Canada: Going green with Microgreens Ottawa
“The problem is that the product has to be fresh to be delicious and nutritious,” Baart explains. “Not sitting on a shelf for two weeks.
City News
Nov 23, 2022
Excerpt:
Before he opened his organic urban farm Microgreens Ottawa, the Ottawa entrepreneur worked close to 60 jobs and three careers including selling computers for IBM, real estate and pop for Pepsi. He also did renovations, landscaping, drove a transport truck, worked in telemarketing and rep-ed for an airline and a car rental agency.
His life in sales was on track until 2013 when he realized he needed to do something completely different, something meaningful, something good for the planet.
“Everything I tried, I liked, but it didn’t hold my interest long-term,” Baart explains. “I didn’t find the work fulfilling at all. It was a means to an end. I wanted to find something that would make a difference, make my corner of the world a better place.”
The lightbulb of insight went off after he saw a documentary about organic farming and microgreens, vegetables and herbs organically grown indoors hydroponically. It was to be the wave of the future. So, in addition to scratching his altruistic itch, it looked like a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor to an up-and-coming industry.
“It made sense,” Baart recalls. “I kept reading about food security, food cleanliness as the way of the future. After all, you can have everything motoring along great, but if you don’t have food, you’re in trouble.”
