ARKANSAS TURFGRASS: Dr. Casey Reynolds, Executive Director TPI

Turfgrass Producers International (TPI) has members who produce and sell turfgrass seed and sod in almost every U.S. state and over 30 countries. As I travel to visit with them, speak at conferences, write magazine articles, etc., I often get to speak with producers first-hand about what they’re experiencing in their local markets. This often includes the good and the bad, and oddly enough no matter where I go, the themes are usually similar. From a farm’s perspective, demand is up; costs are up; labor is short; and where did all the truck drivers go? From a market perspective, consumers and policy-makers increasingly just don’t understand natural grass lawns and their benefits, and in many areas of the country, they are quite literally trying to write them out of new construction, through local ordinances which ban or dis-incentivize the use of grass.

So where does this leave us? In the short run, housing is still quite hot and the demand for grass ebbs and flows with it. In the long run, will the next generation of consumers and home-buyers value or even want lawns, landscapes, natural grass athletic fields, and golf courses? The short answer to that question is that it’s up to us. But let’s revisit that a little later.

Data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development indicates that as of March 2023, purchases of new homes increased for a third consecutive month. Construction of new homes rose in February and sales of existing homes surged after a 12-month decline. The U.S. Census Bureau shows that New Housing Units are still strong, despite a recent drop-off from the post-covid boom (Figure 1). As such, turfgrass producers in most areas of the country including Alabama sod producers, are still reporting strong sales, high demand, and sometimes low inventory.

While this is good news for producers and others in the green industry who rely on lawns, landscapes, sports fields, and golf courses, it is no surprise to anyone that costs are also up. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has some useful tools on its website at https://www.bls.gov. If you’re a data junky, or just a little curious to see it on paper, you can find some helpful charts and graphs that track the costs of goods and services over many years. It should be no spoiler that food, energy, raw materials, transportation, and warehousing are all up when compared to pre-Covid levels. A little good news is that all 2023 Producer Prices Indexes are down when compared to 2021 and 2022.

Like many industries, turfgrass seed and sod producers routinely look for efficiencies to reduce these costs and often find them in new equipment, automation, digitalization, GPS/Remote Sensing technologies, new techniques or practices, and so on. It would be difficult to list them all here, but out of necessity comes innovation and there is always a better way to do things. There are certainly plenty of those opportunities out there just as there are in other segments of the green industry.

Now, let’s change course from a production perspective to a market perspective, which is just as likely to impact the state of our industry. With that in mind, what is the current and future consumer perception of lawns and other green spaces? I suspect many of you have seen recent headlines such as “Kill Your Lawn Before It Kills You”, “American Lawns: Ending the Toxic Yard” and so on. If we need further proof of that, simply Google the phrase “Lawns are” and you can see the top search terms that people are entering into common Google queries. The top hits include Lawns are “bad, stupid, wasteful, colonialism, useless, ecological disaster,” and so on.

While it is easy to sometimes write these off as op-eds, there is definitely consumer research that shows we as an industry should take these seriously.