This year’s strawberry period did not go quite well for growers and marketers. While fantastic income have been realized by way of immediate advertising, weather fluctuations brought on issues when partly overlapping source volumes of early and late kinds from all more than Germany oversaturated the sector. However, Markus Staden (pictured right), handling director of Hansabred and Kraege Beerenpflanzen, acknowledges some traits that can be viewed as the response to these issues. By means of Hansabred, for example, Staden is looking into new kinds and vertical farming.

Variety selection very important for marketing and advertising
“Secured, calculable cultivation is specifically suited for making wide range developments additional predictable, as properly. Also, we can reach calculable volume flows, equally by means of crops in guarded cultivation and as a result of the more enhancement of varieties,” claims Staden. Even so, there is a obvious division in the promoting of versions: “On the a single hand, there are individuals varieties that are superior-tasting and attractive in the husk, but can only be promoted for 1 or two days. Then there are commercial versions for which firmness, storability and substantial tonnages perform a notably significant purpose. In the past, farmers created the very same commodity for each channels. Now, this is no more time feasible, for the reason that 1 has to by now choose either a person or the other possibility in the collection of the kinds.”

Strawberries from greenhouses and vertical farming
Staden also details to the simple fact that greenhouse strawberries are continue to nowhere close to as widespread as in other nations. “The Netherlands and Belgium have converted 80-90% to greenhouse growing. From the United states of america, in flip, the principle of vertical farming has appear to us. For this, we are now investigating new varieties and crops for vertical farming with Hansabred,” Staden stated. Even so, according to Staden, vertical farming in Germany is continue to a very long way off, for the reason that in conditions of fees, open-industry cultivation is even now the most rewarding, once preset expenses are taken into account. Staden: “Even if I really don’t offer 3 ha of 30 ha of strawberries, that’s however bearable for out of doors growers. In a tunnel crop with…