September 2015 Management

Celebrating the Past, Present and the Future By Jasmina Dolce

I have been around the industry since the age of 3. My father (Dallas Johnson) started Red Oak Greenhouses in 1967.

When I was a kid, the greenhouses were kind of my playground. I remember the African Violets, pot mums and all the foliage back then. I fell through the roof for the first time at 6 years old (didn't have tem- pered glass back then). I started working at the greenhouse at the age of 12. I worked every summer (whether I wanted to or not).

I remember just how hot it was (some things never change). We used to fill pots by hand out of a wagon that had just been steamed because at that time they were still using soil.

In 1985, at the age of 21, I made my first attempt at managing a greenhouse. My father had sold Red Oak Greenhouses and purchased another greenhouse in Council Bluffs, Iowa. My first assignment was to con- struct four Quonset houses in the early part of January. We entered the bedding plant side of the business this time. It was all new to me. I remember my dad telling me about plug production for the first time. The only thing I could vision was a cork like thing with a plant in it.
The first year in business we sowed all the seedlings the traditional way. We made rows in an open flat and sprinkled the seed out evenly in the tray. You had to mix sugar in with the begonia seed to evenly spread them out because they were so small. We transplanted all of the plants bare root that year. It was a slow, time-consuming process. In our first year of business we did about $200,000 in sales.

It's now 2015. I am 30 years older and those early days seem like a lifetime ago. We presently produce out of 60 acres. Today, everything is completely automated. The soil is 100 percent synthetic. The baskets are all produced on moving cable systems. The seedlings are all grown in plug trays and transplanted by automatic transplanters. The pot crops are all watered on flood floors. We ship as much in half a day during spring now than what we produced our entire first year of business. Everything is digital now. I would never have thought I would see one of the first working robots in our greenhouses. Today everyone has a smart phone. You can't get through a day without it. The computers are much faster and information is at your access in milliseconds. Without the technology that we have today, we wouldn't be able to do the things we do.

What do I expect to see in the future? I think that technology will play an important role. The labor force is getting smaller and we will have no other choice than to find more efficient and effective ways to get our product to market. We will have to invest in more automated systems to produce more plants per square foot without compromising quality. The biggest key to our future will be to produce better quality with a better shelf life for the consumer. We need her to be successful, for she will be making that deci- sion of whether to purchase our product or not. I don't think social media's impact will be as big as others do. Sure it will have some impact. I think it will always be an inexpensive way for us to promote our product.

It will provide a think tank of ideas for the consumer. I just don't think it has the impact because shopping for flowers is an experience, not a process.

Todd Johnson, CEO/president, Dallas Johnson Greenhouses

Production of floriculture crops has improved dramatically in the last 25 years.
• Crop quality, uniformity, genetics and production scheduling have improved considerably.
• Growers have advanced the use of plant growth regulators and electric lighting while using safer pesticides and less fertilizer.
• Environmental concerns and aware- ness have heightened, resulting in increased safety for everyone.
• The production chain has become much more global, especially with the dramatic increase in plants propagated by cuttings.
• There are substantially fewer yet larger companies producing finished plants.

In the next 25 years, we will see these trends continue:
• Continued consolidation of the industry with more contract (satellite) growing.

• More elements of unpredictability
taken out of the production equation, for example producing high-value crops under controlled-environment conditions (multi-layered growing indoors).
• Most growers will produce more plants but fewer species/varieties to optimize production — with con- tinued expansion into edible and recreational crops.
• Increased automation partly because of challenges with labor availability
• Greater awareness of inputs especially water and energy.

Erik Runkle, professor/floriculture extension specialist, Michigan State University

The world of ornamental horticulture has certainly changed immensely over the last 25 years.

The range of products has increased exponentially. The quality of the products has improved dramatically, and the choices the retailer and consumer have are boundless. The technological advances in production have been extremely useful to growers but have also increased the demands on product performance.

In the next 25 years, I can imagine that there will be just as many changes as in the last 25. Technology will continue to make it easier and less costly to produce plants. Consumers will want tougher and more durable plants that can withstand any sort of environmental stress, disease or pest. More people in developing countries will purchase and use flowers. And many things that we cannot even imagine today will all serve to keep it fun and exciting to be in the floriculture industry!

Anne Leventry, president, PanAmerican Seed

I came into the industry in 1993, and one of the things that I think has changed the most is less formality and less rigidity
in company structure and/or product assortment. As I recall, each company was more clearly segmented into the products they carried and to which segment of the industry they sold.

