The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

Variety improvements, plant production systems, integrated pest management, harvesting, and packaging technologies — it’s easy to imagine that good, new science coupled with good old farmer ingenuity will continue to increase yields of high-quality vegetables.

Production efficiency has already increased to the point that produce sometimes leaves the farm at prices that value the crop less than the box in which it is packed. Amazingly, growers are still able to make a profit at the end of the season despite receiving prices for some crops that are not much different today from what their grandparents were paid 50 years ago.

Cultivating the land efficiently is necessary to survive in today’s produce industry. Cultivating the market will be necessary to sustain a viable farm business.

Produce shoppers, from individual consumers to international buyers for retail super centers, are demanding consistent supplies of uniformly great quality, low-priced, safe vegetables. Successful vegetable growers will identify a niche and cater to the needs of the buyers in that niche, no matter at what level they participate.

Visit The Past

It’s a challenge to predict the future, but sometimes it’s helpful to visit the past to see where you might be heading. For instance, in 1955, Vineland, NJ, was surrounded by farms shipping eggs to markets in New York and Philadelphia. Almost every farm had a chicken coop, but changing production, transportation, and marketing technologies demanded significant investments to increase the efficiency of egg production.

When the next generation left the farms instead of making those investments, support industries soon moved from the area as well, and egg production shifted to areas like Lancaster, PA, and Georgia. By 2005, the only chicken coops left standing in southern New Jersey were those converted to storage buildings, packingsheds, or migrant labor housing.

The City of Vineland sits just off the Interstate 95 corridor running from Boston, MA, to Washington, DC. The competitive advantage of this close proximity to large urban markets has now turned into a competition for land and resources that constantly threatens the viability of farming. The same pressures on today’s vegetable growers that the egg farmers faced 50 years ago are having a major impact and will influence if there will be a vegetable industry in the region in 2055. Growers across the U.S must adopt new production technologies that increase yields and lower costs per unit enough to compensate for low commodity prices, or they must adjust their marketing practices to capture a greater share of the consumer dollar.

Wholesale markets are built on relationships between suppliers and buyers. It’s a challenge to maintain those contacts if seasonal harvests mean a farm’s produce is only in the marketplace for limited periods. However, while communications advances are providing powerful tools to enhance marketing capabilities, practicing the art of marketing will not change. As it is today and always has been, future produce marketers will need to understand who their customers are so they can be sold exactly what, where, when, and how they want or need their produce.

Savvy marketers have known there is more profit in producing what consumers want rather than what they need. Needed food items become staple commodities. Demand is relatively flat, especially when there are constant year-round supplies in the market. The retail price fluctuates very little on commodity crops, but any little shift in supply will have a significant impact on farm gate price.

Demand for produce that people want, on the other hand, tends to be less price sensitive at retail. So, supply shortages that increase wholesale prices can be passed on to the consumer with little or no impact on volume.

In the future, growers in populated regions of the country will be forced into retail marketing to capture as much of the consumer value as they can. Large grower-shippers will adopt new technologies to reduce production and marketing costs while forming alliances with growers in other production regions to be able to create year-round supply strategies.