Horticulture

Horticultural production systems include

• open field and protected cultivation,
• perennial permanent crops and short crops of a few weeks,
• cultivation in soil, substrate or nutrient solutions.

The production of fruits, vegetables and other horticultural products is a very intensive form of land management with high added value compared to arable farming. Horticulture covers only 1.3 % of the agricultural land in Germany, but generates about 12% of the gross value added and employs almost 15% of the labor force in agriculture.

This high intensity of use of labor and capital, as well as nutrients, crop protection, substrates and energy - for example in greenhouse production – also means that changes in the political, legal or market conditions can have a major impact on the profitability and competitiveness of horticultural production. Examples include the introduction or increase of the minimum wage in Germany, the rising energy costs, the amendments to the Fertilizer Ordinance (projects MoDeN and KuN_Gemüse) or the reduction in the use of peat for planting substrates as part of the peat reduction strategy (project MiToDe). How these changes in the business environment affects horticultural farms and which the adaptation strategies they employ are the major questions in the focus of the research of our working group.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are often consumed or marketed unprocessed, so the demands on external and internal quality are very high. Maintaining freshness and quality for rapidly perishable produce is the key challenge for horticultural value chains. This applies not only to fruits and vegetables, but also to flowers and many ornamental plants, perennials and woody plants. Therefore, analyses of the economic efficiency and competitiveness of horticultural production systems must always take the entire value chain into account, as for example in the ReFoWas project were we analyzed food losses in the fruit and vegetable value chains, or in the investigation of innovations in the context of the digitalization of horticulture in the Hortico_4.0 project.

German horticulture faces intense international competition: around 60% of the vegetables and more than 85% of the fruit consumed in Germany are imported from other countries. We are working on international aspects of horticulture, such as comparing the production systems and costs of selected crops in different countries or climatic zones, as part of the agri benchmark Horticulture network.