Successful temperate new crops must either fit well into the rotation of established food, feed, or fiber crops, provide a product that is relatively more valuable than the current crop, or be better suited to growing on a given area. Proximity of growers to potential processors who manufacture the refined product is key to economic advantage for the new crop over prior raw material sources. In the case of arid industrial crops, the issues of survival in a harsh climate and the cost of water are paramount, while in the higher latitude temperate zones the constraints are frost tolerance, length of growing season, crop response to daylength, water requirement rainfed or irrigated, and weather patterns during harvest.

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