Photo © thruer | Adobe Stock

When it comes to keeping up with trends, are you in the driver’s seat or a passenger hanging on for dear life? Reacting to trends in the marketplace can feel like riding a roller coaster. By the time you can tap into a new foodie trend with your produce, the trend may have already passed. So, what are produce growers to do? Acknowledge the current trends you must respond to but resolve to get behind the wheel to drive the future trends.

Taking an assertive approach to marketing and trend-making can be a tough order for many produce growers. You have plenty to do on your plate already. But in today’s market, there’s really no way around getting involved with direct marketing to your end consumer. Ultimately, you are in control of your brand perception, and you must find ways to differentiate your product to improve margins and net profit. Now’s a great time to dive into market trends to make sure you’re not missing out on key opportunities.

A place to start

A good place to start is an audit of what you are already growing, and how you’re growing it, to see what matches up with current growing trends. There are a few current trends that will most likely continue to be key factors for produce growers for many years to come. If you haven’t already responded to these growing trends, you still have time to leverage them and integrate the messaging into your marketing long-term:

• Flavor; Consumers prioritize flavorful produce
• Organically grown produce + “clean” ingredients
• Food as medicine — health and wellness
• Convenience — produce size and portions
• Transparency + traceability
• Locally grown food
• Online ordering + home delivery

Using these key trends, you can make any changes needed to your processes or production. Then fine-tune your customer targeting and your brand messaging to help you stand out in your market — today, and in the future. With all produce growers adapting to these trends, the key for you will be to differentiate your produce from everyone else’s.

Less meat

Another important and growing trend is the reduction of meat in American and European diets. As more Americans either go meatless or reduce the amount of meat they eat, they’re turning to more creative uses for fresh produce. To keep up with these culinary trends, pay attention to popular diets, such as Keto or Paleo diets, but also many new emerging diet labels that guide consumers toward or away from specific produce.

Hyperlocal

Demand for fresh produce is growing and that’s a good thing. But increased demand will put strains on produce growers, especially in the form of both labor and trucking shortages. Hyperlocal food is already a growing trend with consumers, but a hyperlocal market may become much more of a necessity for growers. So why wait? Now is the time to invest in growing your local sales.

Going hyperlocal with your produce sales requires you to take a deep dive into your local market resources. How closely do you work with nearby chefs? Do you have any relationships with local foodies or influencers? Do you participate in, or run your own, local farmers market? What about local school food programs?

When it comes to local restaurants and chefs, they are looking for highly perishable produce they can get delivered in 24 hours or less. Farm-to-table freshness plus great flavor is the peak differentiator. Restaurants and chefs want growers they can rely on for consistent yet unique availability and quick turns.

Ultimately, you are in control of your brand perception, and you must find ways to differentiate your product to improve margins and net profit.

Seasonality

Growing under glass can also afford you the opportunity to offer availability of key produce year-round to your hyperlocal market. 365 availability will most likely become a bigger customer demand, if transport issues continue to be challenging. 365 availability can also be a huge differentiator for you as a grower.

Breeding

Produce consumers rarely know the difference between different varieties of fruit or vegetable. But they do know flavor, timing and convenience. Consumers who want these choices and improvements will continue putting market pressure on both breeders and growers. To stay on top of — or ahead of — flavor, size and convenience preferences, you need to monitor the market continuously. If you are breeding or working directly with breeders, make sure you’re tailoring for consumer preference — not just what you think is cool!

Respond faster

You might not be able to shift production or packaging quickly, but you can quickly pivot your content and market voice. If you’re investing in creating quality content around your product — which you should be — then you can at least respond quickly to changing trends on that front. Blog posts, recipes, social media engagement, and videos about your produce that incorporate a current or upcoming trend is a great way to stay relevant.

Stay ahead

Keeping up with and staying ahead of consumer trends will require you to get a little technical. Ever used Google Trends? If not, get online and search it now. You’ll see an application come up that allows you to enter keywords and phrases to track their search popularity by location. It’s quite fascinating. Also, set Google Alerts for specific keywords or phrases (including your company name and brands) to be sent to your inbox regularly. These alerts will keep you up to date on key trends and events that you may never know about otherwise.

