Sustainable Food From Local Greenhouses

The Netherlands—a country two-thirds the size of West Virginia— is ranked second in agricultural export volume behind the United States. Their secret weapon? Greenhouses and hoophouses. These protected structures allow you to control the environment, resulting in maximum resource efficiency, higher yields, and ultimately higher profits.

Drawing inspiration from Dutch agricultural practices, Andrew Mefferd has created a comprehensive guide for growing plants in protected structures to optimize yields.

Small and beginning growers have never had easy access to information about how the professionals do it, well as, a valuable, up-to-date resource for experienced growers. From seed to sale, The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook will have you growing like never before.

The excerpt below is from The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook by Andrew Mefferd. It has been adapted for the web.

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Why Protected Culture?

The term “protected culture” refers to the practice of growing plants in a structure designed to protect them from environmental stresses and improve the growing environment.

Though it’s not heard often in North America, “protected culture” is commonly used in Europe to describe the full range of protected growing, from the simplest unheated hoophouse to the fanciest heated greenhouse.

I hope to help the term gain more usage in the Americas as protected culture takes on an increasingly important role in the food production system. It’s a handy term to have when you want to talk about protected growing in all its forms.

The Dutch Influence

You may not be surprised to learn that the United States led the world in agricultural exports in 2015. What might surprise you is that the Netherlands ranked second.

Area-wise, this is like West Virginia coming in second to the entire rest of the United States, except that West Virginia is approximately a third larger than the Netherlands.

So it’s really like two-thirds of West Virginia coming in second to the rest of the US.

To put it another way, the 134th largest country in the world, with the 65th largest population, came in second to the 3rd largest country by both area and population. How?

Advanced greenhouse techniques are a big part of the reason why the Dutch have such an oversized agricultural output, especially in the categories of vegetables and ornamentals, which they lead.

When I learned about the Dutch leadership in protected culture, I wanted to know how many of the Dutch greenhouse innovations would work on smaller farms.

I decided to find out by putting them to work on my own farm and in the trials at Johnny’s to see how well they fared in lower-tech situations. The short answer is: Most of them work really well in smaller settings.

One of the foundations of Dutch greenhouse growing is planting crops as densely as possible.

On my farm, we were able to go from growing roughly 1 ton of tomatoes in a 30 × 48-foot (9 × 15 m) hoophouse, to 2 tons, mainly by switching from single rows to double, doubling the number of plants we put in the hoophouse and therefore also the yield.

But it was other techniques, like using both fans and pruning to promote good airflow, and precise temperature and humidity management to keep the crop healthy, that allowed us to plant that densely without inviting problems.

These techniques can help make smaller farms more productive, profitable, and competitive with produce on the commodity market.

Though they have been used to maximize productivity in some of the largest green-houses in the world, they are scalable and can increase productivity on smaller farms without sacrificing quality and sustainability. In fact, by increasing the yield per unit of input, they may be able to increase the sustainability of many operations.

The basics of the Dutch greenhouse system are:

• Spacing: Maximizing the number of plants that can be grown in a given area.
• Climate: Managing temperature and humidity not only for fast growth, but also for the type of growth you want (say, leafy versus fruiting).
• Plant Husbandry: Using specific greenhouse growing practices to care for plants in a manner that pro-motes their productivity.
• Variety: Choosing varieties that are adapted to protected conditions.
• Structures: Using the right kind of structure for your area and what you are growing.
• Efficiency: Operating with as little waste as possible.

Hoophouses and greenhouses are expensive to build; the area inside is precious real estate. By learning from these techniques, you can get the most out of your protected space.

The Importance of Protected Growing to Local Food Systems

Protected horticulture is one of the most important ways for local food producers to compete with industrial agriculture. Consumers are used to a food system that can deliver them almost any food at any time of the year.

Industrial agriculture identifies the best place to grow a particular crop, grows it there, and ships it everywhere else, taking advantage of ideal production conditions, economies of scale, and cheap transportation.

Our food system has swung a long way in the direction of centralization, and protected culture is an important part of re-regionalization.

Local food producers face two major challenges when it comes to taking market share back from industrial agriculture.

The first is geographic: In much of the coun-try, most produce is seasonal and not grown year-round, so consumers—especially in colder climates—have few local options in the winter for certain popular vegetables.

The second challenge relates to production and market-ing in that many people see food as a commodity to be purchased as cheaply as possible.

