ASHS 2025 Conference

While Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) continues to expand rapidly across North America, the U.S. lacks a unified national organization to represent, support, and connect greenhouse growers. In contrast to Canada and the Netherlands, which benefit from strong national-level grower associations, American growers remain fragmented across states, commodity groups, or scale-specific networks. The existing groups tend to be state-specific, crop-specific, or focused on suppliers and hobbyists—leaving a major gap for commercial growers who need actionable support and a unified voice. This fragmentation further limits access to shared knowledge, economic leverage, and consistent representation in research and policy. To address this, we propose the creation of the United Greenhouse Growers Association (UGGA), a national, grower-led association designed to support collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and improved market efficiency. Initial development will begin in Kentucky, where the University of Kentucky has already mapped CEA activity across the state, providing a strong foundation for data-driven outreach, pilot engagement, and program testing. What distinguishes this initiative is its emphasis on practicality, inclusion, and tangible value. Rather than serving as a passive affiliation, the UGGA will offer direct support through group purchasing programs, collective marketing strategies, access to shared services, and the translation of academic research into usable tools. There will be the opportunity for the UGGA to set training and certification standards for professional growers which will give guidance to trade schools and colleges. Membership will be kept affordable and low-barrier, intentionally structured to welcome small and mid-sized growers alongside larger operations. Most critically, the organization will be led by growers themselves—not just vendors or researchers—ensuring the priorities reflect real operational challenges and opportunities. The society will address national gaps that existing groups often overlook: the need for peer-to-peer knowledge on transitions from soil to substrate, crop management under protected/controlled environments, strategies for reducing the isolation of growers in low-density CEA states, and creating a network that supports national-scale coordination without losing local relevance. The UGGA structure would also allow for cross-state collaboration and integration with USDA priorities around regional supply chain resilience and U.S. producer support. This abstract proposes launching an organizing committee to begin outreach, host stakeholder roundtables in Kentucky and beyond, define founding principles, and formalize UGGA’s nonprofit framework in preparation for national rollout.