Each year, Produce Grower magazine takes the pulse of the industry by reaching out to growers all over North America to see how their operations are faring. This year, we found that the industry is much the same as it was last year, with production areas, revenues and methods remaining generally the same.

But as the market changes, so do operations, so in this year’s report you’ll find some new information on supplemental lighting, e-commerce, OMRI certification and more.

This year, we surveyed nearly 100 produce growers from all over the U.S. and Canada to get the information you’ll find on the following pages. Please note that due to rounding, not all percentages add up to 100.

Do you have an anecdote about how your produce operation is adjusting to changing consumer demands? Drop us a line at kspirgen@gie.net to keep us up to date.

— Kate Spirgen

From edible flowers to gourmet crops to cannabis and hemp, growers all over North America are shifting to meet new market demands. While some are working hand-in-hand with chefs to supply culinary demands, others are capitalizing on the local food movement and still others are focusing in on gourmet crops.

Find out how growers are embracing new crops and handling new challenges in the following stories:

Business evolution

Ken VandeVrede eyes hemp and medical cannabis as the next growth markets for his business.

Twelve years ago, Ken VandeVrede was looking for a product to help his business — Gro-Rite — branch out of ornamental production and drive more year-round sales. His solution: hydroponic basil and leafy greens production.

“That was the natural evolution to a next crop for us,” he says. 

Today, VandeVrede sees hemp and medical cannabis as the next evolution. Licenses are not yet available for hemp production in New Jersey, and he was denied a license to grow medical cannabis last year. But VandeVredehe has a plan in place on how to best grow it and a company — Hillview Med — as an avenue through which to sell the product. The plan is to begin growing at the business’ main growing facility in New Jersey as soon as possible. VandeVrede serves as CEO of Hillview med and previously served as the COO of Terra Tech, a cannabis operation, from 2013 to 2018.

“I think New Jersey will be a very good market for both because the licenses they are giving out for medical cannabis and hemp is a new growth market,” VandeVrede says. In order to court investment and increase the long-term viability of the business, he says, adding new crops was needed.

VandeVrede, though, still thinks both the ornamental and produce markets are still healthy despite several businesses across the country either scaling back production to make room for hemp or switching to hemp altogether. In his mind, producers who completely leave either market will leave a profitable hole for existing growers to step into and fill.

“It’s not like we are going away from our ornamentals. It’s not like we are going away from our produce,” VandeVrede says. “It’s just that we see big opportunities in the cannabis and hemp markets here in New Jersey and across the East Coast and IP in extraction for these products. We feel the industry is set up to allow us to diversify as an agriculture company into other products. There are going to be significant opportunities in both spaces.”  –Chris Manning

A grower’s province in produce

Growing premium crops and selling them for high prices is working well for British Columbia grower Nora von Gerichten, who plans to drop commercial production of her more conventional crops in 2020.

After working as an English and history high school teacher while importing and selling orchids on the side, Nora von Gerichten has found her niche in produce.

As current manager of the greenhouse and potted plants at Wildwood Ecological Labs in Powell River, British Columbia, she now grows and sells baby ginger and wasabi.

This year, she expects about half of her revenue to come from ginger, grown in the greenhouse, and wasabi, grown outside in the ground in a temperate rainforest climate. She anticipates the other half to come from other crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. For 2020, she plans to only sell baby ginger and wasabi, while producing other crops just for her own family.

“Simply, wasabi and ginger are easy crops compared to tomatoes,” she says. “Tomatoes — you’ve got to really watch those guys. And wasabi and ginger watch themselves, pretty much.”

At the same time, selling wasabi and ginger requires getting potential customers on board with something new, which can be a challenge. Wasabi sells at $200 a kilogram (2.2 pounds), she says, adding that not a lot of people want to shell out that amount of money for any crop other than cannabis.

“Nobody knows what wasabi is,” she says. “They know wasabi peas, but that’s horseradish; it’s not wasabi. This is real wasabi. It only keeps its heat for about 20 minutes after being grated. This is a gourmet vegetable. But here in British Columbia — there are very few places in the world that can grow wasabi — here is one.”

