Oct 24, 2004 5 min read

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. (AP) – Thomas Handwerker leans close to a young orchid, just over from China, to inspect its deep green leaves. He knows exactly where a long, flowery spindle will sprout. He’s a career horticulturist, but he doesn’t know a thing about growing phalaenopsis orchids.

Handwerker is counting on farmers along the eastern shore region of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to do the work of cultivating this brood of 30,000 orchids. He and Dan Kuennen, a fellow faculty member of the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, are hatching their second agricultural incubator. If it works, it will spawn more than a dozen orchid farms on the shore.

“From the farmer’s point of view, it’s a dream,” Handwerker says.

In a model long used by the poultry industry on Delmarva, orchid farmers will contract directly with Jet Green, the Beijing company that ships the young plants to the U.S. Growers would be guaranteed a price when they turn the plants back over to the company.

That’s the long-term goal. For now, Handwerker and Kuennen are getting the engine started by taking care of the huge shipments of year-old, bare-rooted plants and easing them into the East Coast climate inside this university greenhouse. In a few weeks, the plants will be ready to ship to farmers, who will contract with Jet Green.

The network doesn’t aim to rival established orchid industries in Florida and California, Handwerker said. Instead, its goal is to take advantage of a growing international market and at the same time diversify farming on the shore – and eventually the East Coast – by giving growers alternative crops, Handwerker said.

“This is not a research project. This is economic development.”

Handwerker and Kuennen’s first brainchild, a bedding plant network, was a wild success. It recruited 27 growers, 20 percent of whom were first-time farmers, and generated $24 million over five years for Burtonsville-based Bell Nursery Inc.

“They schemed it up, and it worked out pretty nicely,” said Gene Casey, a retired auditor from Centreville who is in his fifth year of growing marigolds, petunias and ageratums for Bell. He’s doubled his original half-acre of plantings.

The major risk for the farmer trying to cultivate the phalaenopsis is the initial investment – $250,000 to $300,000 to build a greenhouse to the company’s specifications. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture backs the loans, and most growers aim to pay off the mortgages within five years, Casey said.

“In any capitalist system there’s risk,” said Kuennen, director of the university’s Rural Development Center. “We’re trying to minimize the risk as much as possible.”

To keep farmers on the right track and guarantee healthy orchids, they’ll get weekly visits from Jet Green’s horticulturists. The exchange of information eliminates the “entry-level hassles” for the grower, Handwerker said.

“There are a hundred different ways to raise these orchids,” he says, but using the company’s experts as mentors eliminates much of the trial and error.

The expertise is the key to making the contracts work, said Andy Jerardo, a USDA economist who specializes in floraculture.

“It all depends on the arrangement, what the terms of the contract spell out,” he said. “I’m sure farmers aren’t all that familiar with how to grow orchids, so they need the expertise.”

The flowerless plants for now are taking up only about a tenth of the 2.5-acre greenhouse nestled in the pastures alongside the campus. One of Jet Green’s expert growers is experimenting with the temperature and light, as he tries to make a comfortable bed for the transported orchids.

In a few weeks, the plants will show tall flowers shaped like flattened daffodils, with delicate white petals and butter-colored centers. The retail price is about $20 each, although Maryland growers may eventually raise varieties that sell for as much as $300.

Handwerker and Kuennen envision the greenhouse filled with 200,000 orchids before Jet Green’s five-year lease is up – enough to supply plants to as many as 15 local farmers at least once a year. Local farmers already are inquiring about how to join the network.

The two are confident in their incubator model after the success of the Bell Nursery experiment. The only apparent downfall looms in the long run, if the network fattens out of control and growers become “indentured servants” of the company. A criticism long held by poultry farmer advocates is that a handful of giant companies control the industry, leaving growers who raise chicks with little choice but to renew unfavorable contracts.

“The principle would work with any commodity, as long as the (company) doesn’t become too greedy,” he said.

Handwerker and Kuennen believe they may be able to head off that crisis by continually incubating new networks of growers. Their model could work with culinary herbs and specialty vegetables, they believe.

“The goal would be to diversify the industry, so farmers are not so dependent on one firm,” Kuennen said. “So when push comes to shove, when the master gardener puts the squeeze on the grower, the farmer has somewhere else to go.”

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On the Net:

University of Maryland, Eastern Shore horticulture: http://www.skipjack.net/sfi