Is it too late to begin growing microgreens?
After having many meetings with people around the world interested in growing microgreens, we have identified a few questions that we often hear, one of those is:
Is it too late to begin growing microgreens?
During this blog I will answer this question and bring our point of view to the subject. We will go through the trends we see happening in the market and why we believe that the opportunity is still very interesting to pursue.
We have been growing and selling microgreens for almost 7 years and when we started our own farm we had around 20 competitors in our small Danish market of 6.5 million people. Most of these companies have chosen to focus on other opportunities. Meanwhile, we have achieved market leadership and become very successful in the way we do business and are able to keep our customers. We started our business in a highly competitive market which meant that we had to fight very hard for the position that we are in today.
If we zoom out and try to see things from a bigger perspective, then traditional farming has existed for 1000s of years while the greenhouse industry began in the 1700s which was a major innovation in the agriculture industry. Trying to compete in these markets is now very difficult. In traditional field farming you will need big machinery and invest a huge amount of capital to get going. In traditional farming on fields you also have big problems like unstable weather conditions, soil degradation from pesticide and fertilizers. Some years you might have a good harvest while other years you can lose all your crops. A very risky business to be in, unless you have capital to withstand price changes and bad seasons.
Competing in the greenhouse industry is less risky because you have a better control of your environment while being able to add on supplemental lighting. But you still need to compete against companies who have been operating for many years and are leading the markets in their field of competency. Some are great tomato growers while others are masters in flowers, salads or herbs. The investment you need to make is also very high and you need a lot of capital to invest in a fully equipped greenhouse.
Vertical farming is still very new compared to open field and greenhouse farming. LED growlights in recent years have become very efficient at low cost and that have made it possible the last 10-15 years to finally compete against the greenhouse and open field farms which typically produce large scale and transport the produce many hundreds of miles before it reaches the end consumer. This is an expensive procedure and adds costs to the end product.
We believe that the best way to get started is not to invest a lot of money into making a big farm, because we have seen in the news how other big indoor farms with investors have gone bankrupt in recent years. But finally it is possible to make a small investment into this new industry and even make a small setup from home growing microgreens, herbs and salads to supply local customers with fresh hyper local produce. The trend of vertical farming is projected to grow at a rate of 24% until the year of 2031. So we are still only in the beginning of this industry taking off. With all the innovation happening it is possible to compete, since the lights and equipment become more and more efficient by each year.
The trends we see happening are: Consumers would rather buy local produce than imported salads, herbs and microgreens. “Support your local farmer” is a trend that is growing rapidly and consumers are willing to pay a higher price because they know the farmers and they know that the plants have been cared for in a way that bigger corporations are not able to, because they focus on large scale production where pesticides are used to keep down pest and mold issues. Small scale local farmers use organic growing methods, and the time it takes to get the products to the consumers, from the time it was harvested, is also greatly reduced. I saw a statistic that 70-90% of consumers prefer to buy local leafy greens produced within their own country and this reason alone, is why I believe there is great potential in all countries for producing local leafy greens, when you combine that with the efficiency LED growlights today can offer it makes for a great opportunity.
We are all as consumers more aware about where our food comes from and this trend is only the beginning of a mega industry forming over the coming 10-15 years.
Growing microgreens for local consumers, retailers, restaurants etc. there are many ways you can find your niche into indoor farming, and when you combine it with herbs and salads, then the market potential for you is huge.
Schedule a meeting with us on zoom to learn if your market has potential achieving success with our proven methods of getting recurring customers. We will hear your goals and see if we can help you overcome your challenges and fill out your farm with happy customers.
