Secure and Sustainable Crop Production for Canada 365 Days a Year

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Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is experiencing a popularity groundswell due to growing interest in vertical farming and other high intensity urban agriculture initiatives. Over the past few years this has translated into billions of dollars in business and infrastructure investment globally. The growing interest and associated investments lie in the promise of these systems to deliver solutions to some of the most pressing issues of our time. Taken as a whole, CEA provides options that will help to both mitigate and adapt to the effects and implications of the global climate crisis. Further, this `new ag' will help address issues related to food insecurity (e.g., northern and remote communities), food safety and biosecurity, soil and ecosystem biodiversity preservation, medicinal crop and phytopharmaceutical production, and a host of other issues related to excessive consumption and global population growth. Despite the grand promise of CEA, there remain gaps between what is currently feasible, or at least practiced, and what CEA must aspire to if its full potential is to be realized. Meaningful contributions to the aforementioned issues require meaningful research and development today. The program being proposed for Discovery Grant support is designed with the long term goal of `Advancing Controlled Environment Agriculture's Positive Impact on Society'. The positive societal impacts of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) that will be delivered are spread across several key focus areas, namely: Addressing Food Insecurity in Northern and Remote Communities, Medicinal Crop Production, Food Crop Diversification in High Intensity Urban Agriculture, and Technological Advancements in CEA Production Systems. The programmatic funding requested represents the essential backbone to the early development of the overall program and will be used primarily to support HQP development. Five graduate programs (1 PhD and 4 MSc) and five undergraduate research projects will be directly funded, while further leveraging additional funds throughout the five year funding phase to support additional HQP programs; programs born of the knowledge developed with the Discovery Grant support. The program outlined and the overarching objective represents a forward looking 20+ year vision for CEA. More immediately, specifically within the duration of the Discovery Grant support period, the program seeks to address the social issues related to food insecurity in vulnerable northern and remote communities, adapt at risk medicinal crops to CEA production, diversify the types of food crops available to high intensity urban-based CEA, develop biosecurity and food safety technologies, and to advance resource recovery in CEA. Investments made through the Discovery Grant program will pay dividend for decades to come and will Improve Life for Canadians and our global partners.