May 2022 - 48

MANAGEMENT
LABOR PAINS
Growing
Part 3
Our final segment in this series on greenhouse labor management gathers input from a
grower who operates as close to an autonomous greenhouse as one can get.
BY CARL SILVERBERG
I
f you take a two-hour drive east from Chicago, you pass a mixture of
suburbs, small cities and some classic Midwest family farm country.
Then you get to the industrial areas of Indiana - that stretch of
America often called the Rust Belt - dotted with former bustling towns,
now filled with abandoned warehouses and shuttered industrial plants.
In the middle of all this is one of the most technologically advanced
greenhouses in the U.S.
Pure Green Farms is in South Bend, Indiana, and grower Johnathan
McCullar runs a brand new greenhouse designed to take advantage of
all the indoor technology available. With over 100,000 square feet of
produce, McCullar manages the entire operation with about 10 employees.
I wanted to know, does he only have 10 people because he can't find more
people to work in his facility or because that's all he needs?
" We just don't need that many people. In terms of attracting labor
as we expand and build more facilities, we have to develop a brand
that will quickly attract more people. We're competing with Costco and
Walmart, those types of employers for entry-level workers, " McCullar
says. " On the other end, the higher-skilled workers, we see college grads
who graduate understanding scientific papers, with great horticulture
knowledge, and with a good grasp of data analytics, which is a lot of
what we do here. That's a good thing because we don't have a lot of time
to teach someone. "
We talked a bit about the impact of COVID but McCullar focused on what
has changed since he graduated from the University of Florida about eight
years ago. Interestingly, he discussed the impact of technology but talked
about a different aspect of growing than just a need for greenhouse skills.
" Technology has changed the greenhouse a lot, but the basics are still
the same. You still have to create the perfect environment around the
seed. How we do that has changed the most. For example, consumers are
more aware of practices on farms, " he says. " They want to feel good about
the products they're buying, and that the people they're buying
48 MAY 2022 GPNMAG.COM
LEDs and sophisticated climate control systems are becoming standard to
controlled environment agriculture, says Johnathan McCullar, grower at Pure
Green Farms. (Photos: Pure Green Farms)

http://www.GPNMAG.COM

May 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2022

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