So local food producers have to either figure out how to match the price set by the industrial food system, or differentiate their food so consumers will pay more for it.

My opinion is that we reached the high-water mark for industrial food in the United States sometime in the 1970s or ’80s. Consider that if you go back far enough, almost all food was local; long-range transport systems did not exist for perishables.

The imported food that was available, like sugar and spices, was expensive and nonperishable. Fast-forward from 1780 to 1980.

Refrigeration technology and the interstate transport system made it possible to deliver produce anywhere in the country (and beyond).

By the late twentieth century, most food production was centralized in areas with the most favorable outdoor conditions for a given crop. Take lettuce, for example. Today somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of U.S. lettuce comes from a single valley in California, the Salinas.

Why? Because it’s one of the best places in the world to grow lettuce.

If you are a lettuce plant, you will be very happy growing in the Salinas Valley most of the year (in the wintertime, lettuce production switches to Arizona).

You might think, so what if most of the country’s lettuce is grown in one place? It makes great sense, except when you consider both the value of widely distributed agricultural production, and the cost of industrialized food production.

The industrial production model, for example, incurs a number of costs that are socialized (the environmental costs of monocropping and long-range transportation; the social costs of relying on undocumented laborers), whereas the profits are privatized.

If all costs were taken into consideration, locally produced lettuce might well be cheaper.

However, in our system that only recognizes monetary costs, industrial production is “cheaper.”

So we find ourselves in a situation where most states are pro-duce importers, while only a few states are huge produce exporters, led by California and Florida.

In the past few decades, however, even with minimal awareness of the environmental impacts of industrialized farming, consumers have noticed changes in their food.

Everyone knows that the term grocery store tomato refers to a cosmetically perfect, hard, flavorless tomato.

The tomato may be the poster child for bland produce, but it has become evident in many crops that efforts in breeding and growing were for the purposes of easier shipping, not better flavor.

National produce recalls for Listeria and other pathogens have only highlighted the fact that massive amounts of produce come from single sources.

Whatever the reason, whether backlash against industrialized food, affinity for the advantagesof local food, or both, the local food movement has begun to gain momentum.

The most obvious indication of this momentum is the number of farmers markets.

The USDA started keeping track in 1994, when they counted 1,755.

Twenty years later, in 2014, they counted 8,268. That’s almost a fivefold increase over two decades. So clearly consumers are interested in buying locally produced foods.

But as mentioned above, most local growers can only produce for a limited part of the year, while the industrial food system can offer anything anytime.

Many farmers market shoppers come out to get what is seasonally available, and then head over to the grocery store for everything else.

Increasing protected culture growing is the most important way to maintain the momentum of the local produce movement. Though there’s now a market for local food, local growers draw the market when their food is in season and lose it when it goes out.

One of the best ways to grow local food sales is to grow the length of the season through protected culture.

Out-of-season industrial production is vulnerable to competition from local protected culture growers. Florida’s winter field-grown tomato market is collapsing.

If you want proof of this, check out the winter tomato selection at your local grocery store, which used to be dominated by green-harvested gas-ripened field tomatoes. Now over 70 percent of winter tomatoes for fresh eating are grown in greenhouses.

And understandably so: Since most greenhouse tomatoes are harvested at least partially ripe, they deserve the reputation of being at least better quality than winter field tomatoes.

The trend toward greenhouse tomatoes is not surprising when, as one breeder told me, the goal of winter field tomato breeding is to produce a tomato that “could smash a windshield.”

Protected culture is the only way for many local growers to compete with out-of-season production from industrial agriculture.

Since not everyone is willing to pay a premium for local food, even if it does taste better and is fresher, the challenge is how to produce local food out of season at a price that is competitive.

As a local food proponent, I know that people will always want to buy produce out of season.

I’d rather see the dollars for out-of-season production go to a local grower.

Now on to combating the perception that local food is more expensive. At my farmers market, our prices are frequently the same as or similar to those at local grocery stores, and we’ve used signage in our market stand to point this out to customers.

But the larger dynamic that needs to be overcome is that billions of dollars of farm subsidies go to commodity crops—corn and soy in particular—that are processed into junk food.

This puts any type of vegetables, local, organic, or not, out of reach for many household budgets, and makes the worst types of junk food the most affordable option for the poorest people, who need to maximize the number of calories they get out of each dollar.

