Boycotting U.S. Lettuce? Here’s How.

Canada may be rich in canola, potash and oil, but when it comes to lettuce, we’re in a bit of a crunch. Despite our vast farmland, we rely heavily on the United States—especially California—for our salad supply. Roughly 90 per cent of our leafy greens are imported, leaving grocery chains vulnerable to fallout from Donald Trump’s on-and-off-and-on-again tariffs.

Amid growing concerns about food security, a new greenhouse in King City, just north of Toronto, offers a glimpse of a more self-sufficient future. Haven Greens, a five-acre facility that harvested its first crop of leafy greens this spring, operates the first fully automated greenhouse in Canada. Its founder and CEO, Jay Willmot, is a third-generation farmer who’s parlayed his fixation on food sovereignty into a super-advanced agri-tech venture, capable of producing up to 10,000 pounds of lettuce every single day. Willmot spoke to Maclean’s about automated farming, the withering effects of U.S. trade tensions and why this crisis is a wake-up call for Canada to get growing.

Vertical farming is already taking off across Canada, but your new facility represents another major leap forward. What’s the significance of having the country’s first fully automated greenhouse?

Other greenhouses in Canada automate their climate or irrigation systems, but what sets this one apart is that it’s completely hands-free. No one touches the crops from seeding to harvest—the only human contact is when our greens are packed into boxes. Everything else is handled by machinery, controlled by a central computer system. That system, first developed in the Netherlands, automates nearly every part of the operation: irrigation, climate control and lighting. It even syncs with live weather data to adjust our shade curtains in anticipation of cloud cover or sunlight. The entire facility runs on a network of conveyor belts and swing arms that buzz, whirr and shuffle plants through each stage of production. And because there are no harvesters, the facility requires far fewer workers than a traditional greenhouse—fewer hands, but higher-skilled roles. Many of our employees are scientists with master’s degrees.

That sounds like a complex operation. How is all that tech actually helping your crops?

I started developing the greenhouse in 2021, and I’ve basically been moonlighting as a systems engineer ever since. AI optimizes our growing conditions, CO₂ recapture feeds the crops, and an irrigation system uses UV tech, advanced filtration and sensor networks to monitor data like pH levels. As a result, we’re getting greens with fewer crop issues and lower production costs. We set an annual yield target of 100 kilograms per square metre, and just two weeks after launch, we’re on pace to hit that goal in a year’s time.

What kinds of greens are you growing—and why focus solely on those instead of a wider range of veg?

My specific interest in leafy greens came from personal frustration. When I was a commerce student at Dalhousie, I had a professor who said, “Make a list of things that piss you off, and those are your business ideas.” Number one on my list was grocery store lettuce. Canada imports the vast majority of its greens, and the lettuce I was buying in stores was always one or two days from its best-before date—and turned to mush before I could finish it all. I wanted to fix that with a more local option. 

Our main products are green crystal lettuces—what most people would consider standard salad lettuce. One of our primary varieties is called Finstar, a romaine hybrid. It has a curly leaf, great crunch and a subtle sweetness. We also grow red baby romaine and butter leaves, as well as arugula and mustard greens, which we blend into a spring mix. We’re experimenting with other crops too, like baby bok choy and mizuna, to see what performs well in terms of taste, shelf life and yield. Our current greens have a shelf life of 12 to 16 days.

How much of an impact could the U.S. trade situation have on Canada’s food supply?

Honestly, it’s anyone’s guess. The current U.S. administration is so mercurial that the only constant is unpredictability. They’ve floated direct tariffs on foods, then walked it back—but the threat alone has already shaken farmers’ confidence. Haven built our model to serve the local market, so we’re in a good position to ride out some of that instability. Not every grower in Ontario can say the same—many built their whole operation around exporting to the U.S. 

The trade tension is just one part of a larger issue. At the end of 2022, we saw massive price shocks for leafy greens due to crop diseases in western states like California and in northern Mexico. That’s when you started seeing those $15 bags of romaine on grocery store shelves. Add to that fuel prices, labour shortages and climate volatility, and it’s clear that Canada needs its own food-sovereignty strategy—regardless of who’s in the White House.