Keeping up with — and driving — trends is certainly no easy task. To tackle it, think of your customer as your partner. Unless you know what they’re thinking and what’s important to them, it’s tough to have a successful relationship.

This year’s Cultivate was full of sessions covering everything from leadership to email campaigns to sustainability. Here are some of the best educational pieces we found during the show.

For full versions of these articles and more coverage of Cultivate’19, click here.

Too boring, too complicated and too irrelevant. Does that sound like the foundation of a great message? Rafael Mael, marketing strategist, public speaker and founder of Maelstrom Marketing, said the message behind most companies are all three of these things. During his educational session at Cultivate’19 in Columbus, Ohio, he gave advice on how to overcome these challenges and create an irresistible message.

“It all comes down to the art of messaging,” Mael said. “You can call it branding, you can call it marketing and more, but they’re all the variation of the same thing, which is the ability to connect and get stuff done.”

From boring to interesting

According to Mael, the biggest way to overcome a boring message is by evoking curiosity. “Somehow, you have to make them curious. You have to make them want to know more about you,” he said. To do this, he advised “wrapping the message.”

Some ways to wrap your message is by using testimonials as teasers. “Testimonials are tremendously underutilized,” Mael said. “A short and sweet testimonial makes people wonder, ‘Why are you so good?’ “Why are they so happy?’” Other ways are showing your company’s impact by stating the number of customers you have and giving them an inside look by sharing your team and origin.

From complicated to clear

“Your job is to figure out what your underlying message is and how you can relay it to consumers,” Mael said. “The amateur move to is spill it all out; the professional move is to say it short and sweet.” By “short and sweet,” Mael referred to the idea that companies must share every service they offer, instead of a shortened overview. “When you simplify a message, when you streamline a message, you don’t lose, you gain,” he said. “When you incorporate more, the message degrades.”

To ensure a clear message, Mael advised to share it with a child between the ages of 7 and 9. “Kids don’t know fancy jargon,” he said. “If they don’t get it, the problem isn’t them, it’s you.” For a clear message, Mael said to “do surgery,” which means to dissect your original message, throw away unnecessary words and keep the important ones. “You have to be really clear about your message,” he said. “Work it until it’s less.”

From irrelevant to relatable

For a relatable message, Mael suggested finding ways to connect with customers. According to him, mentioning partnerships and suppliers will appeal to an already established relationship, and enhance trust and marketability, which is the goal of any business.

By following these three tips, Mael is sure that any message will become unforgettable, worthwhile and long lasting. “We all love stories, but we have a misconception that a great story is a huge story. A great story doesn’t have to be big, it has to valuable, memorable and finally, good enough so they can pass it along,” Mael said. “We must be able to communicate with our customers if we want to retain them and grow our shared wealth.” — Sierra Allen

Having trouble thinking of catchy subject lines, promotions or newsletter topics? Leslie Leach, head of marketing and operations at Plantt, an e-commerce solution for garden centers, shared her expertise on email marketing basics and fun campaigns at Cultivate’19 in Columbus, Ohio.

Email basics                   

“First, it’s important to understand the five steps to a great customer email,” Leach said, “which are the subject line, body, CTA (call to action), timing and mobile."

For a strong subject line, she suggested using numbers and avoiding salesy language. For the body, Leach advised focusing on benefits, writing in third person and personalizing the message. For the call to action, Leach said it should be easy to spot and thoughtful and should avoid the overused, “shop now” language. She also advised to send emails any weekday between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m.., and to always test emails on mobile phones to ensure device adaptability.  

According to Leach, open rate is dependent upon how strong your subject line is, but the click through rate is equally important because it shows that consumers are digesting the information. “Click through rate is how well you deliver on what you promised in the subject line,” she said. “You want to bring those two things together for a great email.”                                                                                               

Email campaigns can fall into the welcome, promotional, social, automated, special and newsletter category. Leach suggested using an assortment of campaigns for creativity and personal touch.

