The Grower & The Economist

The Grower & The Economist welcomes Rene Rawhouser back for a two-part conversation about preparing for the 2021 season. Rene covers topics everything from crop scheduling, excitement around the newest seed catalogue, to his basement germination room. You will see that from home gardeners to commercial growers the tools are the same (a schedule is a schedule is a schedule), the excitement is t...

Growing and selling crops is a complex equation. Horticulture and business must combine to make a profitable business. Crop marketing means different things to different people, but in the industry all the terms are often combined. Michelle breaks down the different meanings of crop marketing and then dives into how growers can drive success by applying the principle of cost-business analysis ever...

In the last episode, Peter talks about the importance of having a greenhouse to add some control and predictability to your operation. The level of control that controlled environment agriculture may not be fully recognized by most people. With more than a foot of snow outside, Peter is growing cocoa trees in his Massachusetts greenhouse.  This is incredible. Chocolate, bananas, and coffee do...

This conversation started as a look back at the last eight months of The Grower and The Economist. Peter and Michelle each highlighting some of the lessons learned from 2020. The conversation quickly evolves into thinking about 2021. We start the year off with a huge lesson from Peter. To be successful, farmers and greenhouse operators need to have some control over their operations ... this means...

Michael Cardenas and Jason Green from Heilux , Creators of LumaFilm® and GrowFilm® Brands of Products are this week's guest experts on The GATE. They share how a jewelry story light found it's way into agriculture and is now used by greenhouses, vertical farms, and even by home growers. It's used by growers of food and cannabis alike, because according to Peter, "a plant, is a plant, is a plant"....

This week, Peter and Michelle are joined by the owners of Bartlett Instruments Company , Dave Bartlett and Molly Dishman. This family owned company has been a manufacturer of instrumentation equipment and controls for over 70 years. We discuss how a family owned business compete and thrive in this space. Plus, Peter and Dave reminisce about where technology was 30 years ago and the cutting edge se...

Beth Scheckelhoff is an Extension Educator with OSU's extension service and this week's guest expert. Beth explains the ins and outs of food safety. She works with farmers that sell everything from food to ornamentals. She gives them the tools, training, and advice they need to help keep employees and customers safe.  COVID has increased our collective awareness of hygiene and best practices...

Many small farms donate extra produce to local food banks and other charities. Can this be a good business decision? Or do some growers use it to hide losses? Michelle & Peter dig into some of the benefits and discuss how to record the donates so you know how profitable your operation is.  Happy Thanksgiving from The Grower & The Economist 

J. Paul Brentlinger is the CEO of CropKing Inc and our guest expert this week. He shares how CropKing works to educate growers as well as the 2020 trends he has seen this year. Some of the growers he works with had to pivot in March and April but were able to adapt and grow their businesses throughout the summer and fall. We also talk about automation and how it's more affordable than ever farms t...

Good bookkeeping is critical to running a profitable business. In the last episode, we covered fixed costs. Now it's time to understand variable costs. What are variables cost? When should you stock up on inputs that are on sale? When should you keep your money and cash and deploy it later? Michelle and Peter provide practical examples to keep this topic interesting and a strong tool for growers.&...

This is the first of a two-part discussion about cost accounting. We start with fixed costs. What are they? How do growers think about them? How can growers use better understanding of fixed costs to improve their profitability and make better business decisions? We include on-farm and off-farm examples to help better explain these concepts. Next time we cover variable costs. 

Peter provides listens tips on what notes to take during the growing season. Now that the season is wrapping up, Peter & Michelle discuss ways to leverage your notes from all season to make improvements next year. Good recordkeeping is critical, learn why and how to make it easier to implement. 

This week's guest expert is Brian Krug, Greenhouse Technology Leader at Corteva Agrisciences. When Brian & Peter met, Brian made the rookie mistake of taking Peter's advice without ever testing the new technique on a small portion of his greenhouse. Years later, they've presented together many times on why trailing is important for growers and best practices.  This is the first time Miche...

Labor Day weekend is the end beginning of the end of the summer season. Peter and Michelle look back at the last 6 months and discuss how the COVID pandemic changed the food system and created new opportunities for small and medium sized farms. It's been a difficult year, with a lot of transitions. Peter and Michelle learned a lot from recent Guest Experts. In this episode, they synthesize the les...

Guest Expert Mario Ortez is a PhD Student at Purdue University in the Department of Agricultural Economics. Mario joins Michelle and Peter to talk about his family coffee farm in Nicaragua and his decision to start producing and selling specialty beans. He grew up on a farm that grew commodity beans. After studying agribusiness and becoming the owner of a small plantation, Mario wanted to become a...

Natalie Olofsson interviews her friend Sophie Gregoretti who is president of their high school bee club, a position she never expected to have before her freshman year.  Sophie does not come from a farming or conservation background and she stumbled into the club. Now she teaches students about bees and their importance in our food system. Michelle & Peter learned a lot this week and we h...

Where do we learn about food and nutrition? Who's responsibility is it to teach our children about food and nutrition? The fact that 7% of American adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows according to the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy found, suggests that there are information gaps. Formal education is limited, schools teach less than 5 hours of nutrition education per year. Athletes...

In Part 1 with Rene Rawhouser, she shared why he gardens and how he got started. When gardening there is always something new to learn. Rene shares a few of his favorite grower resources and some of the changes he's made over the last ten years to help meet the demands of his consumers. In the beginning  Peter helped Rene accelerate his growing confidence, but as a former teach Rene is very a...

According to Brent Preston of The New Farm , a gardener grows food and a farmers grows and sells food. This week's guest expert is Rene Rawhouser blurs the line. He is an avid gardener, who feeds 15 people on his 2,500 square feet of land. Like commercial growers he needs to think about crop schedules, extending his crop season, and rapidly changing consumer preferences. Unlike farmers, he doesn't...

Like many people living under stay at home orders this spring, Natalie picked up gardening. From carrots to potatoes gardening has been interesting and surprising. On this episode, Michelle questions whether Natalie's at home vegetable production helps local farmers or is competition for them. If the people planting gardens were the people purchasing from local farms, then won't they lose sales. P...

This is part two of our discussion with summer intern Natalie Olofsson on local and regional food. We've discussed how much local food is sold to farmers' markets. Another major buyer is school lunch programs. We also look more broadly food and produce education. The younger generations are interested in learning more about where their food comes from. Yet, knowledge is still low and growers have...

This week we welcome Natalie Olofsson to the show. Natalie is a student at Lexington High School, in Lexington MA and is interning for The Grower & The Economist. Natalie conducting some research on local food. How much food is sold locally, what is sold locally, and where are people buying it? During the next few episodes we look at local food from three perspectives, a grower, an economist,...

Peter and Michelle met talking about indoor agriculture. Michelle used her seed industry experience to talk to indoor growers about improving their variety selection. As an experienced grower and educator, Peter helped growers integrate new varieties and crops into their current rotation profitability.  This week we dive into why to consider new varieties and then how to adopt them on your fa...

Greenhouse Product News' June Edition is out . This month Peter's guest expert is Michelle. In this article, they dive into cultivar selection, plant breeding, and seed quality. Even though we are 10 episodes in, this was the first article we wrote together, hashing out the details in Peter's greenhouse last February. Read the article here .

GPN's top 100 growers list raised a lot of questions for Michelle & Peter. We prize large operations but is it possible to be small and successful? This question is more pressing today because nearly 40% of greenhouse growers went out of business during the Great Recession. Is another round of consolidation coming or will a coronavirus induced recession be different? Here are some ways the sma...