Estimated Nursery Liner Production Costs for Woody Ornamental Plant Stock

Abstract

<jats:p>Ornamental plant growers must be able to accurately assess production costs associated with woody liner stock to gain profit potential in a highly competitive industry. Fixed and variable cost inputs may not be intuitive or readily apparent to growers and may even differ between common types of production in the trade. To help liner producers identify profit-based price points for their woody ornamental liner stock, we modeled costs associated with producing familiar species and cultivars of a representative deciduous shade tree, a broadleaf evergreen, and a needle leaf evergreen liner. Production costs are projected down to individual plant units for each of the three most common liner production systems, including a field ground bed system, a polyhouse-covered (plant protection structure sheathed with one layer of 6-mil polyethylene film) ground bed system, and a polyhouse-covered container system. Production costs for individual plants varied due to the actual growing space available within each system. The field ground bed system offered greatest flexibility in crop planting density, with cost potentially distributed among the largest number of salable units. In addition to modeled costs, advantages and disadvantages of each liner cropping system are discussed.</jats:p>

Liner Propagation Method Influences Growth of Container Grown Bottlebrush

“…Understanding both fixed and variable costs of production are central to being profitable in a highly competitive industry. Liners can be a significant source of production costs, and liner morphology and physiology can influence production time and potentially influence overall plant aesthetics (Hamill 2016;Jeffers 2008). Future studies should include a component cost analysis comparison of TC-liner-produced crops with their CO-liner counterparts.…”

Production Costs of Field-grown Cercis canadensis L. ‘Forest Pansy’ Identified during Life Cycle Assessment Analysis

“…Following previously referenced enterprise budgeting procedures for ornamental crops (Hall et al, 2002;Hinson et al, 2008;Jeffers et al, 2010), the amount of labor required to perform each cultural practice or activity was tracked as was the amount of time machinery and equipment was operated and the amount of materials that were used (e.g., fertilizers, pesticides, etc.). Based on the advice from cooperating growers, the amount of labor needed to perform each activity in the nursery was multiplied by a factor of 1.25 to account for non-productive time such as setup, cleanup, etc.…”

“…Input prices were obtained from 2012 price lists of green industry manufacturers and distributors and averaged when multiple prices were obtained. Lastly, the cost of operating each piece of machinery and equipment was derived from published enterprise budgets (Hall et al, 2002;Hinson et al, 2008;Jeffers et al, 2010), converted to current dollars using the GDP price deflator, and then multiplied by the number of hours each tractor or implement was used and then divided by the total number of seedlings to obtain the equipment-related cost per seedling. Total variable costs were derived by summing the total labor, materials, and equipment costs.…”