Daniel J. Cantliffe

There were 115,000 ha of vegetables produced in Florida valued at 1.6 billion for the production season of 2002-2003. The major crops of tomato, watermelon, pepper, cucumber, and strawberry accounted for 61% of the total statewide vegetable crop value. Vegetable culture in Florida is a very technological business involving several high-cost inputs including polyethylene mulch, drip irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticides. Currently, almost one-third of Florida vegetables, including all tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, eggplants, and most melons, are produced on polyethylene-mulch. Nearly 50% of the polyethylene-mulched crops are grown with drip irrigation.

Although Florida vegetable culture involves intensive production practices, there are major challenges in front of the vegetable industry. These challenges are 1.) increased regulation of water, fertilizer, and pesticide inputs, 2.) loss of a major soil fumigant, methyl bromide, 3.) increased urbanization and loss of some of the more desirable (warmer) production land in southern Florida, and 4.) continued challenges from weather, including freezes, winds and rain. Add to these challenges, the increasing problems associated with regional and global market competition. The added protection by plasticulture could lead to production of higher quality crops that will make Florida growers more competitive against imports from other vegetable production areas in the world. It is evident that for the vegetable industry in Florida to prosper and grow, there is a need to develop new cultural technologies.

Plasticulture systems, including greenhouses, could provide a means to deal with the challenges listed above. Currently, there is a small greenhouse (hydroponic) vegetable industry in Florida, but these special greenhouses represent a substantial investment due to heating and cooling system costs. An alternative might be the use of greenhouse structures with passive venting and heating. Greenhouse vegetable culture can provide protection from the weather, a major production challenge faced by vegetable growers. The serious potential loss of crops due to freezes and rain or wind is a major challenge and concern for all vegetable growers in climates such as Florida. These could more easily be controlled in greenhouse culture.

Greenhouse structures can protect the crop from wind and rain, but also can protect form insects when fitted with insect exclusion screens. Therefore, plasticulture systems could reduce the use of pesticides.

Plasticulture systems could include the use of soilless culture for crop production. One example would be bag or container production using an inert media such as perlite, vermiculite, peat, or coconut fiber. Soilless culture has been used successfully for vegetable production in Florida. Soilless culture would address the current challenges of urbanization because with soilless culture in greenhouses, winter vegetable production would not depend on warm, sandy soils of southern, coastal Florida. In addition, the loss of methyl bromide would be less troublesome if a portion of the vegetables could be grown in soilless culture, either under a protective structure or in open-field soilless culture.

In summary, plasticulture with soilless cultural systems could address several of the serious challenges facing the vegetable industry in Florida and could provide a new industry to Florida producers. Some of the plasticulture technologies currently exist, but need to be evaluated and refined for Florida use. Already, this technology is in use in several places in the world, including Israel and other Mid East countries, several Far East countries (China, Korea, Japan), Canada, and Mexico. These countries face some of the same challenges as does the Florida vegetable industry. The Protected Agriculture Project at the University of Florida Horticultural Sciences Department could provide much needed information for hands-on training and demonstrations so that Florida producers could examine, work, and train in this exciting new agricultural business endeavor.