Indoor Produce Reaching Price Parity with Outdoor Grown

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Volatile weather conditions have highlighted the need for distributed food supply chains, including indoor agriculture. Jeff McKinnon, senior vice president of TruLeaf Sustainable Agriculture says that it helped them become more competitive in the marketplace.

McKinnon… “But what I didn’t anticipate is the upward pressure on the California field. Like it’s been almost the perfect storm for our industry to be honest. California was in drought. This year they’re just soaked in water, so there’s just massive supply shortages. Back in November/December, we had the issues with crop failures because of pests and things. Then the price skyrocketed. The shipping costs, gone through the roof. These events that are happening, I mean it’s scary for the world, but for our business, is just driving that price of California field grown up, and what we’re just seeing is we’re stable and these guys just keep pushing up so we get our return. The issue is are retailers and the food service guys going to continue to sell it if they’re seeing compressed margins, but I think we’re starting to see now close to parity, and that margin issue is starting to resolve itself.”

TruLeaf is a Candian-based indoor ag company. Visit truleaf.ca for more information.