get_project_guide

Get project guide — live MCP tool

Returns one full buying guide by slug: objectives, planning considerations, technical requirements, indicative budget ranges, implementation stages, common mistakes, a procurement checklist and FAQs.

Direct answer

What does the get_project_guide MCP tool return?

get_project_guide is a read-only MCP tool that returns the complete published buying guide for one slug, including objectives, technical requirements, budget bands, stages, mistakes, checklist and FAQs.

MCP endpoint: https://seedmatchgroup.com/mcp
Read-only
Indicative planning content, never a quotation

Run it here

The same read-only logic an AI agent receives over MCP, executed in your browser.

slug

How to plan a commercial greenhouse project

Planning a commercial greenhouse project means fixing the crop, market and target yield first, then deriving the level of environmental control the climate and market actually justify. Site conditions — water quantity and quality, energy availability, solar radiation, wind and access — constrain the technology tier more than budget does. Once the specification is fixed, a single normalised request for quotation produces genuinely comparable offers; without it, cost comparisons are meaningless and financing conversations stall.

Define crop, market and target yield before selecting any structure type.
Water quantity and quality are the most common project-stopping constraints.
Technology tier should be justified by climate and price premium, not ambition.
CAPEX per square metre varies several-fold between tiers — normalise before comparing.
Fix the specification first; issue one RFQ; compare on identical scope and Incoterms.
Lenders assess the agronomic plan and operator capability as closely as the equipment list.

Objectives

Production target: Annual marketable tonnage by grade, and the production calendar required to meet it. A year-round supply obligation implies a materially different climate specification than a seasonal harvest window.
Market and price position: Domestic wholesale, retail programme, or export. Export and retail programmes justify higher control levels because they impose grade consistency, food-safety certification and delivery reliability requirements.
Resource efficiency: Water use per kilogram, energy use per kilogram, and labour hours per hectare. In water-constrained regions, recirculating systems are frequently the deciding factor rather than an optional upgrade.
Return and payback: Target project IRR and payback period, and the debt-service coverage ratio the structure must support. These determine the maximum defensible capital cost per hectare.
Expansion pathway: Whether phase one must be designed to accommodate later phases — shared headhouse, water treatment, energy centre and access roads are far cheaper to oversize than to duplicate.

Planning considerations

Climate data: At least ten years of temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind and precipitation data for the site. Peak summer conditions determine the cooling strategy; winter minima determine heating load.
Water source and analysis: Sustained yield of the source across a dry year, plus a full analysis: EC, pH, sodium, chloride, bicarbonate, iron, manganese and microbiological load. Treatment requirements follow from the analysis, not from assumption.
Energy availability: Grid capacity and reliability, tariff structure, and the cost of alternatives — gas, biomass, solar PV with storage, or hybrid. Energy is typically the largest single operating cost in a climate-controlled facility.
Site and topography: Levelness, drainage, soil bearing capacity, flood exposure, prevailing wind and shading. Earthworks on a poor site can consume a significant share of the structural budget.
Labour and skills: Availability of seasonal labour, and access to a qualified head grower. Agronomic execution is the single most common cause of underperformance against the model.
Logistics and cold chain: Distance to packing, cold storage and the customer. Post-harvest losses erase yield gains quickly when the cold chain is incomplete.
Permits and compliance: Construction approval, water abstraction rights, environmental authorisation, and any certification the target market requires (GLOBALG.A.P., GRASP, organic, retailer-specific).
Phasing strategy: Whether to build the full area at once or in phases. Phasing reduces peak funding requirements and allows agronomic learning, but raises cost per square metre.

Technical requirements

Structure: Type (Venlo glass, multi-span polycarbonate, plastic-film multi-span, tunnel), gutter height, span width, post spacing, and design loads for wind, snow and crop suspension. Gutter height drives climate buffering and is difficult to change later.
Cladding: Glass (float, diffuse, anti-reflective), polycarbonate, or multi-layer film. Specify light transmission, haze factor, thermal properties and expected service life.
Climate control: Ventilation (roof vents, forced ventilation), cooling (pad-and-fan, high-pressure fog), heating (hot-water pipe rail, air heaters, heat pumps), thermal and shade screens, CO2 enrichment, and the climate computer with its control strategies.
Growing system: Soil, substrate (rockwool, coco coir, perlite) on gutters, or hydroponic NFT/DWC for leafy crops. Determines irrigation frequency, drainage handling and root-zone control.
Irrigation and fertigation: Dosing units with EC/pH control, injection accuracy, mixing tanks, distribution zoning, dripline or channel specification, drain collection, disinfection (UV, ozone, slow sand) and recirculation ratio.
Water treatment: Filtration, iron and manganese removal, softening or reverse osmosis where source quality requires it, and storage volume sized for peak demand plus a supply-failure buffer.
Energy systems: Boiler or heat-pump capacity, buffer tank volume, distribution, electrical supply, standby generation for critical loads, and any solar PV or CHP integration.
Internal logistics: Pipe-rail trolleys, harvesting carts, internal transport, headhouse layout, grading and packing space, and cold-room capacity sized to peak daily harvest.
Crop protection infrastructure: Insect screening on vents, double-door entries, hygiene stations, footbaths, and monitoring systems supporting integrated pest management rather than calendar spraying.
Automation and data: Sensor network, climate and irrigation control integration, energy metering, and data export. Specify open protocols (Modbus, OPC-UA, MQTT) to preserve future integration options.

