Down a long dirt driveway in the Squamish Valley, out of cellphone range, wearing a jean jacket and a red cowboy hat is not where one would normally expect to find a successful business and finance guy on a work day, but that is where Daniel Cruz is this late August Wednesday afternoon, as the clouds open and spit down on him.
Cruz is co-founder and chief financial officer (CFO) of Sea to Sky Farms, which has property in the valley on the former land of a hops farm.
These days, Cruz has plans to expand his company's vertical farm enterprise on the property.
Currently, Sea to Sky Farms has an operational vertical farm in Alberta, selling leafy greens.
Wait. What is vertical farming?
Vertical farming is growing produce indoors—it’s controlled-environment agriculture (CEA).
In this case, leafy greens are grown vertically in stacked layers.
The primary product is living lettuce, meaning it is sold with the roots still attached.
It is grown with temperature, light, water and humidity carefully controlled.
The benefits are numerous, Cruz says.
Hydroponic, vertical farming, which is the planned design for the valley farm, uses vastly less water, less land, less labour, doesn’t use pesticides or fertilizers, and, in the valley, will be powered by B.C.’s hydro-energy grid, which is “renewable and sustainable,” Cruz said.
Grown indoors, the lettuce can be grown and harvested 365 days of the year.
Throw in climate change, which makes growing seasons unpredictable, and vertical farming seems a no-brainer to Cruz, who notes that a lot of our lettuce we buy at the grocery store is imported, leaving us dependent on other areas, such as California.
Further, leafy greens imported from California and Arizona have been associated with several outbreaks of foodborne E.coli over the years.
This risk is greatly reduced with vertical farming, which is, as noted, a more controlled environment.
Why vertical farming for Cruz?
Cruz says the catalyst for the business sprouted during the pandemic.
"I think in the pandemic, we all learned that getting out of the cities and experiencing nature was important," he said, noting that he has a long history with Whistler—he currently serves on the board of directors of the Whistler Film Festival Society—but previously didn't know much about the Squamish Valley.
"I just really thought that agricultural land was not being utilized," he said, adding he soon realized how much the valley has to offer.
"The Squamish Valley is like a magical place. Obviously, it's not your typical farming area," he noted, glancing up at the steep terrain just north of the Sea to Sky Farms' property.
"[But] we have power here. We have highway access. We have access to water, and I think we can do more with this area."
He approves of the Squamish Valley Agricultural Plan, the long-term vision for the area aimed to support more agriculture, he said.
All the lessons of the pandemic, from getting back to the land, to food insecurity with supply chain issues, culminated in vertical farming being the direction to go for Cruz.
In 2022, the provincial government clarified that vertical farms are permitted in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) and that larger operations are allowed.
Cruz was one of the first to put an application in for approval, he said.
He spent a year with engineers and made other preparations to be permit-ready to have a 20,000-square-foot vertical farming structure on his Squamish Valley property.
The plan was ready to go, but then, among other things, construction costs, such as the cost of steel, made him press pause on that plan, and instead the company purchased a vertical farm already in operation in Alberta in 2023.
"We've shipped lettuce all the way to Safeway here in Vancouver," he said, of that Alberta operation.
The plan for the vertical farm in the Squamish Valley is still on the table. Sea To Sky is updating the building design to take advantage of vertical farming “2.0” technology, requiring the company to amend and re-apply for permitting with the updated building design. In pursuing this goal, Cruz said he and the leadership team now bring additional “hands-on” experience, including operating the company’s vertical farm in Alberta and the farming technology that continues to evolve.
Ideally, he would like to have agreements with trucking companies, some of which drive right by the valley property, to distribute the lettuce.
"We did full statistics on the lettuce consumption here from Pemberton, Whistler, and Squamish, and, of course, Vancouver, and the design of the building was meant to fulfill the general demand of the Sea to Sky Corridor," he said.
Why hasn't it taken off?
Given all it has going for it, why hasn't vertical farming seen a bigger boon?
After all, it has been around since at least 1990, according to Farm Credit Canada.
Yet in Canada, according to Cruz, vertical farming is less than 1% of the supply chain, and in the U.S., it's just about 5%.
Cruz says there are several reasons for this and the highly publicized failures of some agri-tech firms.
"It's over-investment," he said, giving one explanation. "Over investment in technology, robotics, and forgetting about the simplicity of just making a profit."
Another issue is that big grocery stores are really interested in the individual price of lettuce, so it is harder to sell vertically grown live lettuce for what would make a profit at those chains.
There are only a few grocery players, and they often have long-standing relationships with non-local suppliers, he added.
Though it generally doesn't use pesticides, because it isn't grown in soil, which is what organic labelling is based on, vertical farming can't get the organic designation that would open it up to a more premium price.
And consumers aren't demanding it yet in high enough numbers.
"We do living lettuce with the head on, so that in itself is a big difference from dead lettuce. It is more nutritious and it lasts longer. But the consumer is not willing to pay for it yet, because I don't think they fully understand the options."
Cruz notes that vertical farming isn't an end-all-be-all solution to food insecurity.
"Vertical farming is not the solution. It's a component that can be used in the food system," he said.
This is also why greenhouse and regular farmers need not fear the competition of vertical farming. It aims to fill a gap, not replace other forms of farming, Cruz said.
Cruz has leased part of his Squamish Valley property to be farmed traditionally. There, fresh flowers and vegetables are grown and sold in subscription models.
Asked what the average person can do to support home-grown vertical farming, Cruz said it starts with what we ask for at the grocery store and what we put on our tables.
"I think people need to care about their food. I think we need public opinion to pressure people to go local farming.”
With files from Glen Korstrom/Business in Vancouver