Her baby ginger doesn’t go for cheap, either. It runs $12 per pound, four times what most people pay in the grocery store. She makes the ginger that she doesn’t sell into candy and offers it online. Wildwood enhances production by growing ginger rhizomes under LEDs.

“The reason it’s more expensive is [because] it’s baby ginger, and the baby ginger doesn’t have all that woody fiber running through it, so it lends itself really well to candied ginger and other stuff like that,” von Gerichten says.

At Wildwood Ecological Labs, challenges arise like they do at any other greenhouse. Along with the pests and diseases that come with growing in a controlled environment, von Gerichten, who grows everything organically, says weather also presents issues, like the unusual amount of rainfall they’ve received for the past winter, spring and summer.

But the operation has carved out a successful niche for itself. It can grow ginger without the pesticides that are so prevalent in Chinese ginger farming. (Many growers in China don’t eat their own ginger.)

Von Gerichten will be the first to point out that her operation is an outlier. Being one of the few CEA baby ginger growers, her two part-time employees know her “quirks,” like that she wants the ginger clean and not broken up into pieces that are too small.

“I can go along with everybody, or I can be slightly different,” she says. “And I decided slightly different is better.” —Patrick Williams

There’s gold in them thar hills

Tega Hills Farm strives to expand its customer base while continuing to grow profitable crops.

Mark and Mindy Robinson of Tega Hills Farm in Fort Mill, South Carolina, have made a name for themselves by growing and selling microgreens, squash blossoms and edible flowers in an area where demand for these crops exceeded supply. They also grow the lettuce, peppers and other vegetables that are staples of many greenhouse operations.

The operation uses a flat filler, water tunnel, evaporative cooling, on-table heat, energy curtains and compact fluorescent lights. (Although they may transfer to LEDs). These technologies allow the operation to grow microgreens year-round, which account for about half of its income. In the process, Mark and Mindy can keep in constant contact with chefs.

“With conventional farming, it’s tough to be able to keep into contact with those chefs year-round,” Mark says. “And for us, the microgreens enabled us to do that, which gives us more opportunity to sell to them a wider variety of crops.”

Mark and Mindy operate a roadside stand on their property. They also sell to farmers markets, restaurants and country clubs.

They aim to open more opportunities working with wholesalers and distributors by acquiring its Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification.

“It’s interesting because for the big wholesalers, they still want to be able to have a local grower that they can portray to their chef that they’re getting product from — it adds to their advertising story,” he says. “Regionally, that ends up being good for them.”

Mark and Mindy have also noted changes to their neighborhood that could allow them to expand their customer base.

“Two and a half years ago, we had a 40-acre farm across the road from us,” Mark says. “That now has 75 single-family homes and 125 townhouses on it, and they’re just about to complete that.”

Behind that new construction are another 1,000 family units within a bicycle’s ride of Tega Hills Farm and Mark is considering finding a way to deliver product to those homes.

This ties in with Mark and Mindy’s mission as board members of the nonprofit Catawba Farm and Food Coalition to provide a sustainable supply of produce to five South Carolina counties and the Catawba Indian Nation. Much of the land in the state is used for forestry products rather than ag, and most of the vegetables are imported.

“We’re trying to set up food hubs in the state of South Carolina to be able to bring more product from the coastal areas up here closer to the Piedmont,” he says. —Patrick Williams

Culinary growing

In her home market of Phoenix, grower Heather Szymura sees local chefs beginning to look for new options for their restaurants.

Based in Phoenix, Twisted Infusions caters to a niche market of chefs looking for locally grown, high-quality produce for their restaurants. According to owner and grower Heather Szymura, the two major trends among her clientele in the last year are edible flowers and baby leaf greens, with the latter often replacing microgreens. 

“It’s been a lot of fun because I’ve been growing 10 different varieties of edible flowers and it’s really been more color-based orders,” Szymura says. “Sometimes it is flavor-based, sometimes they just want a garnish. We were ready for this, and I pushed it on people to consider it as an option.” She says bachelor’s button and marigolds are two of the more popular flowers she’s produced. 

