In early June I took a trip to Holland with six other California growers to attend the Dutch Lily Days. It was a great trip for me to see what is new in lilies and gerbera daisies and tour some of the most technologically modern greenhouses in the world. I reflected a lot on the difference between Dutch and California cut flower growing. I believe the one thing we have in common is a desire to be profitable. After that, there is a big difference in how we each go about achieving this goal.

A group of California lily growers attended Dutch Lily Days in Holland. The group consisted of Robin van der Schaaf of Flamingo Bulbs; Mike Mooney and Jack Graham of Dramm & Echter; Jocelyn Villarus, Steve Oku, James Oku and Tyler Hall of Oku Nursery; Ivor van Wingerden of Ocean Breeze; Robert Kitayama of Kitayama Bros.; and Marcos van Wingerden of Pyramid Flowers.The Dutch focus on innovation and technology to increase production, while decreasing their labor costs. As much as possible the Dutch have tried to automate each step of the flowers’ process from planting to packaging. As a U.S. grower, I can’t fathom the investment needed to maintain their facilities.

A very large gerbera grower told us he had installed a $5 million revolving table system for his gerbera daisies and after a year or so decided it wasn’t “right.” He scrapped the whole program and installed another system, which was just as modern and costly. He wasn’t willing to settle for the wrong technology.

Another large Dutch orchid plant producer — who spent $20 million on a new facility — said that in 15 years the entire facility would be redone because the technology would be obsolete.

I have come to the conclusion that Dutch greenhouses are factories under glass and the growers are also engineers. As a result, the flowers are very uniform and the crops programmable.

American cut flower growers take an opposite strategy to the Dutch. There are almost no new greenhouses being put up in the United States for cut flowers. The largest expansion is either in outdoor flowers or in plastic hoophouses. The American grower is trying to produce as much as he can for as little investment as he can.

The greenhouses at Kitayama Bros. are over 40 years old. We keep them in good shape and change the poly glass covering every 15 years.

California does have a major advantage in climate and a small advantage in labor costs. We are not as efficient as the Dutch, but we don’t have to be. Instead of factories under glass we are farms under glass. Most everything is cement in a Dutch greenhouse — our greenhouses have good old soil.

It is not easy to determine which method works better. On the face of it, it would seem the Dutch growers have a better long-term strategy for flower production. However, both countries have seen domestic flower production decline. In each country the number of growers has been cut by half over the last 10-15 years. The total acreage of rose production has gone from 2,500 acres to 750 acres in Holland. Just as U.S. growers have seen South American products take their market, the Dutch are losing a lot of share to flowers from Africa.

Where the Dutch do win is in producing a next generation of owners and managers. At each of the Dutch greenhouses we visited there was a next generation who planned to take over. Convincing our American-raised children that flower growing is a good business might be easier if we were less farmers and more high-tech.

Robert Kitayama is chief executive officer and president at Kitayama Bros. in Watsonville, CA. He can be contacted at [email protected].