An interesting story landed in my lap when I saw the cover story in January’s Greenhouse Grower magazine. It features three different growers from three segments of the horticulture industry coming together to discuss the similarity between their branches. The three horticulture segments represented in the article were cannabis, ornamentals,… Read more »
Craig Regelbrugge, the vice president for government relations and research for AmericanHort, is at it again, and I appreciate it very much. In the past few weeks, Regelbrugge has written two blog posts that explain the potential impact to the horticulture industry of some of the executive orders and actions President… Read more »
In this day and age, the word “lobbyist” has grown to become a word of disdain and derision. It’s almost as if the term has become synonymous with graft and corruption. However, as I was reading through a couple of blog posts written* by Craig Regelbrugge, the American Horticultural Industry’s… Read more »
The horticulture industry was keeping an eye on the calendar — and a U.S. District Court in Texas — as December approached this year. Back in May, the Department of Labor issued a final ruling updating the overtime requirements for salaried employees. Since the salary requirements in the overtime rules hadn’t… Read more »
There are some topics that lend themselves to updates. Take the U.S. government, for instance. (I’ll withhold any “Take my government, please” jokes for now.) On May 18, President Obama signed a Department of Labor Final Rule that would vastly change overtime pay criteria for certain white-collar salaried employees. The ruling,… Read more »
It’s funny how government works. And I’m not talking “funny ha-ha.” Or, maybe I am, because some of the decisions made by government officials seem comical compared to others. As I was watching my TweetDeck feed earlier this week, I saw a Tweet go by with a link to an… Read more »
At Practical Software Solutions, our customers are a bunch of apples and oranges. And I mean that in the most polite way possible that you can call your customers fruit. Of course, I’m talking about the different types of customers we have. Because we have manufacturers and distributors, construction and… Read more »
Over the past few years, we’ve kept up a conversation about HR compliance in the horticulture industry. Even though we’ve been involved with horticulture only for the past 10 years, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in laws ranging from health care to immigration that would never have affected the horticulture… Read more »
Sitting around the table after Christmas dinner, I was speaking to one of my dad’s cousins about possibly taking a course in classic automobile engine repair at the local community college. We both share a love of classic cars, and I’ve always been fascinated with the internal combustion engine. We… Read more »
It seems Laura Drotleff had the same problem I’m having with writing a commentary about a taboo subject. You want to joke about it. Laura, the editor of Greenhouse Grower magazine, dedicated her monthly commentary in October to an issue many large-scale greenhouse operations are facing: To grow or not to… Read more »