As the economy has changed, as well as technology, those lines seem to have blurred. It's much harder to say, for example, that this company only does breeding of annuals that are propagated from seeds. now a traditional seed breeder has also branched out (no pun intended) to vegetative propagation, to edibles and/or perennials. Everyone talks about blurred lines and this is just one example.

All-America Selections, for more than 80 years, was rigidly set to trial only seed propagated varieties. now, we are trialing vegetative annuals and soon will be trialing perennials from seed, cuttings, tissue culture or bare root so even we are changing with the times, as there was a void and we sought to fill it. I'm guessing that's true with many companies as they look to the future; they see voids or business opportunities then, being an entrepreneurial type (that this industry is full of!) they adapt and morph their business model to fill a need. The other big change that has seen its ups and downs is the connection the industry has with the consumer. My hope is that this is the biggest change we'll see in the next 25 years. Many have tried to connect with the consumer but as we all know, that's a daunting task. however, if we are to grow our businesses, that's a vital component and it's encouraging to see the many different efforts being made to bridge that connection. Both of my organizations have the consumer as a top priority and will do as much as possible with the resources available.

So, the biggest change over the past 25 years is blurring of the lines. The main thing I hope changes in the next 25 years is a more direct connection to the consumer.

Diane Blazek, executive director, All-America Selections/ National Garden Bureau

I began my career in the horticultural industry 44 years ago in the nursery and landscape sector, and some significant changes that have occurred are:

• Increased mechanization and equipment improvements.
• Proliferation of new woody and evergreen shrubs.
• Branding and POP programs (once nonex- istent and now a multitude of programs).
• Information technology — When I started, all communication was landlines and U.S. mail. All orders were written by hand and mailed or called to the office. In the future, web technology will revolutionize order entry, marketing and advertising and horticultural information.

In regard to the greenhouse industry the following changes have been revolutionary:
• The proliferation of new vegetative varieties — years ago we utilized a few non-patented varieties and basic seed varieties, and now we have an incredible selection of colors and new genetics.

• New vegetables — breeding and selecting varieties for container gardening
• Speed of plant breeding — improvements in breeding technology have enhanced the garden performance and increased the speed of introductions every year.

In the next 25 years, we'll see more genetically dwarf varieties requiring no PGRs, and greater insect and disease resistance. In regard to perennials, we'll see many more first-year flowering plants, increased annualization of perennials and more branding and POP programs. We will also see the following:
•Proliferation of new and improved seed annuals to compete with vegetative varieties in all areas of production and sales.
• Branding and POP programs — We have gone from almost nothing 25 years ago to many successful programs today, and this trend will only continue and become more technolog- ically sophisticated in the future.
• Drone technology — We will use the technology to monitor insect populations and potential disease issues as well as nutritional levels in plant material.
• Transportation — In regard to liner suppliers, we are moving to regionalized suppliers with rack truck delivery and box elimination, resulting in freight savings and maintaining plant quality.
• Containers — Design changes so containers and tags are integrated. No tag per se, all information on the container!

Vaughn Fletcher, Midwest sales manager, McHutchison Horticultural Distributors

Horticulture in the United States has gotten both more exciting and more risky in the past 25 years. We are much more global in terms of plant movement, technology and information exchange. A good idea on the other side of the world can be adopted here very quickly. Production systems allow very speedy multipli- cation of good lines, and they can be disseminated with great efficiency. Change can, and does, happen with amazing speed.

But, in the flower industry, this speed has a price in the eyes of a plant pathologist. In order to have new plants with polka dot petals, luminous leaves, sexy stems and rippled roots available soon after they are bred, we have sacrificed the cleansing effects of seeds and shifted to an emphasis on vegetative production for annuals — fast vegetative production. Systemic diseases are then, theoretically, more of a challenge. The previous generation learned that a pathogen indexing pro- gram was important to ensure the health of vegetative stock
of carnations, potatoes, geraniums and chrysanthemums — this gave insurance against devastating diseases that can be latent in plants.

Today's many vegetatively propagated crops don't get the same kind of scrutiny because that scrutiny takes time, which has become an unaffordable luxury. Extremely low levels of viruses and other pathogens can slip through the faster modern detection systems, to cause problems later on, and off-shore production combined with new crop species increases the opportunity to import new, exotic diseases. This new scenario gives the green industry a higher level of risk at the same time that it opens up new horizons.

What's ahead? We'll learn to cope with this new risk through new technology. Our ability to scrutinize plants to verify their freedom from pathogens, and to have safeguards instituted all along the production path, will improve exponentially through research and development.

Margery Daughtrey, senior extension associate, Cornell University's Long Island Horticultural Research & Extension Center
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