Have you spoken to other farmers about how they’re weathering the tariff situation?

Yes, and I’ve gotten a wide range of reactions. Smaller producers have more flexibility to adapt and switch to selling locally. But across the country, bigger companies that rely on the U.S. market are in a tougher spot. Some are laying people off. Others are fully relocating operations to south of the border. A few are still scrambling to figure out their next steps. Supply chains don’t turn on a dime. These new trade policies were announced earlier this year, and that’s not a lot of time to reconfigure your entire business model. We were lucky—we started developing our greenhouse a few years ago. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today.

Long before the U.S. trade fracas, you were a big proponent of Canadian food sovereignty—where does that passion come from?

I come from a family of farmers that’s operated in King City since 1967. We used to be one of Canada’s top horse racing and breeding outfits, but it’s notoriously difficult to stay profitable year-in, year-out, in that world. By the late 2000s, we had to ask ourselves: do we double down on racing, sell the land or pivot into something else? We chose the third option. 

We started with beekeeping, chickens and some small-scale artisanal veggies for our own private use and to distribute to neighbours. We then got seriously into renewable energy—developing five solar power plants across Ontario, including one on our farm. That laid the foundation for our greens business. We’re open to expanding into other crops, whether that’s tomatoes, strawberries or peppers. But for now, the focus is on finishing what we started with the greenhouse.

Given our climate, growing fresh produce in Canada has always been a challenge. How much of an uphill battle is it for us to actually achieve self-sufficiency, greens-wise?

It’s definitely not easy. We have a short growing season, and for most crops, that means we can’t grow year-round. A lot of Canadian farmers have shifted toward root vegetables or cash crops like corn, wheat, soy and canola—things that are easier to grow, store and sell through well-established export channels to countries like China or the U.S. Fresh produce is way more complicated. Lettuce, for example, has a longer growth cycle when grown in fields, and it’s a very physical crop to harvest. It’s also vulnerable at a lot of points in the process—weather, labour shortages, contamination. That’s why you’re seeing fewer and fewer farmers growing field greens in Canada. 

I think we’re at the same kind of turning point that tomatoes hit in the 1990s, when greenhouse production really took off. In my view, we’re just a few decades away from leafy greens being mostly grown indoors.

Could this tariff crisis act as a catalyst for food innovation in Canada?

I hope so. There’s an old farmer’s saying: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.” If it took a trade war to light a fire under us, so be it. Another thing to keep in mind is that Canada’s got a growing population and fewer and fewer farmers. Many are aging out of the profession, and younger folks aren’t rushing to replace them. At more innovative companies, though, we’re starting to see a generational shift. Some of our team members are in their twenties, drawn to the greenhouse by what’s becoming possible with automation. We need more of that excitement in farming.

What kinds of farming innovations should we invest in?

Innovation doesn’t just mean growing more food; it means rethinking how we do everything. As an example, we can produce green hydrogen—a clean fuel made by using renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen—and convert it into ammonia to make fertilizer domestically. Right now, we rely on the U.S. for much of our supply of that too, which isn’t ideal in the middle of a tariff war. If we can synthesize it ourselves using clean energy, we can vertically integrate that part of the food system and become far more independent.

Do any other innovations excite you?

Another is seed phenotyping, which can develop crops that are better suited to Canadian conditions. It’s essentially crossbreeding different plants to produce ones with the traits we want, whether that’s crunchier lettuce or disease-resistant tomatoes. A lot of that work is driven by R&D hubs like the University of Guelph, but I’d love to see more investment in that space across Canada more generally. 

Do you see a future where Canada could fully supply its own greens—no imports needed?

Theoretically, sure. But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, and probably not in my lifetime. Field crops aren’t going anywhere; they’ll remain the lowest-cost way to grow food for a long time. What I do see is a growing relationship between traditional agricultural operations and tech-driven ones like ours. That’ll move us forward—not replacing the old system overnight, but building something better alongside it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.