Key Takeaways
- Rabobank highlights growing government focus on fresh vegetable self-sufficiency.
- Greenhouse investment expected to rise despite cautious short-term sentiment.
- Strawberries and leafy greens gaining ground alongside tomatoes.
- Automation and robotics adoption accelerating, especially in harvesting.
- Climate change and energy transition remain defining structural drivers.
Rabobank: Self-Sufficiency Drives Global Greenhouse Investment
Rabobank’s Global Greenhouse Update 2026 outlines how policy shifts, climate risks, and technology adoption are influencing greenhouse strategies worldwide.
According to Rabobank, governments are placing increasing emphasis on domestic fresh vegetable production. This trend, reinforced by pandemic-era supply disruptions and food security concerns, is expected to support continued greenhouse capacity expansion. However, short-term growth expectations among global suppliers have moderated compared to previous years.
Lambert van Horen, Senior Specialist – Fresh Produce at Rabobank, and Cindy van Rijswick, Global Strategist – Fresh Produce and Farm Inputs at Rabobank, note that long-term structural drivers remain intact even as markets adjust to current economic and geopolitical conditions.
Rabobank: Crop Strategies Expand Beyond Tomatoes
Tomatoes continue to anchor high-tech protected horticulture globally. At the same time, Rabobank identifies strawberries and leafy greens as emerging growth categories across multiple regions.
Experiments with alternative crops—including avocado, banana, coffee, saffron, and vanilla—are expanding within controlled environments. While innovation activity remains strong, large-scale commercial breakthroughs in these segments are not yet expected in the near term.
Regional Developments Highlight Diverging Dynamics
Rabobank reports that North America shows mixed trends. Canada continues to scale greenhouse acreage, while the United States remains less self-sufficient in several key vegetables. Mexico strengthens its competitive position with a broad mix of protected cultivation systems.
In Europe and North Africa, competitive realignments are underway, particularly between Spain and Morocco in tomato exports. The Netherlands continues to experience consolidation as growers adapt to energy transition pressures and rising costs.
Asia, led by China, continues rapid expansion of protected cultivation across low-, mid-, and high-tech systems.
Climate, Energy, and Automation Reshape the Sector
Rabobank identifies climate change as a defining long-term challenge. Increasingly extreme weather patterns, shifting crop suitability, and higher pest and disease pressure are prompting adaptation investments at farm, supply chain, and national levels.
Energy transition efforts are influencing infrastructure strategies, including potential synergies between greenhouse clusters and data centers through residual heat use.
Robotization is progressing steadily, with harvesting and picking technologies advancing first due to their repetitive nature and clear economic rationale.
Overall, Rabobank concludes that 2026 reflects a convergence of self-sufficiency priorities, climate pressures, and technological adoption, shaping the next phase of global greenhouse development.
Read the entire report.
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