In the third year of their partnership, the School of Agriculture research facility and the organization dedicated to promoting Arizona’s global business are cooperating to make greenhouse growing and hydroponics the next wave in high-value farming in the region, and Southern Arizona the hub of an international network, where genetic researchers, engineers and agribusiness can meet.
With declining crop prices, rising costs and increasing competition with suburban developers for land and water, it’s getting harder for the state’s traditional citrus and cotton farmers and cattle ranchers to survive, said Professor Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center. However, what makes it more difficult to farm in a field only increases the advantage of growing in greenhouses.
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“There’s a better return on investment,” he said, due to year-round growing, more efficient use of land and water and a much smaller reliance on pesticides. “When you combine that with Arizona’s sunshine, good water quality, a viable workforce and available transportation, there are advantages here unlike almost anywhere else in the world.”
While hydroponics in Southern Arizona is currently limited to tomato growing, “that will expand outward when people realize what can be done.”
Already experimenting with bell peppers and other vegetables, where the university’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center has demonstrated up to a tenfold increase in production per acre, Giacomelli said, “We see controlled environment agriculture as the future of Southwest farming, reducing the dependence on open field agriculture and providing a higher-dollar crop.”
Working to transform that theoretical advantage into a global business model, the International Trade Development Center (ITDC) is developing business plans for international marketing of not just farm produce, but also specialty seedlings for rapidly expanding greenhouse growing operations in Sonora and Sinaloa and elsewhere, portable greenhouses for nutritional programs in underdeveloped countries, and genetically engineered plants for pharmaceutical production.
Development Center Co-Director Ron Richman said, “We want to be ahead of the curve, rather than behind it in developing a new industry for Southern Arizona.” Using a business model where the development center funds university research into projects that can be commercialized, with revenues going back to the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center to support more research, he said, “There are a number of projects we’re looking at pursuing in cooperation with the CEAC.”
He said four grant applications have already been submitted and more are planned, including research into projects that generate power from waste.
Along with developing products, Richman said the partnership is promoting the education of researchers and workers, who will be crucial to the growth of the industry. “Whatever happens with any individual project, we’ve created understanding of what we’re doing.”
By making the effort, the ITDC-CEAC partnership, “is creating an education capability that’s training people to operate in this environment, and not just college graduates, either. There’s a certified grower program to get them into greenhouses,” he said, where the starting pay is more than $30,000 a year, doubling after a few years to $60,000, with benefits.
“Working cooperatively, CEAC is doing research that ITDC can turn into companies which will, in turn, create jobs for people in Southern Arizona.”
The other co-director for the development center, Robert Shatz, said, “To a large extent, food production, the agricultural capability of Southern Arizona, has always been important.” What the partnership is doing is combining that with technology to keep it relevant. “This is about technology transfer,” he said.
Giacomelli agreed. “It’s about applying research and putting it to use in industry and benefiting from everything that comes with that, creating good jobs and tax revenue and economic growth,” he said. “It’s about integration of plant engineering, growing and research. We emphasize that a lot because there are few other institutions in the world, and none in the U.S., that have this capability.”
By working with the ITDC, Giacomelli said industry is learning what the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center has to offer, “and they’re coming to us. They’re asking the tough questions and finding answers, and that gives us a lot of credibility.”
E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Contact Philip S. Moore at pmoore@azbiz.com or at (520) 295-4238.
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