A Collaborative Path To Successful CEA Projects
From HortiDaily.com — As controlled environment agriculture projects continue to scale and diversify, developers are increasingly recognizing that successful greenhouse facilities are rarely the result of technology decisions made late in the process. Instead, the most resilient and productive operations are built through integrated planning, where specialists from multiple disciplines collaborate from the earliest design stages.
According to Joe Swartz, Senior Vice President at American Hydroponics (AmHydro), the industry is shifting away from a reactive, technology-first approach toward a more coordinated development strategy.
“The greenhouse structure, growing system, climate systems, automation, harvesting, packaging, cold storage, and distribution are not independent choices,” he says. “They’re one continuous flow.”
Moving beyond technology-first design
Over the past few years, the CEA sector has experienced both rapid expansion and significant project setbacks. In many cases, Joe says, difficulties emerged when projects prioritized specific technologies before fully defining the business model or operational requirements.
“The industry has gone through significant challenges over the past two years, and a lot of that was caused by unrealistic expectations and technologies that didn’t provide positive economics.”
He emphasizes that, despite its technological advancements, CEA remains fundamentally an agricultural enterprise.
“Farming is farming; whether it’s outdoors, in a greenhouse, or in an indoor facility,” he says. “The economic rules, the horticultural rules and the market rules all apply equally.”
For this reason, successful projects often begin by defining market demand, crop strategy, operational capacity and financial targets before finalizing technology selections.
Designing systems to work together
A key principle of integrated CEA development is synchronizing technologies across the entire production chain. Rather than selecting systems individually, project teams design the greenhouse structure, hydroponic system, automation, packaging, and logistics infrastructure as a single operational platform.
This collaborative approach was recently applied in the planning of a three-hectare leafy greens greenhouse in Newberry, Florida by Harvest Singularity.
Project CEO Charles Garza engaged multiple technology partners early in the design phase, including American Hydroponics for hydroponic systems and Dalsem Complete Greenhouse Projects for greenhouse design and construction. Additional partners such as JASA Packaging Solutions and TTA-ISO joined to address packaging, automation and post-harvest handling.
By involving these specialists from the outset, the facility’s crop production, harvesting, packaging and distribution processes could be designed simultaneously rather than retrofitted later.