State of the Industry 2021: Confident and bullish

After a second consecutive spring season featuring explosive consumer and commercial demand for all things green, this year’s State of the Industry report reveals a greenhouse industry poised to capitalize on all this momentum heading into 2022.

One oft-discussed initiative over the last year and half has been the need for growers to raise plant prices, which prior to this historic boom period had somewhat leveled off. Now, 81% of the growers we surveyed will be raising plant prices anywhere from single-digit increases all the way up to a nearly 20% bump.

Of course, when prices go up, it stands to reason that profits will closely follow. Nineteen percent of growers are expecting a 20% or more net profit increase in 2022, and a whopping 90% of the 134 growers who answered our queries expect net profit to either increase (57%) or remain the same (33%) as this past season. Only one-tenth of our survey group expect to see net profit decrease over the next 12 months.

Despite all that good news, challenges remain. Finding qualified labor to plant, tend and harvest your indoor crops remains a top concern of one-fifth (20.56%) of our survey group moving forward. Managing the supply chain — which the COVID-19 pandemic and its many rippling aftereffects completely turned on its head this past year — is a major concern for over 40% of the growers we polled.

And still, the industry remains confident and bullish heading into the new season. Nearly two-thirds of greenhouse owners and operators are either confident (37%) or very confident (24%) that the industry at-large will continue to grow in 2022. Just three years ago, only 40% of you felt the same, so that’s good news for all of us.

Read on for more insights from your greenhouse growing peers. — Matthew J. Grassi