Win with greenhouses engineered for strawberries and lettuce

The prize for the growers who can design, build, and grow quickly? Grocers ready to buy their harvests in order to meet ever-increasing marketplace expectations. Consumers want food that's fresh, healthy, and locally sourced. Commercial greenhouse operators in North America who can reliably supply high-quality fruits and vegetables throughout the year stand to gain long-term contracts with grocery retailers.

The payoff for getting new crops to market quickly includes enhanced profitability and other benefits:

• Revenue per acre is multiple times higher than what established greenhouse-grown vine crops (tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers) generate.
• Highly automated growing systems can significantly reduce labor demand compared to other controlled environment agriculture (CEA) crops and open-field farming methods.
• Advanced technologies precisely control indoor environments to create ideal conditions for producing the flavorful and healthy food crops grocers and consumers want.

Race contestants include already successful commercial growers of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. They've scaled CEA operations, established relationships with retailers, optimized cultivation processes, and mastered greenhouse technologies. However, they face stiff competition from new growers in indoor spaces in the U.S. and Canada, plus their long-time rivals who raise open-field crops in Mexico.

Design and Build to Create Ideal Growing Conditions

It's normal for established commercial growers to ask, "What's next?" And many are considering whether they should convert existing greenhouses from production of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers to strawberries and lettuce.

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Source: Greenhouse Grower