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.
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.
Part and parcel with the weather is the Golden State’s critical water shortage, with Governor Jerry Brown declaring a state of emergency and the California Department of Water Resources setting allocations at zero due to drought conditions. Inadequate snow pack exacerbated the problem, and growers were faced with an ongoing struggle to adequately irrigate crops.
“Weather is huge,” commented Ely Trujillo of Superior Growers, LLC, based in Nevada but with growing operations in California, Arizona, and Florida. Trujillo says many grower-shippers are “watching how much water there is before the season starts.”
Mike McDonald, president of M&M West Coast Produce, Inc., concurred. “In Salinas, many farmers will not put product in the ground because of the price of water. We still need more rain and if we don’t get it, farmers won’t put product in the ground and there will be less available.”
Fortunately there has been some precipitation. “We’re getting a little rain and if it keeps up we will be okay,” Trujillo adds. “If not, and we’re limited by government regulations (for rationing), we’ll have to either provide less of everything or choose not to grow some [commodities]. The picking and choosing will be difficult.”
Other Challenges
Labor
For many in the Salinas Valley, labor has become a formidable obstacle to growing and harvesting. Superior’s Kim says, “labor is a major challenge—both the availability and the cost.” It is, he concedes, sometimes very difficult to maintain the region’s signature quality and keep costs down.
Pacific International’s Dill also addresses the shortage of labor. “With the economy better, a lot [of laborers] who used to work in the field now have better options, and we have a smaller labor pool.” This decrease in available workers has forced growers to revise their intricate planting schedules to accommodate a fluctuating labor pool.
Food Safety
According to Monterey County’s Office of the Agricultural Commissioner website, the county’s agricultural industry is recognized for establishing the most inventive and strict commodity-specific food safety programs in the United States.
“The food safety component to our business is obviously a big concern,” says Dill. “Not only from a staffing perspective but accountability standpoint because everything is documented, everything is tested, and those records need to be accessible.”
Dill explains that seven to eight years ago, food safety was a simple process that one employee could handle, but now the company’s food safety department is composed of ten people. “Obviously, it’s necessary,” says Dill, “but it’s an additional cost.”
Shipping
Joe Carlon, president of Joe Carlon & Associates, Inc. notes that meeting the new California Air Resources Board (CARB) requirements for 2014 will be an added challenge for business owners in Salinas and throughout the state of California.
Designed to significantly reduce particulate matter and nitrogen emissions from diesel vehicles, Carlon explains that CARB not only affects over-the-road trucks, but also farm tractors, generator sets, backhoes, and motor graders. “Anything with a fossil fuel engine over a certain horsepower” will be affected, he says, and unfortunately, the “requirements are making junk out of a lot of good equipment.”
Travis Lee of Dawn Transportation, Inc. commented, “Many customers are considering rail over conventional truck transportation due to the high rates out of California,” which he believes are primarily due to CARB restrictions. “Many trucking companies we have done business with for years are no longer able to come into California, therefore, there is a shortage of trucks and rates go up.”
Hours of service changes are also having a major impact on truckers, especially in the perishables industry. “Trucks hauling produce are different than freight haulers; we go like blazes to get somewhere, then we sit for sometimes days waiting for the next turn,” Carlon remarked.
With drivers now unable to use this downtime as break time, life is much more complicated. They can’t choose driving and break times when most convenient, as the new regulations require drivers to be on the clock for 70 hours before taking the mandated 34-hour break. With produce, Carlon says, “We don’t always have that luxury.”
Do the Math
Monterey County’s annual crop production value reached over $4.1 billion in 2012, with leaf lettuce, spinach, strawberries, and wine grapes propelling a 7 percent increase from 2011.
Salinas’ two leading crops are leaf lettuce and strawberries, followed by a variety of other vegetables and fruit including head lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, celery, cauliflower, mushrooms, artichokes, and raspberries. Other top crops include peas, onions, carrots, rappini, radicchio, kale, asparagus, and lemons.
Vegetables continue to remain highest in production value followed by fruit and nuts; in 2012, lettuce represented over half of revenues at 53 percent, with broccoli (13 percent), celery (11 percent), strawberries (7 percent), and cauliflower (3 percent) rounding out the top five.
More than 740 million pounds of vegetables and fruit were exported, with the bulk (65 percent) going to Canada, followed by Japan (11 percent), Taiwan (10 percent), Mexico (5 percent), Hong Kong (3 percent), Korea (3 percent), and Singapore (2 percent).
Pacific International’s top commodity export crop is broccoli, and unfortunately, “this year, we didn’t have a great yielding crop,” Dill says, “so the percentage of what we exported was very small compared to the last two years.”
The loss of volume was in part due to root maggots, which Dill says affected a fair amount of cool-weather crops. “No one was immune to it,” he said, explaining that although many growers plant broccoli as a rotation crop and don’t expect to make money on it, it can neverthless be profitable, especially if there are any winter shortages.
Usually it doesn’t sell well because it is competing against fruit, but because of winter shortages, broccoli sold very well. “A lot were surprised about it, scratching their heads,” Dill explained. “You plant broccoli knowing it will lose money and it actually made us money.”
Final Thoughts
In a year that showed the many uncertainties for agriculture—weather, water, pests, labor shortages, rising costs, and policy changes—in many aspects, Salinas still came out ahead. Those in the industry know that careful planning is a must, though few can adequately plan for all the contingencies that may occur. Yet, for most California growers, shippers, and wholesalers, it’s just another day in paradise.
Image: Thinkstock
