How Wholesale-Only Growers And Farm Marketers Differ In Their Crop Choices
April 29, 2016 
We already know of some of the differences between farm marketers and wholesale-only farms. Farm marketers outnumber wholesale-only farms. Wholesale-only farms tend to be much larger and are more likely to be in the western half of the U.S., where as farm marketers dominate the eastern half of the U.S. and tend to be under 500 acres.
But are there any deeper differences? This year, American Fruit Grower and American Vegetable Grower asked the industry about which crops they will be growing, and we saw an even deeper difference than mere geography and size emerge. Farm marketers, our analysis of the surveys shows, are much more diverse in the number of plants they grow.
Let’s get into the details.
What They Grow Is Different
This likely comes as no surprise: wholesale-only fruit growers are more likely to grow nuts and citrus (well, outside of Florida) than farm marketers — 24% to 12% for nuts, and 15% to 8% for citrus).
For all other fruit categories we asked about — pome, stone, berries, and grape — the pendulum swings to the other way.
That’s especially true for pome fruits. When it comes to apples and pears, farm marketers have a 23 point lead over whole-sale only fruit growers (63% to 40%, respectively). That’s likely due to farm marketers preferring to grow a wide variety of crops when compared to wholesale-only fruit growers.
This chart shows how the rest of fruit categories fell out.
We asked about a much wider range of crops in our vegetable survey. And we found that farm marketers were much more likely to grow each crop than their wholesale-only peers.
Like the fruit crop chart, each bar below indicates the percentage of farm marketers or wholesale-only farms that grow each crop. For farm marketers to dominate so much, they must be growing a wide variety of crops.
More than half of farm marketers are growing these crops:
And here are the rest of the vegetable crops we asked about:
The only crops that more than 20% of wholesale-only grow are leafy greens, cole crops, tomatoes, beans, and onions. In contrast, farm marketers are that mark in every category. Only two crops are grown by more than 30% of wholesale-only growers: leafy greens and cole crops. Only one crop is grown by less than 30% of all farm marketers: celery. And it is just below that mark at 29%.
We also asked our vegetable growing audience if they grew three fruit categories: melons and strawberries. The story is pretty much the same. More than half of farm marketers grow melons (56%), with only 14% of wholesale-only growers doing so. The difference is even wider with strawberries — 46% compared to a mere 3%.