Gabriel Forero has spent nearly a decade navigating the realities of commercial greenhouse production in Alberta. Before that, he managed open-field crops in Colombia — potatoes, lettuce, carrots — in an entirely different growing context. His transition into Canada’s high-tech greenhouse sector, including a formative stint in the cannabis industry, gave him a perspective that few growers share: technology alone does not make a commercial greenhouse succeed. People do.
In a recent feature by iGrow News, Forero reflects on the leadership lessons, operational challenges, and cultural shifts that defined his experience building a commercial greenhouse in Alberta. His story is directly relevant to any grower or investor currently planning a greenhouse project in the province.
Episode 1 — Greenhouse Success Stories, Sponsored by Harnois Greenhouses
Listen to the full episode below, or keep reading for the key takeaways.
4 Key Insights for Building a Commercial Greenhouse in Alberta
1. Train Your Team on the Why, Not Just the How
Forero’s most transferable lesson is about staff development. When he first took over greenhouse operations in Alberta, his phone never stopped ringing — 25 alerts every hour from his team, unable to make decisions without him.
His solution wasn’t more automation. It was deeper training.
By explaining why each task matters — why monitoring pH, irrigation cycles, and valve pressure isn’t just box-ticking but plant survival — his team became proactive rather than reactive. The result: “Three years ago, I had 25 calls every hour. Now I have one every eight hours.”
For anyone planning a commercial greenhouse in Alberta, this is a critical operational benchmark. Automation reduces labour, but a well-trained team reduces risk.
What to do: Build onboarding that goes beyond protocols. Teach your staff the plant science behind every procedure. Link tasks to outcomes they can observe.
2. Balance Automation with Human Observation
Alberta’s high-tech greenhouses are increasingly automated — climate control, irrigation, nutrient dosing. Forero believes in these systems, but he also believes they can fail silently in ways that dashboards don’t catch.
His example: “The sensor said everything was fine, but when we pulled the plants, they were full of sponges.” The roots had been overwatered for days. Every metric looked normal. No alert was triggered.
His conclusion: human observation is not a backup to technology — it’s a parallel system. Experienced growers notice wilting patterns, colour shifts, and root behaviour that sensors are not designed to detect.
What to do: Schedule daily manual walkthroughs even when your climate control system reports green across the board. Train staff to observe, not just monitor screens.
3. Build a Team That Can Lead Without You
One of Forero’s proudest moments as a greenhouse manager came when he had to travel abroad unexpectedly. Before leaving, he set a single challenge for his team: “I don’t want to see a single dead plant when I come back.”
They delivered — without daily check-ins, without micromanagement, without him.
This kind of operational autonomy doesn’t happen by accident. It is the direct result of trust built through consistent training, clear expectations, and a culture where staff feel accountable for outcomes, not just tasks.
For a commercial greenhouse operation in Alberta — where labour shortages are a known challenge and margins are tight — a self-sufficient team is a competitive advantage, not a luxury.
What to do: Gradually expand your team’s decision-making scope. Let them solve small problems independently before they face large ones alone.
4. Adapt Global Plant Science to Alberta’s Local Conditions
Moving from Colombia’s open-field agriculture to an Alberta commercial greenhouse was not just a change of location — it was a change of system, climate, photoperiod, and market.
Yet Forero found that the fundamentals of plant science remained constant: roots need oxygen, leaves need light, stress manifests visually before it shows on sensors. What changed was how those fundamentals are managed in the context of Alberta’s short days, cold winters, and specific market demands for local produce.
His perspective reinforces something Harnois has seen across hundreds of projects: the growers who succeed in Alberta’s greenhouse sector are those who combine technical expertise with genuine knowledge of local growing conditions — and who invest in both before their first crop.
What to do: Before finalising your greenhouse design for Alberta, consult with growers who have operated in the province. Climate-specific design choices — insulation, supplemental lighting, heating systems — will directly affect your yield and your energy costs.
Why Forero's Experience Matters for Your Alberta Greenhouse Project
If you are currently evaluating whether to build a commercial greenhouse in Alberta, Forero’s career offers a practical framework — not a theoretical one.
The four lessons above point to a consistent truth: a commercial greenhouse is a sociotechnical system. The structure, the equipment, and the climate controls are only as effective as the people operating them and the culture surrounding them.
Here is what that means in practice for your project:
- Invest in staff training and empowerment before your first harvest, not after your first crisis.
- Combine automation with structured human observation to manage Alberta’s environment, seasonality, and energy costs.
- Build a team culture capable of adapting to change — Alberta’s greenhouse sector is evolving fast, and rigid operations will fall behind.
- Recognise that transitioning to controlled-environment agriculture in Alberta requires plant science fundamentals, local adaptation, and strong leadership at every level.
Whether you are building your first greenhouse or scaling an existing operation, the structural and operational decisions you make in the planning phase will determine your ceiling. Harnois works with growers at every stage of that process — from site assessment and structure selection to equipment specification and post-installation support.
