San Jose de Ocoa Province
Greenhouse vegetable capital (40% of national production, 50+ trucks daily); 10M sqm covered agriculture by 2024; organic farming pioneer via Father Quinn.
San José de Ocoa has emerged as the Dominican Republic's greenhouse vegetable capital, with controlled-environment agriculture producing 40% of the country's vegetables under plastic. Communities like Rancho Arriba, La Horma, and El Pinal ship more than 50 trucks daily to urban markets, and the Dominican agricultural sector doubled greenhouse coverage to 10 million square meters by 2024. Father Quinn, a Catholic priest, organized early organic vegetable cooperatives that remain models for sustainable production.
The province's highland location—winter temperatures can drop to -5°C—enables cool-season crops that cannot grow in coastal lowlands. But geography cuts both ways: steep slopes and high rainfall create landslide risk that devastated pepper farms in November 2023, when flooding destroyed 48,000 plants and caused $34,000+ losses for individual farmers. The San Juan River and Vallejuelo Dam provide irrigation, though climate variability increasingly challenges water availability.
By 2026, San José de Ocoa will test whether greenhouse intensification can withstand climate extremes. If protected cultivation reduces flood damage and USAID-supported fertilizer transitions lower costs, the province could model climate-resilient agriculture. If extreme weather events become more frequent and damage overwhelms smallholder investment, the greenhouses that transformed Dominican vegetable production may prove more fragile than their steel frames suggest.