Who Are we?

Our Mission

  • Make nutritious, sustainably grown produce accessible to Canadians by growing locally. 

Interius Farms was founded out of a desire to make fresh, sustainable produce available to Canadians year-round. After noticing that the produce in local stores was faded, brown and expensive during the winter months, Interius Farms’ founders realized the obvious: Canada’s climate constrained growing season leaves the country dependent on imports. 

Each year Canada imports up to 500,000 tons of leafy greens from distant and water-strained regions such as California, Arizona and Mexico. By eliminating this  5,000 km journey from farm to table, Interius Farms aims to provide Canadians with produce that is better for people and our planet. 

How We Grow Sustainably

our brand

Our Core Values

These are the values that we pride ourselves on at Interius Farms. We work hard every day to uphold them in every aspect of our business.

  • Accountable
    Interius Farms was born out of a desire to make our food system more sustainable. We are striving to push vertical farming to new standards of energy and resource efficiency.
  • Dependable
    In Canada, our growing season limits our ability to access local produce. We want Canadians to be able to access affordable fresh, nutritious produce year round.
  • Innovative
    We are constantly seeking better ways to serve our communities with more nutritious and efficiently grown produce.
  • Truly Local
    We're not just about producing food locally; Interius seeks to have a positive, holistic impact within the communities we serve

where we started

Born in 2018, Interius Farms was formed out of a realization that Canada depends on imported produce during the winter months, which has a negative effect on product availability, price, quality, and sustainability. We wondered how we could farm within our own Montréal community, and discovered vertical farming was the answer! 

We set out to learn more about vertical farming, reading anything we could get our hands on, attending tours of vertical farms, and interviewing vertical farmers and academic experts from McGill’s McDonald Campus. 

We soon realized just how energy intensive these farms are, due to the vast power demands of artificial lighting. Despite the massive improvements in commercial grade LED lighting, the artificial light still consumed too much power. With this problem in mind, we began to think about our local community and realized that Quebec offered a unique environment: Quebec is almost solely supplied by hydro-electric power, which is not only renewable, but also extremely inexpensive. 

Despite the low cost of energy in Quebec, we still had to address the efficiency of established lighting practices. We set out to design a solution, and our first proof-of-concept design was erected in the Spring of 2019. The system consisted of a five-foot-tall rack in the corner of a Chicago apartment. It took several months of trial and error, but by late 2019, we had proven to ourselves that there was a way to drastically reduce energy use while maintaining production and spacial efficiency.

In January 2020, we moved into a tiny 150 square-foot room, affectionally dubbed “the barn,” where we built our first scaled prototype. It was here, during the COVID-19 crisis, that we really began to understand the urgency of localizing food production for Canadians. 

In June 2020, we moved into a 1,500 square-foot facility, where we are currently focused on building our first full-size rack prototype, suited for commercial applications. As we refine our design, we will be producing hundreds of pounds of lettuce, kale, basil, parsley, and cilantro, each month. We can’t wait to show you how good local produce can taste!