By Brett Wolff
I recently helped lead a professional development workshop for NRCS and Extension personnel about how to use the new High Tunnel Resource Guide for Producers. Part of the workshop was about crop selection for high tunnels. There are lots of different variables for choosing a crop, but my focus was on the economic factors.
Our standard recommendation is always to to add up your specific costs (including labor) and compare those to your potential revenue from your specific markets (including the price and potential sales volume) to truly evaluate the crop. Our enterprise budgets are a great tool for starting the research to calculate those numbers. There are also budgets in the Resource Guide.
But if you’re just kicking around crops what should you think about? Are certain types of crops a better fit than others? As I often do with these questions, I approached it like I was going to do it myself. So I picked a few crops and did some math you can see below. NOTE: This is not a peer reviewed extension publication (though we may think about making one of those) and these are just very rough “back of the envelope” estimates to get you thinking.