Looking to 2025 and Beyond: Protected Crops
December 27, 2024 As climate change and erratic weather continue to make traditional field production more challenging, many growers have started growing some or all of their crops under protection. From high tunnels to low tunnels and hoop houses to mesh coverings, protected cropping systems vary from one operation to the next.
CEAg World spoke with Courtney Boyer from Duncan Family Farms, which is headquartered in Goodyear, Arizona, about how she uses protected cropping systems in her operation and how she foresees the industry changing in 2025. In addition, this story shares data from the 2024 State of the Vegetable Industry Survey conducted by our sister brand, American Vegetable Grower (AVG). In that survey, growers shared information about how and what they grow under cover, and why.
Photo: Duncan Family Farms
How American Vegetable Grower Conducted This Survey
The USDA considers produce a specialty crop, which means it devotes fewer funds to gathering intel on vegetable production. By surveying 827 vegetable growers across the U.S. from February to March of 2024, AVG was able to compile valuable insight on labor, production, and many other important industry topics that might otherwise have gone uncaptured. While the full AVG survey features data from across the vegetable growing industry, including open-field production, CEAg World is focusing specifically on produce grown under cover, which applies to 429 of the vegetable growers surveyed.
Notable Statistics
Of the surveyed respondents that use protected agriculture, 11% use hydroponic growing methods. This means roughly 89% of protected-crop growers use soil as a growing medium — Boyer is one of them.
The top three reasons that these growers have incorporated protected cropping systems into their operations are: to extend their growing season (87%), to protect their crops from unreliable weather (36%), and to produce transplant starts for their farm (51%).
Some growers also use protected cropping to extend their growing seasons, including Boyer, who shared this and more of her perspective on the present and future of protected cropping in this Q&A.
CEAg World: Where do you see the CEA industry going in the next three to five years?
Courtney Boyer: The CEA industry will likely follow similar trends that you see with any major innovation. The amount of CEA system/component providers has increased dramatically in the last few years as well as the number of companies utilizing these systems to bring new products to market.
This competition and the lessons learned from early adopters will lead to efficiencies and decreases in the cost of technology that may have been cost prohibitive to some companies as the industry took off. The number of suppliers and firms in the space will begin to consolidate as some of the earliest companies may go out of business or larger corporations make acquisitions.
At the same time, rising costs of critical inputs on the open-field side will continue to constrain margins for those producers and prices of the finished goods may increase on the consumer side. As both happen, the price differential between CEA-produced goods and open-field produced goods will shrink, making CEA more competitive.
CEAg World: What is the most significant issue you see facing protected crops right now?
Courtney Boyer: One of the most significant issues facing protected crops is scalability and the learning curve. Open-field production lends itself to repeatability and the spreading of large capital expenditures over several sales units. CEA allows for production in areas where open field does not.
However, [open field] is constrained by throughput and infrastructural specificity. In order to increase throughput, heavy capital expenditure is required as well as specializing in a specific crop type to automate as much of the growing process as possible. CEA structures also require a long lead time for sourcing proper materials, permitting, and actual construction. Decreasing outside investment in the industry will also make the capital expenditures required for new systems more difficult to come by.
CEAg World: What is the most significant opportunity you see in protected crops right now?
Courtney Boyer: As a primarily open-field producer, we see a huge opportunity for growers like us to adopt portions of protected cropping systems to support (not necessarily replace) current operations. CEA in general offers a myriad of options from basic protection to fully automated, hyper-sophisticated systems. With so many structures and systems to choose from and in facing changing weather patterns and conditions, growers can utilize components of CEA to supplement their production or alleviate certain constraints.
Rather than viewing production systems as silos (open vs. protected), companies can adopt a more dynamic approach with space for both. CEA can allow a producer to bring on a new crop type or lengthen a season/availability window of crops grown in an open-field setting.
In short, protected cropping systems have often been pinned against open-field production practices, whereas the opportunity lies in the coalescing of the range of production styles in order to augment availability overall, increase regional access to local foods, and alleviate disease and insect issues inherent in an open-field setting.
CEAg World: Is there anything you’d like to share about your operation and its plans for 2025?
Courtney Boyer: We will continue to incorporate additional acreage of covered agriculture in both Arizona and Oregon. For Arizona, we are primarily focused on additional space to support our organic culinary herb and organic microgreens programs. The structures in Oregon will allow us to plant earlier to extend our season in the region.