Ending agricultural subsidies is a subject for another book, but I do believe that the impact of making junk food artificially cheap is that vegetables of all types seem more expensive.

I see an opportunity for local growers to take advantage of the fact that industrial food has such high transportation costs associated with it.

The lack of such costs needs to make up for the higher cost of production associated with most smaller operations.

Plus, our car-bon footprint would be smaller if local growers pocketed more of the price of produce, instead of it paying for interstate transport.

Produce wholesalers don’t like the current long industrial supply chain that much, either. It’s cheap and efficient, but it doesn’t produce a high-quality product.

Many would prefer to offer tastier, fresher local produce, but wholesalers’ need for a reliable supply has long been a barrier for seasonal, local growers.

Greenhouse production is a way for local producers to finally remove that barrier, since production becomes more dependable without the vagaries of weather.

In an era of foodborne illness scares, wholesalers also appreciate the fact that food from protected agriculture is produced in a controlled environment, which should be clean and free of contamination.

Ultimately, local protected culture growers can offer food that is higher- quality than anything industrial food has to offer.

Future Trends

The industrial food system will increasingly favor local production. In North America, for example, a pro-longed drought in California is currently jeopardizing the most important vegetable production region in the country.

Not having enough water to maintain prior production levels, as well as scarcity forcing prices up, both represent an opportunity for local growers.

The gradual increase in the price of fossil fuels could also diminish industrial production. Cheap fossil fuels are the foundation of the industrial food system and its ability to ship food anywhere in the world.

Though they may continue to be relatively cheap now, the inevitable increase in transportation costs will increase the cost of industrial food. In the long run, this will favor local growers with shorter supply chains.

Improvements in energy efficiency and green technology mean that local greenhouse growers can grow out-of-season produce efficiently, closer to the consumers.

On the farms and greenhouses that I have visited, growers are investing in protected culture production at a faster rate than they are investing in new field production.

This trend, coupled with the fact that the Natural Resources Conservation Service has funded over thirteen thousand hoophouses to date in all fifty states, means that there is a rapidly growing amount of protected-culture growing space on farms everywhere.

The rise in demand for local food has created an opportunity that farmers can meet through protected agriculture, which has an especially important role to play in the local food movement.

Even though year-round field growing is impossible in most of the country, people still need to eat 365 days a year. So the choices are either to let local produce dwindle down to storage crops over the winter in most areas, or to extend the season.

I know there are some dedicated locavores who prefer to subsist as much as possible on food that can be stored over the winter, much as our ancestors did.

But with people used to the wide variety of produce that’s available year-round from the grocery store, not everyone is going to go without fresh produce in the cold months.

Now that farmers markets have reestablished them-selves in many communities, extending the seasonality of the foods available from local production is the next step for increasing the consumption of locally produced foods.

We have made great progress in increasing the accessibility of local foods through farmers markets, CSAs, food hubs, and local wholesaling. And with many foods, the season can be extended through refrigeration, freezing, or storage.

With the eight crops I focus on in this book, however, if no one is extending the season at the end of the local field-growing season, the dollars spent on local food will go back to industrial agriculture.

This is why raising the quality and quantity of season- extension crops is the next step in the revitalization of our local food system.

Not only do I support local food systems because I am a local grower; I am a local grower because I support the idea of a robust local food system. I think it would be great if more of the food we consumed were produced locally.

For one thing, local food systems are resilient. In a centralized food system, if bad weather impacts an important production area it can cause widespread disruption. The disruption doesn’t even have to be in the production area to have an effect.

Lettuce prices are seldom higher in the East than when the Mississippi floods, preventing bridge travel and transport from the Salinas Valley. This highlights both the extreme centralization of production and the importance of transport to the industrial food system.

When lettuce production is distributed over the country, however—whether in field or protected culture—localized weather and climate disruptions don’t have as big an impact.

Local food also means fewer food miles. Some people may disagree and say it doesn’t matter, that fossil fuel usage will come in the form of greenhouse heating if not from the truck transporting the food.

But greenhouse heating systems are getting more efficient all the time, to the point where it’s now possible to have an off-grid, carbon-neutral or fossil-fuel-free greenhouse.

Over time, the increasing cost of fossil fuels will favor efficient greenhouse production over long-range transportation of produce. Every part of the industrial food chain, from plant breeding to harvesting, is made to support shipping produce long distances.

If produce didn’t have to go as far, not as many corners would need to be cut, resulting in better-tasting, more nutritious food.

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