The Fruit Growers News - December 2002

Ten years ago people talked of the great changes coming to agriculture. Bigger farms, fewer chemical and equipment companies and more power in the hands of the produce buyers of the giant chains.

Well folks, it’s here. Look around you at your annual trade show - the crowd isn’t getting any younger. On the surface this looks bad, because the system the majority of the baby-boomer farmers grew up with is fading away quickly.

A new system is taking its place and will be made up of a different type of crowd. Demographic changes in our population will shift the need from a meat, grain and potatoes agriculture base to other crops such as Asian vegetables, organic produce and fresh-sliced products.

Go to an organic, small farm or direct marketing conference and you will see a very diverse crowd in every age and socioeconomic class. There is new blood coming into the industry, it’s just entering through a different doorway.

As I look into my crystal ball I have a few predictions on the future of agriculture.

1) White Men Can’t Farm
The white male dominance of specialty crop growers will slowly change as more minority (mainly Hispanic) and women get into farming. The number of Hispanic farmers increased 58% from 1987 to 1997. Female farm owners now make up 9% of U.S. farms, twice as many as in 1978, according to the USDA. In Florida 15.5% of the farms are owned by women. The shift will mainly come as third and fourth generation white farmers go off to college and find jobs that pay better and aren’t so hard on the back. Many older growers I’ve talked to are even discouraging their children from farming. Newer immigrants from South and Central America will enter farming, as they are willing to work the long hours because the life they are escaping had few opportunities. Women farm owners will also increase as enterprises that interest them like direct marketing, CSAs and organic production increase.

2) Commodity Confusion
National and state commodity marketing groups will have to change to become pertinent to the “new” agriculture. Already many commodity groups are being sued and some growers have won. The Supreme Court will have the final say in a few of these. The issue used to be over forced speech, but now organic and other niche growers are making the case that these commodity groups aren’t pertinent to their market. It’s going to become more difficult over time for commodity groups to be able to come up with an effective marketing campaign for a certain crop as the grower base becomes more diverse. Throwing out a generic advertising message like “eat more strawberries” won’t cut it anymore. And with fewer produce buyers, the consumer can no longer pull products through the system. If you don’t get on the shelf in a good position, you won’t sell anything. Plus, the consumer is too busy to tell the produce manager that they want to see New Hampshire lingonberries on the shelf. And even if they do, the produce manager probably has no control over what is in the department because there’s only one buyer for the company, and he’s in Kansas.

3) Politics, Politics, Politics
Specialty crop growers and organizations are going to have to increase their political clout to guard against foreign imports, unfair safety and labor laws and restrictions on crop protection tools. Growers are going to be hesitant to send their hard-earned money to a group that can’t protect their interests. New groups will pop up and cross-commodity alliances will be formed to keep specialty crop growers powerful in Washington, D.C.

4) Make It Fast and Fresh
The double-income families and the younger on-the-go generation will continue to demand more convenience. Over 47% of consumers say convenience is important in the food they eat, up 13% from 10 years ago, according to research done by the U.S. Potato Board. Generation X (25-35) and younger represent the majority of one-person households and they don’t know how to cook, so instead frequently use convenience products, take-out or delivery. Fresh cut will continue to be all the rage.

5) Organic Will Become Mainstream
Say what you want about organics, but it is clearly here to stay and offers conventional growers an opportunity for a new market. Retail sales of organic products have grown steadily for the past 10 years and were $9.3 billion in 2001. By 2005, sales are expected to reach nearly $20 billion. The new National Organic Standards have added legitimacy to organic products and will help grow the industry even more. The chemical companies also see the organic train coming and most new products will be registered for use in organic production. Twenty years from now the organic label will be the norm and will garner about as much attention as your rear-view mirror message stating“Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear.”

6) Get Big or Shrink
The mega chains want produce shipped all year to their stores and don’t want to deal with 10 different packinghouses. The big farms will be able to meet this demand and be profitable for the mainstream fruits and vegetables like onions, apples and potatoes. The middle-sized farms will become extinct at some point, unless they form partnerships with each other. The small farms are where the growth will be. There are far more markets a small and nimble operation can target. Whether it be organic heirloom tomatoes or u-pick raspberries, it doesn’t matter. They will be able to manage the operation and give a specific market exactly what they want.

7) City Slickers Rule
My biggest gripe with agriculture is that it’s a bunch of rural white guys sitting around figuring out how to sell to a bunch of diverse city slickers. Us white folk aren’t going to be the majority forever and we have to look at the big markets and grow what they want. Just because we eat meat and potatoes, doesn’t mean a Chinese immigrant will want the same meal. In Cook County, Ill., where the city of Chicago is, there are 5.3 million people and half of them aren’t white. Hispanics and Latinos make up 20%, blacks make up 26% and Asians make up 4.8%. In Los Angeles there are 4.4 million Hispanics, which is a market to target in itself. Each ethnic group eats very differently and the specialty crop growers can easily change their product mix to meet these new demands.

8) Say No to Commodities
New exciting varieties will increasingly be trademarked and licensed. As every grower knows, the value of a new variety doesn’t last long because every grower in America soon floods the market. Instead, new varieties, will be exclusively licensed to a company who will grow only as much as the market demands.

9) The China Factor
China makes everything we wear and watch, so are we going to be eating Chinese too? No one is sure in the vegetable market, but the Chinese have taken a chunk out of the apple market. First it was juice concentrate and now some processed products are starting to trickle over. We can never beat their cheap labor, so processed products may someday come to our shores. What American specialty crop growers can do is grow fresh products that the diverse U.S. consumer wants and come up with fresh processing products that can never be shipped across the Pacific Ocean. The “Buy American” sounds nice, but in the end, the cheap U.S. consumer buys with price in mind.

10) It’s the Weather Stupid
Global warming - I never bought the theory and probably never will, but we all know there is a shift in weather patterns. Many older growers I’ve interviewed over the years tell me that in the 1960s and 1970s they knew exactly what varieties to plant and generally got good yields. Now, growers seem to be dealing with extreme weather patterns that are either very wet or very dry, very cold or very hot. Scientists generally agree that the earth will warm by up to 5°F or more in the next century and most growers will notice this difference in their lifetime. The middle and high latitudes would definitely benefit while some low latitudes would physically just become too warm to support some types of agriculture. This could mean Florida and southern California could no longer grow vegetables and the Midwest would become the new vegetable growing region.

11) The Healthy Angle
Healthy foods are all the rage. Even though American’s waistlines are expanding, there is still a great interest in foods with health benefits. There is tart cherry juice to help with arthritis, blueberry pills to make your eyes healthy and all sorts of research pointing to fruit and vegetables as being the key to healthy living. This should all add up to a growing market for specialty crops.