Just Vertical

08/27/2026

Huge news! We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been named a Top 10 Finalist for the Manufacturer Spotlight Award at the 2026 Ontario Made Awards! 🎉

Ontario Made celebrates local businesses building right here in our home province, and being recognized as one of the outstanding companies in our category is an absolute honour.

Now, we need your help to bring it home. Public voting is open, and every single vote makes a difference!

Why vote?
- 🗳️ Quick & Easy: Takes less than 1 minute to set up a free account.
- 🔁 Daily Entry: You can cast up to 10 votes per day until September 10th.
- 🎁 Perk: Every vote enters you to win a $250 gift card to an Ontario Made manufacturer of your choice!

Help us show the power of local manufacturing. Cast your vote today: https://bit.ly/4zFEw0v (https://bit.ly/4zFEw0v)

Thank you so much for your support! 🇨🇦

08/26/2026

Imagine walking into a restaurant and having your salad greens picked from a wall just a few feet from your table. It's already happening. 🌱

A restaurant in Omaha called Gather grows its own greens and herbs on 61 towers right inside the restaurant, producing over 3,600 lbs a year that gets used in their food and their cocktails.

In London, Roe grows its own garnishes to help keep its seafood menu as sustainable and zero waste as possible.

And over in the Netherlands, LOCALS at Hotel Haarhuis harvests fresh herbs and vegetables every day for their tasting menus.

There's no long truck ride involved and nothing sitting around getting old. Just fresh, flavorful ingredients grown right where they're served.

It's a pretty cool look at where restaurants might be heading. Would you want to eat somewhere that grows its own food on-site? Let us know below. 👇

08/04/2026

Most people picture "farming technology" as a bigger tractor or a fancier sprinkler.

The reality looks nothing like that anymore.

Today's commercial farms such as greenhouses, vertical farms, container farms, run on a connected loop of 🔹sensors, AI, automation, and software management🔹.

It's the integration of technologies that drive this shift, and every piece makes the next one more valuable. A sensor alone just collects data, but when connected to AI, it can become insight. Connect AI to automation, and insight becomes action.

Why it matters right now: climate volatility, labor shortages, and supply chain uncertainty are pushing food production closer to where people live. Making these connected systems are becoming more of a competitive necessity.

The farms winning right now aren't chasing one flashy innovation, but they're building integrated ecosystems where every system continuously improves the next.

What's one part of this stack you think growers underestimate? Sensors, AI, or automation?
https://bit.ly/4by419E

07/30/2026

Thinking about getting into commercial farming? Crop selection and financial payback go hand in hand, and a question serious growers ask is "when does this pay for itself?"

We built a free ROI calculator to answer exactly that.

Plug in:
🔹 Farm type
🔹 Crop type (leafy greens, herbs, tomatoes, peppers)
🔹 Size (sq ft) and number of plant sites

And get back:
🔹 Your payback period
🔹 Your expected net profit per year once you're past breakeven

This makes it so no sales call is required to get real numbers. It's the same math we use when we sit down with new growers, but just available to run yourself, in minutes.

If you've been on the fence about whether commercial farming pencils out for your situation, this is the fastest way to get an estimate.

👉 Try the ROI calculator
https://bit.ly/4xbUjlp

Calculate the return on investment for your indoor farming project. Estimate yields, revenue, costs, and payback period with Just Vertical's free business case tool.

07/23/2026

Have you seen the news about the lettuce recall? 🥬

The CDC and FDA recently issued alerts on a Cyclospora outbreak linked to commercial shredded iceberg lettuce, affecting well over 1,000 people across multiple states.

Unlike the E. coli or Salmonella outbreaks most of us are used to hearing about, Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that clings tightly to leaf tissue, and per the CDC, standard household washing under tap water often isn't enough to remove it.

That's the part worth sitting with: when produce moves through large, shared agricultural water systems, one point of contamination can ripple out to retailers and restaurants across the country.

It's also a good reminder of what decentralized, home-grown produce offers:

- Full control over your water source
- No multi-state handling or storage in between harvest and your plate
- Complete seed-to-table transparency

You don't need a farm to shorten that distance. A countertop hydroponic system or a small indoor setup gets you most of the way there.