Welcome email                 

A welcome email is used when an account is first created. It can incorporate a generic “thank you” to new users or the return policy to establish confidence for online shopping. “Any way to just make people feel comfortable about shopping with you,” Leach said.

Building trust   

Email two is a follow-up that is intended to build trust between the company and consumer. According to Leach, using testimonials is a good way to connect and establish trust. “Sharing what people think of you makes you more credible in their eyes,” she said.

Abandoned cart                                                                                                       

The abandoned cart email is used when potential shoppers move items to their cart, but never finish the checkout process. This email reminds consumers about their items and shows them that you care. “A re-targeting ad is when someone visits a particular item on an e-commerce site and neglects it, but sees reminding ads afterwards,” Leach said. “This is the same but by email.” This is also a good chance to suggest similar items that may complement a purchase, she said.

Segmented emails 

Segmentation is sending the right email to the right person at the right time. Some e-commerce behaviors that can be segmented are average order value, purchase frequency, previous purchases, products browsed, geographic location and personality.

Personalized emails

Personalized emails can also fall into the segmented category by separating consumers into potential customers, website shoppers and repeat shoppers. For potential shoppers, you can offer first-time only coupons, suggest products based off previous purchases for website shoppers and offer loyalty coupons and request product reviews from repeat shoppers.

Product promotion  

Promotional emails are good for announcing new products and services or highlighting on-sale items. According to Leach, purchase rates are higher when a “click here” link is included.

Category Sale                                                                                                                              

The category sale email focuses on one department and includes a set time frame of when the sale begins and ends. According to Leach, this campaign can be fun by leveraging psychology. By using FOMO inducing language, or the fear of missing out verbiage such as “limited time only” or “just a few days left,” Leach said consumers are more likely to purchase items they think they cannot get any other time. Flipping language is another way to leverage psychology. “Instead of saying ‘$10 off,’ say they have $10 to spend to make it sound more like a gift or credit, rather than a percentage off,” Leach said.

Website-only offer

These campaigns are ideal for getting rid of leftover or excess items. They’re also a good way to get consumers to shop online and browse extra items they may be inspired to purchase.

Special occasions                                                                                                                 

Special occasion emails are great for capitalizing from birthdays, holidays and seasons, Leach said. Birthday emails can suggest personalized items, while holiday and seasonal emails can suggest themed gifts that are contingent upon on the time. Leach suggested building a 12-month calendar to stay organized.

Social engagement

“This is something you can do to strengthen your social media presence and following,” Leach said. “You can ask consumers to invite friends to sign up, take a photo with success stories and use special hashtags for your garden center.”

Educational emails

Educational campaigns can be a mixture of curated and written content to inspire purchases and share knowledge. “It’s a much lush way of educating and encouraging them to buy something,” Leach said. She suggested doing an email round-up of information that’s helpful to certain regions, seasons and popular purchases.

While Leach suggested using the campaigns that work for you, she advised using a mixture of emails, like these 11 campaigns, to keep consumers enthused, involved and looking for more. — Sierra Allen

Supply chain waste can drive up prices and cut into profit margins. But by considering some changes to shipping, you could find a way to keep those costs down. “If you’ve got air in a trailer, you’re wasting money,” said AJ Lambert, director of sales and account management at Container Centralen, at Cultivate’19 in Columbus, Ohio.

Some of the biggest problems simply come from the labor associated with shipping. If you’re using corrugated boxes, there’s a lot of handling, from putting boxes together to loading, unloading and breaking down boxes.

By simply making a switch to racks, growers can save on labor, but that conversion isn’t going to give you the same payload.

By considering a central distributor, growers can consolidate materials into one semi-truck. A localized box truck can pick up products at various stops and bring them to a distribution center where they’re packed on a semi-truck and shipped out.

“Then the trailer is fully loaded and on its way, whereas drivers in the previous process are spending two hours at each location,” Lambert said.

Transportation regulations

Gary Cortes, founding partner at Flowvision, said growers are also facing issues with touch loads, especially when using deck or California stacking. “The quality of plant is going down when you do that,” he said.

He said that many growers are moving away from touch loads to rack loads because of new ELD laws, which limit drivers to 11 hours of driving and 14 hours of work. “There’s a lot of rules and regulations on it,” Cortes said.

