Burgeoning East Coast Broccoli
East Coast, US-
By ANUK Staff
1.11.13
Grossing nearly $1 billion a year, the U.S. broccoli industry continues to expand, due in part to growing awareness of its health benefits. The high fiber, nutrient rich vegetable has been linked to cancer prevention and improving vitamin D deficiency.
The fact remains, however, that 90 percent of broccoli sold in the East is produced in California and Mexico, resulting in a larger
carbon footprint and profits that leave the region, according to Thomas Björkman, associate professor of horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences based at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y.
With an end goal of building a regional food network and a year-round market worth $100 million, Björkman is leading a team composed of researchers from broccoli breeding programs, seed companies, production specialists and economists, according to phys.org.
After two years, funded by a $3.2 million USDA grant and bolstered by $1.7 in matching funds from participating companies, the team appears close to reaching their goal.
"Most standard varieties developed for western climates have trouble lasting through hot and humid eastern summers," Björkman says. "But new genetics have allowed us to develop varieties that don't make misshapen heads when the weather turns consistently warm."
During the past two summers, the project team tested varieties and new hybrids at five field sites in New York, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina and southern Maine. A few new crosses outperformed the best commercial varieties, setting a hopeful tone for future breeding.
New summer-tolerant varieties could expand the growing season as well as profit margins, but according to Miguel Gomez, Cornell's Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, the team needs to figure out distribution logistics.
Comparing data from emerging eastern broccoli producing areas with regions in the West, Gomez’s recently developed economic model identifies cost-effective pathways from getting broccoli from the farm gate to the grocery store.
His results show that the additional expense incurred by eastern US broccoli production would be offset by savings in transportation
costs. According to the model, a 30 percent increase in eastern acreage has the potential to reduce costs by $5 million a year under current diesel fuel prices and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.4 million pounds per year, an amount roughly equivalent to taking 125 cars off the road.
"More problem solving is needed to identify optimal locations for growing and postharvest facilities and ways of keeping large amounts of broccoli cold," says Gomez. "But initial findings show that if we can answer those questions, we can have a strong industry here. It's broccoli today, but we hope the project can be a model for other crops."
