{"id":700816,"date":"2026-06-13T01:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T01:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/700816\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T01:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T01:43:12","slug":"why-ramping-up-canadas-indoor-farming-capacity-may-prove-difficult-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/700816\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ramping up Canada\u2019s indoor farming capacity may prove \u2018difficult\u2019 – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Canada\u2019s new National Food Strategy<\/a>, aimed at bringing down the cost of groceries<\/a> for Canadians and boosting domestic food production across Canada by growing produce year-round.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But some experts say expanding greenhouse<\/a> production is easier said than done.<\/p>\n

The federal government is planning to spend $750 million to \u201cdrastically expand year-round Canadian production of fruits and vegetables,\u201d Carney said Thursday.<\/p>\n

This includes scaling up production through greenhouses, vertical farms and other enclosed growing spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already a big sector,\u201d said Barry Prentice, professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba\u2019s Asper School of Business.<\/p>\n

In 2025, greenhouse area in Canada increased to 35.9 million square metres.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

However, the greenhouses are \u201ccentred in Ontario, and around the Leamington area, in British Columbia, and some in Quebec,\u201d Prentice said.<\/p>\n

Ontario alone is home to nearly two-thirds (64.9 per cent) of the greenhouse area in Canada, followed by B.C. (17.4 per cent) and Quebec (10.4 per cent).<\/p>\n

The federal government\u2019s support for greenhouses, hydroponics and other controlled environment agriculture will build a \u201cstronger, more self-sufficient food supply chain\u201d for Canada, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association said.<\/p>\n

The commitments in the National Food Strategy \u201crepresent the highest investment in the fresh produce sector in recent history,\u201d CMPA president Ron Lemaire said.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture lauded the strategy\u2019s emphasis on \u201cadvancing controlled environment agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Food Strategy makes a \u201csizable investment in greenhouse production,\u201d said Michael Widener at the University of Toronto\u2019s department of geography and planning.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Get<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGet weekly money news<\/p>\n

Get expert insights, Q&A on markets, housing, inflation, and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so reliant on importing fruits and vegetables. Close to 90 per cent of our fruits come from outside of Canada and around 70 per cent of our vegetables. This would be a meaningful increase in what\u2019s done domestically,\u201d Widener said.<\/p>\n

However, he added that it would prove very difficult to scale up production to the point where it would replace all imported produce, because building greenhouses at that scale would be too expensive.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more expensive. It is difficult to grow the large volume of fruits and vegetables that consumers want in the country through greenhouses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Most greenhouses cost US$5 to US$35 ($7 to $49) per square foot, according to estimates from U.S. construction company CraftCamp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Canada, a typical small to medium-sized commercial greenhouse can be anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 square feet, while a large-scale greenhouse can start from 10,000 square feet and run into several acres, according to Quebec-based greenhouse maker Harnois<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just easier to grow fruits and vegetables in an outdoor setting in climates that are where those foods are from than it is to sort of try to engineer it in a colder climate like Canada,\u201d Widener said.<\/p>\n

Growing produce year-round in Canada is also going to cost a lot more energy in Canada\u2019s cold climate, Widener said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to actually shine the fake sunlight onto our plants, in a way that wouldn\u2019t have to happen if it was grown in the southern U.S. or Mexico. It\u2019s more energy-intensive, it\u2019s more labour-intensive and our ability to do it across bigger plots of field is going to be limited,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore on Canada
\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n

Greenhouse production and sales in Canada have been growing consistently, data shows. In 2025, greenhouse sales increased to $6.5 billion, Statistics Canada said.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

Tomatoes were the top-selling greenhouse crop in Canada, followed by cucumbers. Production has been growing for strawberries, lettuce and herbs as well.<\/p>\n

However, Canada\u2019s ability to grow more vegetables and fruits is \u201climited,\u201d Prentice said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can grow some [more] strawberries in greenhouses, but the question is should we, given the cost of doing that? It does come down to the economics of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some plants \u201cjust won\u2019t do as well as others in the greenhouse environment,\u201d Widener said, adding that Canadians should consider what\u2019s in season when looking for fruits and vegetables in the grocery aisle to keep costs down.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps it\u2019s not reasonable for us to be thinking about having oranges year-round every winter. Because oranges in December just aren\u2019t something that are going to be available to us here in Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While greenhouses can help build a \u201cresilient and robust food system\u201d in Canada, \u201cgreenhouses won\u2019t be the only solution,\u201d Widener said.<\/p>\n

Since nearly 40 per cent of Canada\u2019s fresh fruits and vegetables come from the United States, the solution for Canada\u2019s food insecurity might lie in diversifying trade relations, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we really want to keep consuming things like strawberries or cherries or grapes year-round, we\u2019re going to have to adjust the ways that we import those kinds of foods and think about different trading partners, maybe across South America, across the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. But this strategy doesn\u2019t really address that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

In the last year, Canada has inked several agreements with Asian countries, including deals on agricultural produce.<\/p>\n

\u201cBananas are already really cheap, and we\u2019re importing them from 10 different countries, Ecuador being one of the largest. You have to also remember that if we don\u2019t import from countries, they don\u2019t have any money to buy from us,\u201d Prentice said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrade works in two directions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Canada\u2019s new National Food Strategy, aimed at bringing down the cost of groceries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[103,5457,101,192,30305,36469,17639,2066,303125,79],"class_list":["post-700816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-canada","tag-consumer","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-greenhouse","tag-groceries","tag-indoor-farming","tag-money","tag-national-food-strategy","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}