Ryan Douglas is a Maine-based strategic advisor to cultivation businesses and the
author of “Presence is a Strategy: The Competitive Advantage You Can’t Automate.”
Last week, a news report announced that the Lisbon greenhouse facility operated
by Springworks Farm is headed to auction.
Roughly 40 miles away, Vertical Harvest, a high-tech producer of indoor leafy greens in Westbrook, has faced significant delays and has yet to reach the commercial scale it originally envisioned.
If Maine is going to support innovative agriculture with public resources, it should ask one question before a project moves forward: Is the operation ready to run?
Early in my career, I worked for an ornamental flower grower in Mississippi who operated on five acres of patched-up, run-down greenhouses. The facility wasn’t impressive, but the crops were consistently exceptional.
Years later, I consulted for a publicly traded cannabis company in Colombia. It had sophisticated facilities, a ton of cash and a board with impressive credentials. But when I stepped into the company’s greenhouse, I was speechless. Every plant was dead.
How could an operation with every advantage fail at the most basic task, while the unimpressive greenhouse produced exceptional crops?
Those two experiences reinforced a lesson I’ve learned throughout my career: operational readiness is fundamental to success.
As a lifelong Mainer, I’ve spent three decades in commercial horticulture throughout the U.S., Canada and South America. Most of my career has been under glass as a grower, manager and consultant, and I previously served as general manager for Backyard Farms, the 40-acre tomato greenhouse range in Madison.
Operational readiness is having the people, systems and discipline to run a facility reliably from day one. In this business, margins are made or lost in the consistent execution of mundane but essential work.
Skipping a crop walk on Friday could mean missing signs that insect pressure has increased due to warmer weather. By Monday, that small oversight can mean unsaleable product, additional labor and lost revenue.
In a small greenhouse, that mistake may have a limited impact. But at a commercial scale, small mistakes compounded over time can quickly turn into major losses. No amount of money can replace the need for operational experience, seasoned judgment and common sense. Operational readiness must be built into a cultivation project from day one, not treated as a problem to solve once construction is complete.
Springworks Farm received meaningful public support, including a $300,000 Maine Technology Institute award for greenhouse expansion. The Finance Authority of Maine insured a $5 million loan and a $1 million working-capital loan in partnership with Farm
Credit East.
Vertical Harvest received nearly $49 million in USDA-guaranteed loans, approximately $8 million in financing facilitated through Efficiency Maine and $1 million in direct loans from the Finance Authority of Maine.
When public resources support private projects at this scale, Mainers have a legitimate stake in whether those projects are built and managed to succeed. Operational readiness should be scrutinized as closely as technology, job creation, capital investment and economic impact.
I am 100% in favor of continued investment in Maine’s ability to feed itself. Considering our short outdoor growing season, innovative cultivation projects like these will be a key part of the solution. But these latest developments are a reminder that impressive facilities alone aren’t enough.
Public funding shouldn’t just help ambitious agricultural ventures get off the ground. It should increase their chances of actually sticking around.