A Nova Scotian agritech company that first began at the Perennia Innovation Centre is now looking forward building farms across the country with their advanced crop growing systems.

TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture’s systems are now in use at their subsidiary company GoodLeaf Farms, an idea that first came about to address food security issues in Nova Scotia.

TruLeaf manager of business development Greg Veinott says the initial aim of the company was to grow nutrient-dense food for people who might not have access to it and that continues to be the aim today.

“The idea came from kind of a lightbulb moment when our CEO (Gregg Curwin) saw pictures of a similar setup in Japan in a magazine and decided he wanted to take that technology, build it out and adapt it for here,” Veinott says.

“We had some folks that came together at the Perennia Innovation Centre and really took that idea from a cocktail napkin and started building and prototyping technologies, developing different systems to control the environments, to change the temperature of the air, to douse nutrients into water, to distribute water.”

That technology is a collaboration of a number of different elements including off-the-shelf technologies like HVAC, LED lighting and water distribution. Veinott says TruLeaf brought all those elements together to create a system that allowed them to work together to grow plants. . . 

Read the full story in Huddle.

Read Entrevestor's article on TruLeaf's $8.5 million funding round.