Delta, British Columbia-based Houweling’s Nurseries
thepacker.com; by Tom Burfield: Casey Houweling’s ambition extends beyond growing premium-quality tomatoes. He’s equally concerned about how he grows them.
In 2011, Delta, British Columbia-based Houweling’s Nurseries, which also operates an expansive facility in Camarillo, Calif., was honored with the California Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award for its greenhouse program that incorporates renewable energy, water and fuel conservation, efficient land use and an extensive recycling program — the company recycles more than 90% of its waste.
This August, Houweling, president and chief executive officer of Houweling’s Tomatoes, switched on an 8.8-megawatt heat-and-power cogeneration plant in Camarillo that is the first of its kind in the U.S.
The system captures heat, water and carbon dioxide that otherwise would be wasted and uses it to help run the greenhouses. Since the plant produces more power than the facility needs, the company is able to supply electricity to the local power grid.
Houweling, 54, didn’t stumble into the greenhouse industry by accident.
The company began as a small floral greenhouse and berry farm that his father, Cornelius Houweling, a Dutch horticulturalist, started in Langley, British Columbia, in 1956.
Houweling, the youngest son in a family that had three sons and five daughters, enjoyed spending time in the vegetable garden with his father from the time he first learned to walk.
He took an active role in the company starting in 1976, when the firm expanded to a 6-acre greenhouse in Delta that grew beefsteak tomatoes.
The facility grew to 50 acres within 10 years, and Houweling, eager to ship year-round, expanded once again in 1996, this time into Camarillo, near the Oxnard, Calif., growing area.
Today, Houweling’s grows eight kinds of tomatoes, ranging from large tomatoes-on-the-vine to strawberry tomatoes and some cucumbers on a 50-acre site encompassing two greenhouses in Delta and on 125 acres with six greenhouses in Camarillo.
Link Sponsor
We Clean Up Coco Water.
