Welcome to the Vegetable Crops Online Resources Center

Rutgers NJAES values New Jersey’s vegetable farmers, their family goals, their livelihood aspirations, and views each farmer as a vital farming resource, like land and water, which are also critical to farming viability. New Jersey’s $160 million vegetable production on 40,000 acres is fast-paced and vibrant. Family-owned and operated enterprises of all sizes are as diverse as the crops they grow and sell, ranging from asparagus to zucchini. Family vegetable farms are intense in their sustainable use of all resources, including labor, land, water, equipment, inputs, capital, and management.

The intensity of our vegetable industry is matched by growers’ fast-paced management decisions meeting business needs, while farming on the 4th highest farmland real estate in the US ($11,300 per acre, after RI, MA, and CT). Farmland Preservation and Conservation Cost-Share programs are necessary complements to farming profitably, but not sufficient replacements for profitability as the core of farm viability.

Vegetable farmers are as demanding of Cooperative Research & Extension as they are of their own farms. Our Rutgers NJAES & Cooperative Extension Vegetable Crops Working Group members, research farms, and this web site are meeting the challenge. The science, field research, and field demonstrations of our Working Group assist growers in reliably and cost effectively making it through harvest and sales.

Our farmers produce the highest quality produce through sustainable methods, pleasing wholesale and direct market customers and nourishing our residents. We hope you find this web site a valuable tool and look forward to future educational programs, research, extension practice, and service to the vegetable industry of New Jersey and beyond…

  2008 International Pepper   Conference Session Papers
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