As for the rising popularity of baby leaf products, Szymura thinks chefs are looking for an alternative to microgreens because microgreens have either become overused or used improperly. 

“It’s hit or miss. I think micros are not as popular as they were five years ago,” she says. “People have started looking for alternatives to find that look, plus the bonus of flavor, and I think the baby leaf captures that on some level.” Szymura describes baby leaf products as a middle ground between microgreens and fully grown lettuces. 

Looking ahead to the rest of 2019 and 2020, Szymura’s major endeavor is expanding Twisted Infusions. Recently, she signed a lease to begin growing in a warehouse in Phoenix; the business is currently operated entirely in a container farm. In the warehouse, Szymura says she is installing an NFT hydroponic system and LED lighting as she expands her crop availability to products such as tomatoes and cucumbers. 

The container farm, though, won’t be going away — it fits in the warehouse and will still be used to grow the edible flowers and baby leaf greens chefs want. Szymura hopes her customer base expands too, as some of her competitors in the Phoenix area have moved out of vegetable production and into hemp since hemp production was legalized in December 2018.

“It’s about the ability to grow more,” she says. “I love my container farm — I’m not getting rid of my container farm. But for me, with the land opportunity and the electricity costs, it’s more conducive to run in directly in the warehouse for the volume I want to grow.” —Chris Manning

In hydroponic production, the nutrient solution is one of the most important aspects of any system. Since having adequate mineral nutrients in nutrient solution is essential to hydroponic crop production, the concentrations of nutrients is frequently monitored by measuring the electrical conductivity (EC) and management decisions are made based on measurements. When below acceptable levels concentrated fertilizer is added, or when above acceptable levels clear water is added.

The EC, reflecting the total amounts of nutrients in recirculating solutions, is very useful for day-to-day management of mineral nutrients. However, it doesn’t always provide all the information needed for successfully managing mineral nutrients in recirculating hydroponic systems. The EC measures the total concentration of electrolytes in water. When fertilizer salts are added to water, the salts dissolve and the positively (cations) and negatively (anions) charged components dissociate. For example, when calcium nitrate [Ca(NO3)2] is added to water, it will separate into calcium (Ca2+) and nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-), which are both electrolytes that are measured and reflected in the EC of the nutrient solution. But the EC doesn’t measure the concentration of individual nutrients; rather, it is a measurement reflecting the total concentration of all electrolytes in solution.

Though the EC is a useful measurement for managing nutrient solutions, it doesn’t always provide the information needed for longer-term management of solutions. When concentrated fertilizer from a one- or two-bag (i.e. “A and B tank”) fertilizer is added to nutrient solutions, the ratio of individual nutrients are in fixed proportions to one another. Regardless of how well-designed any fertilizer is, the uptake and use of nutrients by plants in hydroponic systems does not occur in the same ratio in which they are added to nutrient solutions. Therefore, for longer-term nutrient solution management, nutrient solutions should be sampled and submitted to commercial laboratories for a thorough and comprehensive analysis of concentrations for each essential element.

For longer-term nutrient solution management, nutrient solutions should be sampled and submitted to commercial laboratories for a thorough and comprehensive analysis of concentrations for each essential element.

There are several useful pieces of information you can get from commercial nutrient solution analyses. By submitting nutrient solutions for complete analyses, the concentration of each essential element becomes known. There is no more guesswork about how much of each nutrient is in the solution; instead, concentrations for each essential element are measured and reported. These analyses may reveal that an excessive amount of one nutrient may be building up in solutions, potentially leading to a nutrient toxicity. Alternatively, concentrations of other nutrients may be low and insufficient for healthy plant growth and development. While EC reading reflect the total nutrient concentration of a solution, only a complete analysis can measure the concentration of specific essential elements.

