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Inside View: What do you spend your time looking at?

Over the years, I’ve been very blessed to have been involved with many sectors of the horticulture industry. Nursery, soft fruit, bedding and potted ornamentals, cut flowers, mushrooms. Propagation, production, marketing, education. I even explored coffee, tea and rice production in East Africa for a year and gained some insight into tropical fruits in Vietnam for a short stint. Fantastic fun. Each area had their specific needs that always made horticulture such an engaging, inspiring and rewarding career choice for me. It still does. Perhaps, for me though, the only area that didn’t go well was spending several weeks brushing a foot of snow off the crowns of Brussels’ sprouts and cabbage plants, high upon the UK Yorkshire Wolds in December, collecting samples for Ministry of Agriculture brassica leaf disease surveys. Nothing against field veg. farming, but I’m pretty sure that experience contributed to me swiftly heading into a career in greenhouse crop production.

In the food sector, I’ve very much enjoyed both modern greenhouse production and the organic farm community. In both, the more I’ve learned, the more I realise that I have even more to learn. There has never been a dull season. And part of that learning process is found in the enjoyment of talking to people and being privileged to share in their collective knowledge. But working in these two specific ‘sectors’ has sometimes brought conflict. Proponents of both ‘systems’ have their views, with these views often driven by accumulated knowledge and experience, which in turn builds passion. Or is it passion driving the knowledge? Either way, sometimes this passion may spill over into a lack of willingness to understand the others’ position. Sophisticated technology-based, greenhouse hydroponics versus lower tech input, knowledge-based, organic systems. It seems to be a ‘one way or the other’ stance.

If you’ve been anywhere near a hydroponic greenhouse pepper grower in Canada in the last few months, conversation at some point probably came around to the hot topic of severe root issues caused by Fusarium. There’s no disputing the very severe problems it has caused and continues to do. What is much less clear is the fundamental issue and why it’s having such a big impact over such a short time and why now? Some growers are concluding that the growing medium is having a significant part to play. One grower shared that by allowing roots of infected plants growing in an inert medium to move into an organic-based medium (coir), there is a marked improvement in root health. Perhaps there is more biological resilience imparted from the organic medium. Or is it just clean at that point? Or something else completely. I don’t know – I have no empirical evidence to support one or the other. I’m not sure anyone does, to be honest.

But the actual medium is not my point today. I have seen all kinds of growing media used with great success. [I even recall one grower in the south of England growing cucumbers in bags filled with old socks.] My point? Well, I thought the (hydroponic) grower observation mentioned above was intriguing. Perhaps we don’t have to view one system as ‘the answer’. Isn’t there room for both? (And more?) Or perhaps, is there some middle ground where all growers can be comfortable with a highly efficient, environmentally sound, long-term ‘sustainable’ system that also makes great economic sense not just for producers but also for consumers? Personally, I don’t expect there to be one solution to the food security issue. I’m optimistic that there’s a place for all our production methods that collectively allow the food system to work for the benefit of everyone. I would love to see proponents of all sides of the food conversation (in particular the organic and so-called ‘conventional’ corners) learn from, and build with, each other.

Another hydroponic pepper grower, struggling with crop losses from Fusarium, recently said to me that perhaps we don’t take enough time looking at the roots. He didn’t say this, but it was kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’, as the saying goes. Yet, indeed, the growing medium is a cornerstone of any agricultural practice. Perhaps we should spend the same amount of time looking below ‘soil’ level as we do looking at the tops.

Gary Jones sits on several greenhouse industry committees in BC and welcomes comments at greenhousewolf@gmail.com

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