Located in Monterey County along California’s Central Coast, Salinas’ heart beats agriculture. The verdant county seat boasts large farming sculptures that welcome visitors to the community and has been the setting for two great Steinbeck works that intertwine literature and agriculture.
The region has also taken the lead in organic production, with Monterey County as the first registered organic certifier within the state of California to be accredited by the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture (USDA). As of 2012, there were 131 farms encompassing 22,288 registered organic acres, which brought in just under $182.7 million in revenue.
Well known as the “Salad Bowl” of the United States, the school districts in Salinas Valley encourage agricultural education to help maintain youth interest in the region’s primary industry.
And, appropriately enough, Salinas is a major promoter of salad bars in schools, especially given its status as the top lettuce producing region in North America.
Seasonal Highs and Lows
Salinas is crowned by the Santa Lucia and Gabilan mountain ranges, 17 miles inland from Monterey, 303 miles north of Los Angeles, and 106 miles south of San Francisco. Temperatures are consistently mild, averaging 68 degrees year-round, and annual rainfall averages 14 inches (predominantly from November to March). According to Rich Kim, commodities manager for Superior Sales West, Inc., a top benefit of growing in Salinas is the region’s highly respected and established reputation, and of course, the “rich soil and a great growing climate.”
Although Salinas is known for its relatively stable Mediterranean climate, its biggest challenge last year, according to Henry Dill, sales manager for Pacific International Marketing, came in the winter when they had “thirty consecutive days of frost in the desert.” The cold vastly affected crops in terms of both quality and volume, he says, putting a strain on availability across the supply chain. The extreme highs and lows came at critical times during the maturation process, and had many growers “juggling their planting schedule.”
Other adjustments came in early 2014 when California experienced mild weather while the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard suffered through several ‘polar vortex’ events that plunged temperatures below zero, followed by snowstorms. Then the Southeast was blanketed by ice and snow, further paralyzing shipping lanes and disrupting the flow of fresh produce throughout the country.
