Cost of production analysis for greenhouse grown foliage plants in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas

Abstract

The Texas Rio Grande Valley Foliage Plant Industry is comprised of a small number of growers producing in adequate, low cost structures. Firm size varies from 50,000 to 1,300,000 square feet of greenhouse space with 87% of the space being allocated to finishing the plants. The primary market is to price-oriented chain store accounts within the state of Texas. The primary competition is from Florida growers. The managers of the firms feel that an oversupply of plants in the market place will be a major factor limiting the success of their business over the next five years. The large size firms have an annual total cost per square foot of production space of $2.22. Cost of goods sold accounts for 60% of total cost for the large firms. Labor is the largest single expense with total labor accounting for 39% of total costs for the large firms. An operations process chart was used to identify potting labor and harvest labor as two parts of the production process which hold potential for variability. Potting labor varies between container sizes, plant species and the form of the plant material being potted. Potting labor for the large firms was estimated to be 22% of production labor and 6.6% of total costs. Harvest labor varies between container sizes, plant species, and the type of box used to ship the plants. The cost of harvest labor for the large firms was estimated to be 29.1% of production labor and 7.8% of total costs. The combined cost to pot and harvest the plants as estimated for the large firms was 51.1% of production labor and 14.4% of total costs. The variations between species documented in the potting labor and harvest labor studies are to a substantial degree different from the variation in labor allocation accounted for on the basis of the production space being occupied by a particular plant. Any uniform allocation of production labor costs may introduce substantial error into the estimate of the cost of producing the plant.