Budget ranges

Structure and cladding: Typically the largest single line, and the one most affected by technology tier. Tunnel and film structures sit at the low end; fully specified Venlo glass with screens and diffuse glass sits at the high end.
Climate and energy systems: Heating, cooling, screens, CO2 and controls frequently approach or exceed the structural cost in cold or hot climates. In moderate climates this line can be much smaller.
Irrigation, fertigation and water treatment: Includes dosing, distribution, storage, treatment and drain recirculation. Poor source water can move this line substantially.
Growing system and crop support: Substrate, gutters, wires, hooks, trolleys and first-cycle plant material or seed.
Civil works and site preparation: Levelling, drainage, foundations, roads, fencing and utility connections. Highly site-specific and routinely underestimated.
Headhouse, packing and cold storage: Reception, grading, packing and cooling space. Often deferred, then rebuilt at higher cost once volumes arrive.
Engineering, permits and supervision: Design, independent engineering review, permitting fees and construction supervision.
Contingency: A defined percentage of hard cost. Lenders expect to see it explicitly, not absorbed into other lines.
Working capital: Inputs, labour, energy and overheads until first receipts, plus receivable days. A project that funds CAPEX but not the first cycle stalls at commissioning.

Implementation stages

Concept and objectives: Fix crop, market, target volume and indicative budget. Test the commercial logic against realistic yields and prices before committing to feasibility spend.
Feasibility and site assessment: Complete climate analysis, water testing, energy assessment, permitting review and a financial model with a downside case.
Specification and design: Produce the technical specification and bill of quantities: structure, climate, irrigation, energy, automation and post-harvest scope, with acceptance criteria.
Procurement: Issue one normalised RFQ. Compare offers on identical scope, Incoterms, performance guarantees, warranty terms, spare-parts provision and lead time — not on headline price.
Financing close: Align lender or investor documentation with the selected quotations, complete due diligence, and match the drawdown schedule to the construction programme.
Construction: Civil works, structure erection, systems installation and integration, with staged inspections and documented site instructions.
Commissioning and training: Functional testing of climate, irrigation and control systems, performance verification against contract criteria, and operator training before the first crop goes in.
First production cycle: Run the crop against the agronomic plan, record actual yield, resource use and labour, and reconcile against the model to inform any next phase.

Common mistakes

Selecting a structure type before analysing site climate data, then over- or under-specifying climate control to compensate.
Treating water analysis as a formality; source quality routinely dictates treatment cost and, occasionally, site viability.
Comparing quotations with different scopes, Incoterms and exclusions, and concluding the cheapest offer is the best value.
Omitting post-harvest and cold-chain infrastructure from phase one, then losing grade and price on the first harvest.
Budgeting CAPEX without working capital for the first production cycle.
Appointing a head grower after commissioning rather than during design, when their input still influences the layout.
Assuming yields published for another climate or latitude transfer directly to the project site.
Deferring permit and water-rights applications until after equipment orders are placed.

Preparation checklist

Crop, target market and annual production volume defined in writing
Ten years of site climate data obtained and analysed
Water source yield confirmed and full laboratory analysis completed
Energy supply capacity, reliability and tariff confirmed
Topographic survey and geotechnical assessment completed
Permits, land title and water abstraction rights identified with a timeline
Technology tier selected and justified against climate and market
Technical specification and bill of quantities prepared
Financial model with base and downside cases completed
Head grower or technical operator identified
Post-harvest, packing and cold-chain scope included in the budget
Contingency and working capital explicitly provided for

Open the full published guide

Parameters

slugstringrequired
A guide slug returned by list_project_guides, for example how-to-plan-a-commercial-greenhouse-project.

Returned fields

summary and key takeaways
objectives and planning considerations
technical requirements
indicative budget ranges (planning bands, never quotations)
implementation stages and common mistakes
procurement checklist and FAQs

Example call

{
  "tool": "get_project_guide",
  "arguments": {
    "slug": "how-to-plan-a-commercial-greenhouse-project"
  }
}

An unknown slug returns a tool error listing how to obtain valid slugs.

Boundaries

All four tools are read-only. They never create an RFQ, reveal supplier identities or return supplier quotations.
Every figure returned is an indicative planning range from published models — not an offer, guarantee or engineering design.
Access is via OAuth sign-in; unauthenticated automated access is rate-limited and may be declined.
SeedMatchGroup does not manufacture, build, install, finance or provide site-specific engineering or agronomy.

Project guides hub Agriculture RFQ checklist

Other MCP tools

list_project_guides get_procurement_checklist estimate_greenhouse_project