GoodLeaf Farms Plants First Test Crops at Calgary Facility

Sep 15, 2023

GoodLeaf Farms has planted the first test crops at its new facility in Calgary, Alta. with full production in Western Canada expected to start in late fall, a Sept. 13 news release said.

“This is a significant milestone for GoodLeaf Farms as we work to establish a truly national footprint of indoor vertical farms that provide fresh leafy greens that are typically imported to Canada,” Barry Murchie, president and CEO of GoodLeaf Farms, said in the release. “As import replacement products, the foods we are providing are critical to our food security and sovereignty. We are excited to begin ramping up production in Calgary to serve markets in Western Canada.”

Construction on the 96,000-square-foot indoor vertical farm facility is almost finished, the release said. The crops of the microgreens and baby greens that were planted will be grown and harvested in Calgary for retail stores and the food service sector in Western Canada. These crops were planted to ensure all of the equipment and infrastructure is working as intended. Once fully operational, GoodLeaf’s Calgary farm will produce more than two million pounds of fresh, local leafy greens each year — with an expected 40 annual harvests of microgreens and 20 annual harvests of baby greens.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.