Canada gets its first hands-free VF facility
Added on 07 March 2023
The new vertical farming facility in Pitt Meadows is the first of its kind in Canada and promises to yield 350 times the greens as field-grown crops.
Brothers Shahram and Bahram Rashti officially started UP Vertical Farms in 2021, and with some help from their sales and marketing partner Oppy, they’ve now been able to unveil their new state-of-the-art facility.
“We are thrilled to go live after many years of research, development, and planning,” said Bahram.
Using specialized indoor growing methods, UP Vertical Farms is able to produce greens in a fully automated system that uses 99 per cent less land, water, and fertilizer than traditional farming methods, they say.
It also avoids the use of pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, and is able to recycle carbon dioxide produced by the plants.
“With climate change affecting the fresh produce supply in a multitude of ways, we’re honoured to do our part to help Canada navigate its food security issues — as with recent shortages experienced in the traditional leafy greens sector, for example,” said Bahram.
“These limitations in supply will be a continuous issue, one that we had foreseen, and for which we developed a commercial scale solution to address. Our facility will further limit Canada’s dependence on imported greens in the provinces we supply, and we anticipate expanding our footprint quickly.”
Image provided by Oppy
More news
