The vast majority of broccoli sold in the United States is grown on the West Coast. Why not grow the crop here? That’s the question behind a $3.2 million, five-year research project that began in 2009. Several Southwest Virginia broccoli growers are involved.
“There are some people that are still optimistic, and some are pessimistic. But most people are being patient to see what comes out of the project,” said R. Allen Straw, Virginia Cooperative Extension area specialist for horticulture, small fruit and specialty crops at the Southwest Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Center.
“We want this industry to grow, we want the growers to be successful, but there have been some hurdles.”
The most popular commercial varieties of broccoli are grown in the western United States, so the first two years of the project were focused on whether those varieties would grow well on the East Coast. That was followed by efforts to breed new broccoli varieties optimized for the East Coast’s humid and hotter conditions; those efforts are ongoing
Building a new marketing network for broccoli growers will be the focus of the last year of the project, Straw said.
“We’ve already got a strong marketing program with the Southwest Virginia Farmers’ Market in Hillsville, with Food City and the Appalachian Harvest Organic Growers Cooperative,” he said, “and we’ve already got more demand than we can grow. There’s demand out there for East Coast broccoli.
“The challenge is finding enough growers and land to fill that demand,” he added. “We want to build a group of highly skilled producers who understand the crop and understand the market.”
Other growers in Eastern Virginia are already involved in a network of broccoli suppliers up and down the East Coast, Straw said. “That’s one of the things the grant is trying to work on, how to develop a network that’s good all year long.”
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