In Focus: Five Questions With Ben Martin

1. Is there increasing interest in protected agriculture in Florida, and why?

Martin: Florida, like most every market we service around the world, is increasing its investment into protected agriculture. The obvious reason is the climate change whereby weather is becoming more erratic. Consequently, businesses need to protect from severe weather events to ensure they can avoid the risk of losing crops and customers. For Florida growers, this means strategies for reducing impact of hurricanes or freezes. Protected agriculture also will allow Florida’s growers to improve quality, yield, and timing to produce safe and healthy crops sustainably to compete with ever increasing foreign imports.

2. What kind of improvement in quality might one expect growing produce under cover?

Martin: Growers all agree that if you can create the best environment and maximize plant transpiration, the outcome is a high-yielding, long-harvesting, quality product with better shelflife. What often is overlooked is that such an environment also requires less farm inputs such as seed, water, fertilizer, and agrichemicals. This offers profound returns on investment.

3. Which fresh produce crops being grown under cover would provide the best potential for returns in Florida?

Martin: Just about any crop where you are aiming to produce organically, since the best prevention from pest and disease is a healthy plant that optimizes stress and fully develops its own natural defense mechanisms. We believe the potential is now greater to introduce newer produce varieties and crops since there is an opportunity to change the environment confidently and consistently. Consumers love tomatoes, berries, and citrus, but cuisine is changing. We will see more exotic crops fill this demand and improve grower profit margins that specialty crops can command.

4. How much of a role does consumer demand at the retail level have on the increasing popularity of greenhouse or protected agriculture production?

Martin: Every successful farmer knows that today you must have a connection to the consumer. We now see our clients embracing not only the web, but also social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and even offering connections between farm and fork with QR codes on packaging and point-of-sale displays. It is one thing to grow a good crop, but it is vital for you to sell it profitably. That means fulfilling consumer demands for fresh, local, safe, and delicious food.

5. Some have questioned protected structures and how they would hold up should a hurricane passes through. How would you respond to this?

Martin: Hurricanes can damage or destroy not only structures but potentially your business. Either you design a fortress to survive or you get out of their path. Cravo deals with this by offering high wind designs up to 150 mph in an enclosed building, and our structures have been hit directly about seven times over last 20 years without structural damage. However, unlike other buildings, we can fully retract our roof and walls in minutes, and in this position sustain even higher loads. If you retract your structure you now have opportunity to recover or replant, but you avoid having to rebuild. Retractability is our unique feature and can be controlled by barometric or wind sensors or with a power loss we can retract our systems with a cordless drill directly to the motors.