Floriculture Sales Up, Foliage Way Up, Florida #1, Says USDA

Dr. Marvin Miller

A quick first analysis of the just-released 2020 Floriculture Crops Summary, with a more in-depth analysis coming soon:

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA/NASS) has released its Floriculture Crops: 2020 Summary, which details sales of floriculture production in 17 states. USDA reported that sales were up an estimated 8.6% overall. Yet, if we examine the report and remove the estimates for the smallest of growers, as well as the sales of propagative materials, sales of finished floriculture crops for growers with $100,000 or more in sales were up only 6.8%, according to the report.

Examining the different segments of the industry as seen in the Floriculture Production Pie chart of finished floriculture sales reveals that sales of foliage plants increased 22.8% from 2019 to $756.0 million in these states, the largest segment increase in the report. Foliage plant sales accounted for 17.7% of the pie. Sales of bedding/garden plants were up a healthy 13.3% to $2.275 billion in 2020; sales for this segment of the industry now account for 53.3% of the pie.

Unfortunately, sales of cut flowers were down 9.6% to $294.8 million (6.9% of the pie), sales of cut greens were off 0.2% to $89.0 million (2.1% of the pie), and sales of potted flowering plants were down 10.9% to $849.9 million (19.9% of the pie).

The state of Florida finished in the top position for sales of finished floriculture crops, accounting for 24.4% of the sales in the report with $1.04 billion of sales of finished crops. California is now state #2, with sales of $906.2 million in finished crop sales, accounting for 21.2% of the pie. And Michigan, in position #3 with $405.8 million in sales, accounted for 9.5% of the pie’s total sales. Together, these three states accounted for over 55% of the 17-state total. GT