $80-million facilities each. So, they’re very, very large, and all the growing happens indoors,” Garlow explained.
He added that farming at Goodleaf is practiced in a highly controlled environment, where everything from temperature to water levels is meticulously managed to grow crops as nutritious as possible, allowing them to be pesticide-free.The company advertises itself as pesticide-free rather than organic.
“Organic is a tough term,” said Garlow
“People say it’s organic, but organic still uses chemicals. They’re just organic chemicals. We don’t use any chemicals. So, I guess, potentially, depending on how you look at it, we might be better than organic.”
In Canada, organic farms are allowed to use certain pesticides and chemicals under the Canadian Organic Standards, provided they are naturally derived and not synthetic. In farms such as Goodleaf, where the environment is indoors and agricultural practices are completely controlled, they can avoid spraying plants altogether because pests are not a problem. However, because the environment is so controlled, Goodleaf cannot actually allow on-site tours.
“We’d love to do tours and stuff, but if you bring in tours, then you’re introducing, potentially, pathogens – people have colds, people have different things. We just try to keep it a very clean environment, so you’re getting literally the safest product that you can,” explained Garlow.
“We can’t bring Canadians to our farms, so we decided, wouldn’t it be cool if we could bring our farms to Canadians?”
Some Sobeys employees are joining Goodleaf’s staff on the tour, including two chefs who are creating different flatbreads for participants to sample, using the farm’s microgreens. Garlow noted that there has been strong support for the tour so far, from both employees and consumers.
