A Preview of the 2024 GLASE Summit
September 20, 2024 Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) professionals, researchers, growers, and business owners will gather for the 2024 GLASE Summit in Montreal, Canada on November 6, 2024. Greenhouse Grower, CEAg World‘s sister brand, recently chatted with GLASE Executive Director Gretchen Schimelpfenig about what to expect at this year’s Summit.
Brian Sparks: Let’s start by talking about how many years the GLASE Summit has been going on and then you know what specifically is different and unique about this year’s event.
Gretchen Schimelpfenig: “This will be our third year hosting a GLASE Summit. Our first summit we held at our home base at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Our second summit we went to the hotbed of greenhouse activity in Leamington, Ontario, and this year we’re going to Montreal, Quebec.
“What’s different this year is of course the location, but also, we have a different theme each time and the theme this year is dynamic lighting. We have also increased capacity from 60 attendees to 100.”
Brian Sparks: You know, I was looking at the agenda and one of the things that really stuck out to me was the grower panel that you have planned. Can you talk about that?
Gretchen Schimelpfenig: “I mean, what’s the CEA event without growers really sharing their stories and talking about their challenges and their successes? So, we knew we had to have that as one of our major themes last year, we had Jim Dimena from Red Sun Farms speak as our keynote.
“This year we’re having a U.S. and Canadian grower panel where we have two growers from the U.S. and two growers from the Canada talking about their perspectives that span geography, scale and experience with these different crops, including lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, microgreens and other vegetables.
“No floriculture growers on this, plenty to learn from just being a greenhouse grower in these two different countries.”
Brian Sparks: Looking through the rest of the agenda, I know you’ve got a research panel on tap as well as a pretty dynamic keynote as well. Can you talk about those?
Gretchen Schimelpfenig: “Our keynote that we’re so excited to have is actually one of our GLASE founders, Tessa Pocock. She was involved as one of the original principal investigators, one of the researchers for GLASE.
“So we’re glad to bring her back now that she’s Chief Science Officer at Soli Organic and she’s going to be talking about light, of course, our theme being dynamic lighting, but nature versus nurture. She’s an indoor grower and she has plenty of experience with using supplemental lighting.
“She’s going to cover dynamic lighting in nature and the greenhouse, and talk about how plants react in both sole source and supplemental lighting scenarios. I think it’s going to be a really cool place to learn from someone who used to work at Plenty, works at Soli now, and has been an academic researcher.”
Brian Sparks: Is there anything about the agenda that stands out to you that you want to highlight?
Gretchen Schimelpfenig: “Well, I think it’s unique to have a perspective from Dr. Tessa Pocock. I also think that we’re providing a cool international perspective with our grower panel.
“We’re hosting the event in a very innovative and cool city. Montreal has a lot to offer both from the tech side, but also from the culture side and we think that there’s going to be really great networking opportunities.”
Brian Sparks: If I’m a grower, why should I attend this year’s GLASE Summit?
Gretchen Schimelpfenig: “Well, there are a lot of shows out there, but this is meant to be an intimate and personal gathering where you’re going to be able to speak to everyone who’s there.
“The goal is not to sell things to each other. We’re ultimately here to feature technology, but not have it be installed by any particular manufacturer, but to have it installed in greenhouses to help [growers] excel.
“You’ll be able to meet growers from two different countries and Vivid Canopy networking event that we hope that many growers continue to find value in as we increase diversity in the CEA industry.”
Brian Sparks: Where should folks go to find more information about the Summit?
Gretchen Schimelpfenig: “Well, if you go to the GLASE website at www.glase.org, you can just hover over the events panel and click on 2024 GLASE Summit. Or you can go to our LinkedIn page and find plenty of posts about it there.”
To watch the full video interview, click here.