“Transportation regulations forced carriers to reconsider current operating practices,” Lambert said, noting that multi-stop linehaul runs with two- to four-hour load times at each pickup and four hours of unload times meant increasing costs for customers.

“Many carriers stopped this service offering altogether without a dock-to-dock pickup and delivery,” he said. “Having a central spot will save the shipper and the driver a ton of time loading the racks and unloading the racks. Then the driver can turn faster and get that load. That typically equates to lower prices.”

Here are a few solutions the pair offered for shipping:

1. Convert from corrugated to racks. It eliminates multiple touches and the need for boxing

2. Decrease overall transportation spend. Smaller growers can blend their products with other growers. A full truckload means less cost per plant being shipped for every grower involved

3. Drivers have more drive time due to dock-to-dock moves. “If you can drive the cost of transportation down, your profit margins with skyrocket,” Lambert said.

4. Greater load and rack optimization means less labor. It’s less handling by the shipper, the driver and the receiver of the product. — Kate Spirgen

Photo courtesy of Celestial Farms

Minister William Winkelman has big plans to supply his whole county with fresh produce. Located in Erie, Pennsylvania, his nonprofit hydroponic farm, Celestial Farms, is only its beginning stages but has its sights set on expansion.

Winkelman decided to grow his own crops before the farm even came to fruition. To avoid spending upwards of $500 a month on groceries for his family, Winkelman started raising and producing what he could. He began researching different methods that would not only be effective, but cost-efficient as well.

“I grew up in the farming community, and as I was looking into proper ways of producing, I stumbled across hydroponic,” Winkelman says.

The inspiration for Celestial Farms

The idea to turn a garden into a full-fledged farm came about from Winkelman’s own realization while shopping. Since the lettuce he purchased came from the West Coast, most of its shelf life had already run out.

“This is the reason why when we go to buy lettuce at the store, we have it for a couple of days and it already starts to wilt,” Winkelman says. “It shouldn’t be wilting that fast.”

Winkelman wants to be able to supply Erie County with fresh produce, with the eventual goal of cutting out product shipped in from the West Coast. The ideal setup for efficiency is two commercial greenhouses that can produce 40,000 heads of lettuce a week.

The focus is on growing Salanova lettuce, Winkelman’s main crop until the farm becomes better-suited for expansion. (Currently, the farm is raising money on Kickstarter.) The product is known for having benefits outside of its nutritional value.

“If you’re growing in soil or hydroponics, you can cut the top of it off and it will regrow itself. There are a lot of advantages to this lettuce,” Winkelman says.

Celestial Farms’ plans

One way Celestial Farms is looking to keep its costs down is through the community. Once up and running, Winkelman plans to reach out to local schools to set up a program where students can work on the farm in exchange for a grant upon graduation. Through this, the need for farmers can be emphasized instead of “beating students to death with the idea of work ethic.”

The grower plans to also do community outreach through food donations. Winkelman aims to give only fresh produce as opposed to the bulk of farms that only donate throwaway produce.

“Why are these people who are less fortunate not able to get something just as good as the rest of everybody else, just because they’re less fortunate? No,” Winkelman says.

Salad bars for local schools and donations to nursing homes are ways Winkelman also sees fit to give back and help others.Yet, he still acknowledges that these things take time. Though there is a ways to go, Winkelman has nothing but optimism for the future of Celestial Farms.

“It’s not about tax write-offs, it’s about giving back,” Winkelman says. “It’s about changing people’s mentalities on how they think about and purchase healthy foods.”

The author is a summer intern with Greenhouse Management magazine.

Measuring pH and electrical conductivity (EC) can be used to check the quality of irrigation water, calibrate fertilizer and acid injectors, and measure nutrients and availability for plant uptake in applied fertilizer solutions and the root zone. Several types of pH/EC meters are available, and vary in size, cost, and how they are used in horticultural practice.

It is important for growers to choose a meter that best meets the measurement needs of their operation. This e-GRO Alert discusses the basics of using pH and EC meters, common types for greenhouses and nurseries, and relative costs.