While the concentrations of each essential nutrient are important, the ratio of certain nutrients to one another are important. Nutrient antagonisms, where an excess of one nutrient can inhibit the uptake of another, can occur if the concentrations of some nutrients get too high. One of the most well-known antagonistic relationships of nutrients is calcium and magnesium. In their ionic form in nutrient solutions, they compete with one another for uptake; too much calcium inhibits magnesium uptake, and vice-versa. A recommended ratio for the concentrations of these nutrients is three to five parts calcium to one part magnesium. Potassium is another nutrient that can compete with calcium and magnesium for uptake, and its concentration should be monitored to avoid excessive levels.

A common practice for recirculating hydroponic nutrient solutions is to periodically replace a fraction of the nutrient solution. This adds fresh nutrient solution that has every nutrient in better balance with one another, with one another, alleviating deficient or excessive concentrations of nutrients in the solution. However, this replacement is frequently done on a time basis, such as every week or every other week. But is this always necessary? Without measuring the concentrations of mineral nutrients, there is no way of knowing. Using a commercial test to quantify individual nutrient concentrations can help producers make more informed decisions about replacing nutrient solutions. Sufficient concentrations of nutrients in balance with one another may allow forgoing this replacement, saving labor, water and fertilizer. A commercial analysis may reveal deficient or excessive nutrient concentrations and prompt action, thereby avoiding nutrient deficiencies or declines in crop productivity.

One common question is, “How often should nutrient solutions be analyzed?” The simplest answer is “as often as you can afford it.” This really is not meant to be a flippant answer. Submitting recirculating nutrient solution samples to commercial laboratories for analyses has a cost associated with it, running from approximately $25 to $40 per sample, depending on the laboratory and the type of analyses required. Producers will need to weigh the cost of this sample with the value of the results. If careful monitoring of nutrient concentrations allows reduced inputs associated with partial or full nutrient solution replacement, this clearly can pay off. Alternatively, if the nutrient solution analyses reveal deficient or excessive concentrations of nutrients that may lead to deficiencies, toxicities or insufficient growth before they occur, this also has value.

The EC is a great measurement for day-to-day management of mineral nutrient concentrations in recirculating hydroponic solutions. However, the detail revealed in complete nutrient solution analyses can help maximize crop health and productivity, while help avoid unwarranted expenses or unwanted problems.

The author is an assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State University. ccurrey@iastate.edu

CanadaGAP to phase out aquaponics certification

CanadaGAP will begin phasing out certification for aquaponics operations in 2020, citing “potential chemical hazards (antibiotics, for example) associated with aquaponic production” and possible uptake of contaminants through leafy greens.

The government organization will stop GAP-certifying businesses on April 1 and begin revoking certifications from businesses in 2020.

The organization says it uses a generic HACCP model establish food safety requirements. According to CanadaGAP, using that model means more research is needed before aquaponics can be GAP certified again.

>> Read the full story here.

photo: Patrick Williams

Proven Winners to drop out of California Spring Trials in 2020

Proven Winners will not host a stop at California Spring Trials in 2020 and will reevaluate in following years whether or not to rejoin the tour.

With attendance slightly declining at the event in recent years, the company hopes to broaden the pool of horticulture industry members who can learn about its plant introductions, said Jeanine Standard, who handles media and public relations for Proven Winners.

“For us, we are respected for having marketing innovations and new approaches, and this is definitely in that category,” Standard said. “And we’ll be the first to say that there is no guarantee at anything we do. But we felt it was time to try a different approach — something that more of our audience could participate in.”

>> Read the full story here.

© vallefrias | Adobe Stock

Researchers with the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) have found that eggplant varieties developed specifically for growing in greenhouses and high tunnels produced a prolific amount of fruit.

“A comprehensive survey of high tunnel producers that we conducted in 2016 indicated that a surprisingly high number of producers were growing eggplant in tunnels. This number increased further in a 2019 survey. While some cultivars are marketed as being suitable for high tunnel production, there have been no comprehensive studies available to guide selection of eggplant cultivars,” said station researcher Becky Sideman.

According to the USDA’s Census of Agriculture, 92 Granite State farms were growing eggplant to sell fresh to consumers in 2017, an increase from 55 farms in 2012.

>> Read the full story here.