What to grow.

The crop decides the greenhouse — never the other way around. It is the most important principle of the whole DutchGreenhouses® approach, and the reason “what to grow” comes first: every downstream engineering decision, from the structure and climate systems to the irrigation and the logistics, follows from what the facility is meant to produce and for whom. Design the building first and force a crop into it, and you optimise for the wrong thing; start from the crop and the market, and everything else falls into place.

Crop selection therefore starts not in the field but in the market. The key questions are commercial: what does your region currently import that could be grown locally, what commands stable and attractive prices, and what perishable produce benefits most from being grown close to the buyer rather than shipped across the world? A crop that grows beautifully but cannot be sold profitably is a failed project, so demand and price come before agronomy.

From there we model the economics in detail against your local climate profile. Yield per square metre, the seasonality of prices, labour intensity and the level of technology a crop justifies are weighed together — a high-value, labour-light crop with a strong local market may justify sophisticated technology, while a lower-value crop points toward a simpler, leaner facility. The climate profile enters here too, because a crop that thrives in one location may be uneconomic to grow in another once heating or cooling costs are counted.

The outcome is a clear, evidence-based answer to what the greenhouse should grow — whether that is vegetables, flowers or indoor produce, each of which implies a genuinely different facility. That decision then anchors every engineering choice that follows, which is why getting it right at the start is worth far more than any later optimisation. Not sure what your market needs? We run the crop feasibility with you, before any steel is ordered. Get in touch to start.