By Clint Thompson
A more active housing market equates to improved business for the nursery and greenhouse industry. It was especially evident during the past year.
Wendiam Sawadgo, Auburn University assistant professor and Extension economist, shared those thoughts during the latest Alabama Extension Commercial Horticulture Webinar Series.
“I think we saw a sharp dip starting around March of 2020. We have seen that v-shaped recovery. We’re back basically to where we were at the start of the pandemic,” Sawadgo said. “We’ve seen our housing market really pick up. For some of our nursery and greenhouse industries, when people are buying new houses, that’s when we start to see purchases of plants, and stuff like that really pick up. Those industries have been really strong. They were strong during the pandemic when people were staying at home and doing more gardening. But they’ve remained strong because of all the new housing purchases and development we’ve seen over the past year.”
The Gross Domestic Product was just shy of $22 trillion in 2020 before dropping to below $20 trillion in 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. It has since risen to more than $23 trillion.
Alabama’s nursery and greenhouse industry generated almost $230 million in total sales, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture.
