Month: November 2010

Thanksgiving is such a great holiday. As I prepare to sit down to two family meals today, I’d like to thank all the farmers out there who work so hard to produce my food. I’m also thankful to the researchers in land-grant universities and many extension agents for their vital contributions. Also, to all the tractor and combine companies out there. I’m even thankful for the big, “evil” seed and chemical conglomerates. What a bounty they provide us!

There probably aren’t many who are thinking what I’m thinking.

Today, our world and culture are divorced from the soil. We don’t know what it means to plant with hope, to wait for rain, to weed, prune or harvest. So even at Thanksgiving, most Americans are either oblivious to agriculture or even worse, they are hostile to it. 

Here’s an example of an “un-thankful turkey” I stumbled across. Have you heard of “vertical farming?” Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia in NYC, has written a book called The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century. According to the Vertical Farm Project website, this concept “has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe.” I notice that they make NO MENTION of excited farmers, horticulturalists or anyone with any knowledge of agriculture. 

The basic idea is that agriculture is dysfunctional and unable to meet the future needs of our world. Despommier isn’t thankful to our farmers or the agriculture industry. He proposes that we abandon the concept of the family farm and build massive skyscrapers in urban locations to grow our food hydroponically and organically. 

Most of us could poke a lot of holes in this idea, but it’s already been done for us. Check out this interview of the author on the Colbert Report:

Dickson Despommier

Pretty funny, but consider that Colbert’s act is to mock things that he and his audience agree with. Here’s the lesson I take away: an alarming number of intelligent leaders in the fields of education, politics, economics, planning, design and architecture do not understand our world of farming. They think agriculture essentially rapes and poisons the earth. Their ideal world would be one without farms, without tractors, without pesticides, fertilizers, and overhead irrigation. 

I wish we could laugh this “vertical farming” off, but I have a feeling the philosophy at its heart will persist. 

There are many things going on right now that we are inclined to ignore or dismiss. With “Plants vs Zombies” I was trying to point out that a game we think is irrelevant actually reveals our own irrelevance to the current culture. With “Vertical Farming” I want to suggest that when it comes to solving future agricultural/horticultural/environmental issues we are not seen as having solutions…in fact, many think we are the problem! 

~Art

PS: I haven’t actually read the book. Think I should?

PPS: One last comment. Think this topic isn’t on anyone’s mind? Go to Google. Type in “farm.” Click “images” on the left-hand column. What I find is that two of the images are of concepts for this “vertical farming.” I believe that this idea is on someone’s mind.

It seemed like a no-brainer to make a video using the old slogan “Fall is For Planting.” We posted this a couple weeks ago and a few of our customers have used it. Let me know if you have any constructive criticisms!

To link to the video on YouTube, here’s the address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ErHQ8rGWx0

To downlaod the file so that you can customize and/or upload to your own video channel, right click this link as select “Save Target As…”

Many thanks to Todd Davis and NMPro magazine for putting the spotlight on OpenHort in their current issue! If you haven’t seen Todd’s editorial, you can read it here.

Todd says:

“So let’s get to work. We have the knowledge and creativity to get this done. Let’s crank out clever videos that also tout our products…Then start forwarding those videos to friends and family. All it takes is for one or two of these videos to go viral, and we’ll receive as much exposure as those expensive Super Bowl ads.”

We can create messages and distribute them via social networks for a very low investment. But I’m not sure if we can call success having a video or two get a few million views, although that would be great.

My vision is to concurrently build a sytem to regularly produce compelling messages and a distribution system to get those messages out. I can’t do any of this alone! So, thanks to all of you reading and especially to those like Todd that are helping to spread the word…contributing their vision here.

~Art

(New idea: where can I get some monkeys?)

I’m about ready to drop this Zombie thing and move on, but before I do, I want to thank everyone reading and following this discussion, and I want to specifically thank Matt Edmundson of Arbor Valley Nursery for this really thought-provoking comment he sent in:

Not to disrespect our elders here but go to an industry function, look at the folks standing in the room, the owners, upper level management (and well, heck when I look in the mirror), what do we see? Old guys/gals or young people who are raised by the old school. How is gardening or ornamental plants relevant to our culture? Who “needs” our products like they need the latest Apple product which will be obsolete in a year? Our marketing is from the stone age and our products and lifestyle activity is focused on the generation that just saw their retirement age extended another 10 plus years.

I interviewed a guy the other day who worked in a distribution center for cheap junk from China that no one needs, novelties really. You know how much a Whoopie cushion costs imported from China? The Landed price to the DC in NE $0.02. They retail it for $4.50 BEFORE shipping. Shipping costs them less than $2 anywhere in the country yet they charge $7.50. They sell 200,000 per year. People “have to have” Whoopie cushions but not plants? Why cant we sell a daylily for $224 before shipping and handling? Or do we have to find a way to push down the cost of making it to $0.02 landed? I just bought pumpkins for Halloween which we will essentially use for a few nights then pitch for more than I sell a #5 shrub which took a heck of a lot more than sowing seeds, watering and harvesting to produce. Obviously if I were a marketing genius I would have sold 200,000 daylilies for $44 million!

Wow. Thanks for the kick in the pants, Matt!

Why can’t we get more value for our plants and services? Is it because of waste? That our product doesn’t objectively have enough value? Or that few “perceive” the value? Can we fix that “perception problem?” Is it possible that we could make an argument that could lead us to $224 Stella d’Oros? We laugh at that outrageous price, but then I wonder, How profitable do we want to be?  Is our goal reversing the trend of profit erosion or making profits soar?  I don’t have any answers, but I do know there’s no get-rich-quick-and-easy solution. Let’s get to work!

~Art