The Finnish Glasshouse Growers' Association is promoting this focus in the local market. “We are fighting against the import since 1995 when we joined the European Union and we focus on our Finnish customer only,” Jyrki says. The lobby for local produce has turned out quite positive for the Finnish growers; 80 percent of the cucumbers eaten in Finland are produced in Finland. “The same goes for 95 percent of the lettuce and fresh herbs,” he adds. The rest is imported, so that’s very little.”
According to Jyrki, the main reason Finnish consumers are preferring more expensive local produce, is food safety. “Consumers have a good feeling about local produce as we showed them in our campaigns that the local production is produced on a clean and sustainable way.”
The success of the local marketing is not the case for all greenhouse growers; for the Finnish flower industry, it’s a different story. “Many growers stopped producing cut flowers last year due to high production costs. The standard of living in Finland is very high and so are the salaries. They couldn’t compete with the cheap flowers coming from Africa.” Despite that Finnish customers are willing to pay more for local food, it is not the case with flowers. "The customer doesn't eat the flowers, so he doesn't want to pay more on domestic flowers and plants. Only tulips are an exception; local tulips last 1-2 days longer than the imported tulips. Thus over 90 per cent of the tulips on the Finnish market are locally produced."
More efficient
Although the number of Finnish greenhouse companies are decreasing, the Finnish Glasshouse Growers’ Association has high hopes for the future. “The number of companies will decrease, but the acreage of greenhouses will stay the same. Also, the production of those greenhouses will be higher in the future, because they will work more efficiently.”The Finnish growers are looking for efficient and cost reducing innovations, but when it comes to LED lighting, Finland still has a lot to develop. Jyrki: “We did some tests on tomatoes, but in commercial production we’re not yet using them. The prices of the luminaires are still much too high for many growers. Yet, a couple of weeks ago we had a meeting with a group of LED manufacturers and they gave us very promising hopes for the future of LED lighting in Finland.”
As representative of the Finnish Glasshouse Growers’ Association, Jyrki Jalkanen gives presentations in several countries about the Finnish horticultural industry, with the aim to promote growing and consuming local food. “I’ve been in Hungary, Denmark, Norway and Germany and the growers were really surprised about the Finnish greenhouse industry. The overall reaction was that they want to see if they could also make consumers buy their local production.”