How COVID-19 Is Changing Vegetable Crop Plans for 2020

By Carol Miller|April 15, 2020

Our team had unexpected insight to how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting vegetable production decision making. It’s all due to the timing of when we conducted our State of the Vegetable Industry Survey: February and March 2020.

Slightly more than half our responses came in the later half of March. This allowed us to compare the responses before and after the first stay-at-home orders occurred (March 13). That’s when food service produce sales plummeted.

We zeroed in on one particular question in the Survey: Which crops you plan to grow this season?

It’s a monster question, one survey takers likely groan at when they reach it. For each of the 32 crops, we ask:

In 2020, are you:

Growers Grew Cautious After March 13

Overall, growers pulled back on making big changes.

Those planning to add a crop to the mix in 2020 decided to hold off. Those planning to increase production on a crop retrenched. And even those planning to drop a crop in 2020 had second thoughts.

Naturally some crops bucked the trends. More growers answering after the stay-at-home order plan to increase onions (11.6% to 14%) and peas (8% to 11.5%) crops than their peers responding prior to the order.

The one area with mixed responses related to plans for decreasing production for a crop.

Growers responding after COVID-19 impacted food service accelerated their plans to decrease production on roughly a third of the 33 vegetable crops we asked about. But they also halted plans to decrease production on slightly more than a third of crops. The remaining crops saw no changes in plans.

Here’s a Look at Individual Crops

These charts compares the responses growers gave to all 32 crops, sorted by pre-lock down and after the lock down. Note that the percentages do not add up to 100%. The missing amount represents those who do not grow the crop.