Curious how others are thinking about this: does news like this change how you source your greens? 👇

07/22/2026

Urban vertical farming sounds complicated, until you break it down and see how convenient it is for local spaces.

It follows the similar hydroponics system: seeds start in trays, then to vertical systems where light, water, and nutrients are carefully managed. From there, crops get harvested and distributed close to where they were grown.

The result is fresh produce grown year round, no matter the weather, the season, or how much land is available. As cities deal with rising food costs and shaky supply chains, this kind of local, controlled production is proving to be a vital piece of urban infrastructure.

So what does it actually take to run an indoor field, and what tech is powering the future of urban farming?

Full breakdown on our blog.
https://bit.ly/4wNTi2M

Urban vertical farming explains how cities grow food locally using indoor farming, hydroponics, and sustainable urban agriculture.

07/21/2026

A vacuum company just expanded its strawberry glasshouse in Lincolnshire to 42 acres, running largely on natural sunlight and power generated from its own farm waste.

That's a pretty striking proof point after a rough few years of shutdowns across vertical farming. Dyson doesn't usually bet big until the engineering is solid, so what made this the moment?

Full story on our blog. Check it out now.
https://bit.ly/4wefZ0a

What Dyson's Strawberry Farm Means for Vertical Farming

07/15/2026

Food security has no borders.

Over the past years of our operations, we've deployed vertical farming across some very different settings, and each one reinforces the same idea: fresh, local food shouldn't depend on where you happen to be.

🥬At the University of Toronto, multiple customized indoor grow towers are deployed directly across campus, supplying fresh greens straight to student cafeterias.

🌱With Seneca College, we built a two-story shipping container farm with hydroponics below, and a greenhouse and R&D hub above, giving students hands-on research into crop yields under non-ideal growing conditions.

🌍In Rîșcova, Moldova, alongside GlobalMedic, we deployed a 267 sq. ft. indoor hydroponic farm capable of growing 1,000+ plants at once, which is now a year-round food security hub feeding vulnerable local families and Ukrainian refugees.

🍅At the Red Deer Food Bank in Alberta, working with GlobalMedic and NuLeaf Farms, we installed a hydroponic system now growing fresh cherry tomatoes year-round for the community.

And beyond these partnerships, many of our units are already integrated into urban condos, offices, and schools, helping cut food miles down to zero.

A campus cafeteria. A research greenhouse. A refugee support hub. A food bank. These different contexts support the same core idea of growing food closer to the people who need it, and using up to 95% less water along the way.

That's what our food security innovation looks like in practice, and we're grateful to every partner who's helped us prove it out.

06/30/2026

We talk a lot about what we're building, but every so often it's worth going back to basics.

So what actually goes into keeping an indoor farm running? It comes down to managing four aspects simultaneously:

💧 Water and nutrients: Plants need 13 essential minerals delivered through precise irrigation. But the harder part is pH and EC, both checked daily, because pH determines whether the plant can absorb what it's being fed, and EC tells you whether the nutrient mix is too strong or too weak.

💡LED Lighting: Rather than just being on or off, the light is tuned across intensity, spectrum, and photoperiod, each one calibrated for the specific crop.

⛅ Climate: Temperature is the one of the most important physical variables, as it controls metabolic rate and water loss. Airflow matters just as much to prevent humid pockets where disease could take hold.

🚰 Cleanliness and hygiene: Indoor farms are closed systems, so contamination can spread a pathogen to an entire crop within days, which is why sanitation is key.

In our operations, all of these factors work in unison, and they're all being monitored and adjusted in real time. It's more involved than four bullet points can really capture, but that's the short version. 🍀

06/23/2026

What if the future of food production was already being grown in a warehouse down the street?

Vertical farming is not a concept anymore. It is operational, it is scaling, and it is quietly reshaping how food moves from a farm to your table in ways that use fewer resources and create less environmental impact.

One vertical setup can replace 35 to 50 acres of farmland. Same output. A fraction of the space.

But here is what most people still do not fully understand: how it actually stacks up against traditional agriculture when you get into the real numbers. Land use, water, yield consistency, supply chain distance, and how the two processes even interact in hybrid ways. The comparison is more interesting than you think.

We have a full breakdown on our blog. No hype, just the side by side.

Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4vr3Swm