The East-West Divide Among Fruit And Vegetable Growers [Infographic]
January 8, 2016 It’s well known that farm marketers are located primarily in the Eastern half of the U.S. and that whole-sale only farms tend to be larger and in the West.
This year’s State of the Industry Surveys from American Fruit Grower, Western Fruit Grower and American Vegetable Grower, asked many questions about direct marketing. That allowed us to see more deeply into this issue of direct marketers versus wholesale-only growers.
Combined, 699 growers responded to the question we used to create this map infographic. Roughly, 60% of growers are direct marketers and 40% are wholesale-only. However, as you can see below, that is not how it broke out from region to region. One type of grower dominated a region.
The West region has the most growers overall, with 21.6% of all growers located there, followed by the Midwest, with 18.7% of all growers. The smallest region is the Southwest, with only 5.3% of all growers.
In a smaller survey, we asked growers which channels they would like to expand their businesses into. Those with direct marketing wanted to expand their consumer businesses, but not their wholesale business. Conversely, many wholesalers were also interested in expanding their direct marketing areas. It will be interesting to see if the below map will change at all in the next few years.
