A grower in Antalya is experimenting with growing sweet corn as an alternative product in his tomato greenhouse and is ecstatic with the results so far. Each corn cob is sold for 0.25 USD per piece, which leaves significant profits for the grower.
Increasing tomato production costs has pushed grower Fettah Kaplan to a search for alternatives and he has started experimenting with sweet corn production in 0.2 hectare part of his greenhouse.
Grower Fettah Kaplan: “I have planted seedlings on the 5th of February and harvested products in 3 months. That is the biggest advantage we have in greenhouse sweet corn production. In the open field, corn seeds and seedlings are planted at the end of March and they were harvested at the end of June and early parts of July, and the prices are lower at that point of the season, as many growers harvest their sweet corn. In greenhouse production, we have the advantage of planting and harvesting earlier, thus benefiting from much higher prices. 0.2 hectares were enough to plant around 14,000 seedlings. I’m delighted with the results. Compared to tomato production, sweet corn production requires less manual labor, and as a result its production costs are much lower than tomato. Tomato in 1,000 square meters has a production cost of around 750 USD, whereas the cost of sweet corn in the same area is around 250 USD.”
Source: Haberler