My family is from Leamington and my grandfather laments to this day about how sad it is that the acres upon acres of glass and plastic have been plopped on top of the most fertile land in Canada. The Leamington area has seriously mild and fair weather compared to the rest of Canada and a sizeable chunk of its farmland comes from drained marshes. Fresh water is limitless as well (Lake Erie). That combo is killer and is the reason Leamington became the tomato capital of North America. Leamington was so successful in this that Heinz dropped a large factory directly in the heart of the city and bought up the majority of the area's tomato supply. Good on the farmers for making the most of their acreages but it's sad to see land you don't find just anywhere trapped beneath glass.
I should also add that outdoor tomatoes are still so much tastier. You could test the same type of plant grown inside and outside, just meters apart, and know immediately which one is which.
But the output per acre is multiples of regular outdoor farming, so it's the opposite of wasting the fertile land. It's making the land area even more productive.
W/re taste it's possibly just the variety grown rather than the cultivation method.
I don't know anything about lemmington, but assuming the land is highly fertile, you could greenhouse elsewhere rather than covering high-quality land with concrete.
It's hard to google for, but it appears that hydroponics allow for more crop per acre. So the article is actually conflating greenhouses and hydroponics (outdoor hydroponics seems to be very rare, so the latter more-or-less implies the former)
Pouring concrete on top of fertile land so you can grow plants in hydroponic systems is absolutely a waste of fertile land. They could poor that concrete and put those greenhouses anywhere. Put them somewhere with bad soil, and leave the good soil for growing food.
Several of our customers are Leamington tomato processors. I think part of it has to do with where the processing infrastructure is located. I doubt there is 1M+ square feet of tomato grading, sorting, processing and canning equipment other places in North Eastern North America. The whole downstream industry is built around Leamington and area (northern Michigan/southern Ontario). I would argue that building hydroponics near all the infrastructure makes sense then rebuilding the infrastructure somewhere more arid.
Likely run in land use issues where as putting green houses on existing farm land would not raise many if any objections. Plus farm land is generally flat which makes it easier.
Though it might be a great way to reuse a lot of old industrial areas provided the tax load can be adjusted appropriately to reflect its use in farming. Just look to Detroit and such. Surely all those dead neighborhoods with proper permanent tax changes would be great for such as this.
I'm originally from neighbouring Kingsville (small world!). It's been interesting to me that more development of greenhouses hasn't happened in Harrow where the land is less fertile, and vastly cheaper.
I have been commenting to my wife about why are all the Tomatoes down here in TX from Ontario?
We in Ontario are still left wondering why all our tomatoes are from the southern US. We're stocked with GMO products these days that aren't nearly as good as what we were used to.
I guess our tomatoes sell better in Texas than they do here...
What's interesting is that with global warming, more of that land is available. Spring is coming weeks earlier in the far north, and the father north you go the more daylight hours you have in the summer.
In the summer I like to get tomatoes from my garden slice it up and put it on some rosemary ciabatta bread, toasted. Maybe a bit of mayo or instead some olive oil.
I should also add that outdoor tomatoes are still so much tastier. You could test the same type of plant grown inside and outside, just meters apart, and know immediately which one is which.