Basics of using pH and EC meters

What is pH? pH refers to the acidity-basicity of a solution, which influences the solubility and availability of nutrients for plant uptake. This is particularly the case for micronutrients like iron, manganese, and boron. A pH < 7 is acidic, pH > 7 is basic, and a pH equal to 7 is neutral. For most plant species, nutrients are adequately available for uptake at a slightly acidic root zone pH between 5.6 and 6.4.

What is EC? Electrical conductivity (EC) is a measure of total soluble and dissolved salts in solution. EC is measured in units of electrical charge. Dissolved nutrients and non-essential ions such as sodium and chloride all contribute to the EC. EC does not indicate specific concentrations of nutrients or elements — this would require sending samples to a commercial testing laboratory.

Choosing the right pH/EC meter

Calibrating and storing pH and EC meters. Regular calibration and maintenance of pH/EC meters ensures measurement accuracy and a long meter shelf-life. pH sensors can become damaged if they dry out, and should be kept protected in a proper storage solution when not in use. EC sensors can usually be stored wet or dry without damage. It is important to keep standard calibration and storage solutions on stock for your pH/EC meter, and refer to the instruction manual for guidelines on using, calibrating, and storing meters.

Testing pH and EC. Monitoring irrigation water EC is important because soluble salts in the water supply can fluctuate and influence fertilization and irrigation. Checking pH and EC of applied fertilizer and hydroponic nutrient solutions helps determine whether fertilizer and mineral acid injectors are working and if sufficient nutrients are being supplied. Measuring root substrate pH and EC can indicate the quantity and availability of nutrients for plant uptake.

To learn how to calibrate fertilizer injectors using EC meters, check out the University of New Hampshire Extension article by Dr. Brian Krug titled ‘Fertilizer Injector Calibration’ (here).

Common types of pH and EC meters

Hand-held and portable meters. Sometimes referred to as “pen” meters, hand-held and portable meters are battery-powered, low cost and practical for both small and large grower operations (Figs. 1 and 2). Many are combination meters and measure pH and EC. An advantage of hand-held/portable meters is that they can be carried easily by workers to conduct “spot-checks” of pH/EC in the greenhouse. Some pH/EC meters have special “needle” probes designed for sticking directly into substrates, but most are designed to measure in liquid or extracted substrate solution. The cost of many hand-held and portable meters ranges from approximately $100 to $300.

Bench-top pH/EC meters. These meters are placed on benches or tables as shown in Fig. 3, and typically consist of separate pH and EC sensors plugged into an electronic console. Some consoles can log measurements for record-keeping, and may also have options for measuring individual nutrients, dissolved oxygen, and other parameters. Bench-top meters are common in research laboratories and large growing operations that process numerous samples. Bench-top meters are usually more expensive compared to hand-held meters and range from approximately $500 to over $3,000.

In-line pH/EC sensors. “In-line” sensors are installed in irrigation pipes or reservoir tanks to monitor pH and EC of fertilizer solutions entering and leaving the crop (Fig. 4). Sensors are often linked with environmental control computers and injection systems for automatic injection of mineral acids/bases and fertilizer to maintain target pH and nutrient levels (Fig. 5). In-line sensors for pH and EC are relatively inexpensive (<$1000), but there are extra costs associated with installation, plumbing, and environmental control systems. In-line pH/EC meters are most common with larger growers as well as hydroponic operations.

Conclusions

pH and EC meters can be used to check the quality of irrigation water, calibrate fertilizer and acid injectors, and measure nutrient availability for plant uptake. Expect to invest at least $100 for a quality pH/EC meter and refer to the instruction manual for guidelines on proper use and handling. Hand-held and portable meters are lowcost and often practical for both smaller and larger growers. Bench-top and in-line pH/EC meters are more expensive, but often come with extra measurement capabilities and are useful in certain production and research scenarios.

The author is an assistant professor of greenhouse horticulture and controlled-environment agriculture at the University of Arkansas. His research areas focus on nutrient and pH management, irrigation water quality, soilless substrates and hydroponics. ryand@uark.edu

This article originally ran as an e-GRO Alert.