Despite the chaos the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to several industries, growers in the controlled-environment industry appear to be in expansion mode.
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Red Sun Farms
Red Sun Farms, a vertically integrated high-tech greenhouse vegetable grower with locations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, has been responding to consumer demand for locally grown produce with unprecedented levels of investment in 2020. This spring, the operation began construction on its first phase (27 acres) of a three-phase project totaling 63.8 acres in Kingsville, Ontario. Learn more here.
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Bloomaker
Waynesboro, VA-based Bloomaker is anticipating its largest holiday season in company history. Starting this month, the operations plans to produce and ship nearly 1.5 million amaryllis bulbs to major retail customers across the U.S. and Canada from its production facility. Bloomaker has seen a significant increase in amaryllis sales over the past five years, leading to a need to expand their onsite production capabilities. Learn more here.
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Little Leaf Farms
Massachusetts-based greenhouse baby green lettuce producer Little Leaf Farms is doubling its growing capacity to 10 acres of lettuce fields under glass, producing more than 2 million packages of lettuce each month, and broadening distribution to stores across New England and into New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and throughout the East Coast. Learn more here.
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Copperstate Farms
Copperstate Farms Management, LLC, has completed its first harvest after finishing a 10-acre greenhouse buildout and renovation at its cultivation facility in Snowflake, AZ. The 435,600 square-foot construction project, designated “Greenhouse 3,” encompassed best-of-industry technologies and cutting-edge ventilation and climate control systems to support high-quality cultivation needs without compromising scalability. Learn more here.
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Houweling's Tomatoes
Houweling’s Tomatoes is targeting the Great Plains for its latest expansion project. The British Columbia-based greenhouse operation, which already grows tomatoes under around 150 acres of glass in Canada, California, and Utah, is in the early stages of a 30-acre project in Spiritwood, ND, with a planned expansion capability to up to 60 acres in the future. The plant will be located directly south of a Dakota Spirit AgEnergy ethanol plant with construction slated to start next spring. Learn more here.
Results from Greenhouse Grower’s 2020 Top 100 Growers survey, which covered the ornamentals market, showed that 56% of operations were planning to build more on their current site this year, while 13% were planning to acquire additional locations in the coming year. Steps to improve profitability, including raising prices and streamlining production through automation, have contributed to the ability of growers to invest in the future.
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In the greenhouse vegetable market, stay-at-home orders in many areas, coupled with food safety concerns, have led to rapidly rising demand for fresh, locally grown produce, something greenhouse vegetable growers are certainly able to accommodate.
The trend also holds true in cannabis and hemp, where producing a crop in a greenhouse, while perhaps more expensive at first, gives growers the ability to better manage crop quality.
Check out the slideshow above for a rundown of how just a few growers are positioning themselves to better meet consumer demand across a wide range of crops.
September 21, 2020 
