A pragmatic approach

Paul Sellew, the owner and CEO of this month’s cover subject Little Leaf Farms, said something during our interview that has stuck with me:

“Markets figure things out,” he said. “You need to have a cost of production. You need to have quality. You need to be able to deliver that product to the market. And you need to be able to make a profit. Or you will not be sustainable and you will go out of business.”

When talking to Sellew, he reminded me a lot more of the ornamental growers I talk to for Greenhouse Management than many of the folks growing vegetables, be it in a greenhouse or a vertical farm or any other kind of CEA operation. Which makes sense — Sellew grew up working at his parents’ business, Prides Corner Farms, a nursery in Connecticut that his brother still runs today. He attended Cornell and studied horticulture. He ran and founded another business (Backyard Farms) before it sold. He is pragmatic and more focused on growing a high-quality crop that meets customer needs than he is on changing the entire system. He is a grower first and foremost.

“We have to get it from the grocery shelf and then the consumers decides if you’re successful or not,” he says.

That isn’t to say CEA — and more specifically, the highly-competitive lettuce category — doesn’t need visionaries or bold thinkers who want to reshape the industry. It does and some of the most innovative companies in the space are built around the idea that the way companies grow needs to be upgraded and modified to fit modern times.

But I think Sellew is getting at something that is core to CEA growing as an industry and maturing into something with a solid market share vs. outdoor-grown lettuce. Needing to make a profit is essential over time to make a business last.

Yes, there can be times when taking on debt and expanding the business is part of the process, but ultimately, this is about dollars and cents, being in the red or the black.

Either a business can turn a profit or not. For this industry to reach the potential many believe it has, these businesses need to last.

I think you’ll find the Little Leaf Farms story and their approach to growing insightful. Flip to page 6 to learn more.