Going green on the farm: Sudbury container farm generating smart yields for producers.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay

At the Sudbury farmers market on a recent Thursday afternoon, Erin Rowe and Steph Lanteigne unloaded their usual 75 bags of freshly picked kale, hoping to find buyers for their harvest. Just 90 minutes later, they were completely sold out.

The crisp, leafy green has incited a fervent fan base amongst the market's clientele since they began cultivating the crop at their Smart Greens indoor hydroponic farm just outside of Sudbury in April.

"The response has been fantastic," Rowe said. "It's modern farming. I believe that it's the future, especially Northern farming."

Smart Greens was founded by business partners Eric Amyot and Eric Bergeron in Cornwall in 2014. They started out with a refurbished shipping container, using hydroponics and LED lighting to create a climate-controlled environment that reduces growing hazards, such as pests and harsh weather. Eventually, they improved the design, adapted the technology, and came up with their current model.

Plants are cultivated from seed and then transplanted into vertical growing towers, which allows the farmers to grow up to 4,000 plants in just 400 square feet of space. The amount of water, nu trients, and light are all controlled by a programmable computerized system.

Several crops have been tested by the founders, but for Rowe and Lanteigne, kale is proving to be a hardy, quick-growing cultivar that's high in demand. They can harvest the leaves from one plant, which regrow at a quick pace, multiple times for up to three months before a new seed has to be planted.

"What we're finding is kale is a really unique product," Lanteigne said. "It's unlike anything else that's on the market. The fact that it's hydroponic means that it grows very quickly, and it doesn't get that bitterness, the stalkiness that you get with regular kale."

The couple aren't farmers by training--Rowe is a teacher, while Lanteigne has degrees in biology and applied linguistics--but they came across the idea for container farming while contemplating a return home to Canada after a 12-year stint teaching English in South Korea.

Searching out a new challenge that would let them spend more time with their four-year-old daughter, Indie, Lanteigne came upon the Smart Greens website and started an 18-month conversation with the founders to determine if it was the right move.

They bought some property, sight unseen, in the Sudbury bedroom community of Chelmsford, and got their farm on April 19. Smart Greens-Sudbury became one of...