What’s It Like to Run a Vegetable Farm?
In the first segment of our Faces of Farming miniseries, we meet vegetable farmer and VP of Artichoke Production Dale Huss. Dale explains what it takes to get all of those vegetables from the fields to our front door
Monica Reinagel, MS, LD/N, CNS
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What’s It Like to Run a Vegetable Farm?
A few weeks ago, I happened to be standing in a huge celery field in Salinas, California, right before the celery was about to be harvested. I tweeted a picture of the field and asked if people could identify the vegetable. Some guessed parsley. Others thought it might be cilantro or lovage. Although celery is one of the most commonly consumed vegetables, I’d never actually seen it growing in a field—where it looks a lot different than it does in those little plastic sleeves!
Despite the huge growth of farmer’s markets, community gardens, and CSAs in recent years, the vast majority of the food we eat is produced by large-scale growers: the fruit and vegetable growers, cattle ranchers, dairy farmers, and others who fill up the bins and shelves at our local grocery stores with an unbelievable abundance and variety of fresh food, week after week, year round.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit many of these operations and to meet the people who dedicate their lives to feeding us. And I want you to meet them too and to learn more about this vital link in our food chain. In the next several weeks leading up to the American Thanksgiving holiday, I’m going to be talking to some of the people who are helping to bring that feast (as well as every other day’s meals) to our table.
This week, I spoke with Dale Huss, the VP of Artichoke Production for Ocean Mist Farms. Headquartered in Castroville, California, Ocean Mist Farms is the largest grower of fresh artichokes in the United States.
For many of us, fresh artichokes are a bit of a novelty—not something we buy and prepare on a weekly basis. But maybe we should be! One medium artichoke provides 3.5 grams of protein and almost 7 grams of fiber, all for just 60 calories. In particular, artichokes are high in inulin, a type of insoluble fiber that acts as a prebiotic, providing food for the beneficial bacteria in our gut. Artichokes are also high in antioxidant activity.
In addition to artichokes, Ocean Mist Farms grows beets, broccoli, lettuce, and many other vegetables (including celery!) in California, Arizona, and Mexico. Interestingly, Ocean Mist grows both organic and conventional produce.
In our conversation—which you can listen to in this article’s audio player or read an excerpt from below—Dale explains what it takes to get all of those vegetables from the fields to our front door, some of the chemical-free techniques that they use to control pests in both their organic and conventional crops, and the challenges that our farmers are facing.
I hope you enjoy this opportunity to learn a bit more about the people who bring the food to our tables.
Next week, I’ll be continuing my Faces of Farming series with a conversation with Tera Barnhardt, a doctor of veterinarian medicine and cattle rancher in Kansas. I hope you’ll join me.
If you have comments or questions about today’s show I’d love to hear from you. You can post your thoughts below or on the Nutrition Diva Facebook page.
What’s It Like to Run a Vegetable Farm?
Nutrition Diva: So, tell us a little bit about what’s going on at the farm this time of year. We’re sort of deep into the harvest season. What’s happening out there in California?
Dale Huss: Well, you know, when you’re in the vegetable industry in California at this time of year, you’re going even faster than you were a month ago.
We purposely ramp up our volumes. We know that America likes to have fresh vegetables for Thanksgiving, and so we’ve essentially doubled the volume of some of our key commodities. And trying to get all that harvested, trying to get all that cooled, and trying to get that all to our customers really takes a tremendous amount of effort. At the same time, we’re ramping things up to start in our desert areas, which includes Mexico, so there’s just a tremendous amount going on. A lot of people moving, a lot of folks harvesting, a lot of folks working ground getting ready for winter. It really is an exciting time to be in the Salinas Valley in California.
ND: So in particular, I want you to tell us a little bit more about artichokes. I talked a little bit earlier about some of the special nutritional features of artichokes, but I have to admit, I’ve never actually seen one growing in a field. I have no idea what that looks like. What’s involved in growing an artichoke? Is that a really long season crop? Is it seasonal, sort of like pomegranate? How does that work?
DH: Actually, things are changing in the artichoke industry because they have to, because of the increasing cost, and the pressures that are being felt by every farmer, rancher, grower, out there. What’s happening with artichokes is that 20 years ago, the plants were perennials, and by that I mean we would prepare a field, take cuttings from crowned sections of existing plants, and we’d move them to a new field and we plant those. And from the time they were planted until the time harvest would start would be usually about 6 months. But because they’re in the ground for as long as they are, we have problems beginning to build up in those fields with pests. And especially in the last 10 years, where it’s been warmer and drier than normal, we’ve had increasing pest pressures, and we can’t escape them unless we rotate with other crops. And so our new culture, and Ocean Mist being the leaders in the artichoke industry, we evaluate some 700-1,000 different individual selections of different artichokes every year, looking at a lot of different things. But these are annual varieties now, and so they’ll go in the ground as transplants, small plants at maybe 4-6 inches high, and by the time they start harvesting, they can be as tall as 5 feet. In the summertime, the season is much shorter and usually production is in the four to five months and by going to an annual culture, we do a few things. Number one, we rotate with other crops, meaning we can get away from some of those pest pressures that just seem to nag us throughout the growing season. And we also increase our yields pretty significantly, so it allows us to be more efficient from our growing standpoint.
ND: What do you think some of the misunderstandings or misconceptions that people have about what’s going on at farms?
DH: Well here, you’re talking about a vegetable operation like ours, the first thing people who don’t really understand how their food is produced, the first thing they’re going to see is how many people it takes to bring that food to their table. You’re going to see the amount of hand labor it takes because in order to harvest cauliflower, in order to harvest lettuce, in order to harvest artichokes, it requires a lot of hand labor. So you could be looking at 20-30, in some cases in our brussel sprout crews, maybe 80-100 people out harvesting those crops. So that’s the first thing they’re going to see. But if they dig a little deeper and they really want to understand — for instance, in my case, I’m managing maybe 400 different fields with maybe 15 different crops being grown in any of those fields at any given time, all of them requiring different water, irrigation, and fertility regimes. And then if you dig even a little deeper, you get an understanding of the planning it takes to even get us to that point. We sit down with our sales people twice a year and we ask them what kind of volumes we’re going to need. And if they say we need 70,000 a week of head lettuce — I’m talking about cartons — then we have to plan to get that and have that for him at a consistent basis throughout the year.
ND: Farming is obviously not an easy way to make a living. It’s hard work, it’s long days, big risk and not great margins — what keeps you in this profession, year after year?
DH: There’s no greater feeling in the world than having a great crop on a great market. There’s no worse feeling in the world than having a lousy crop because you screwed it up. And so, that’s it. It’s that risk-reward and that challenge that just keeps you going. And it’s one of the things that really attracted me to agriculture and farming — if you want to work hard, you can be successful. The harder you work, the more successful you can be. We’re not talking 8 hours, we’re not talking 10 hours, sometimes you’re talking 14, 16 hours a day. Oh by the way, artichokes don’t stop growing because it’s Sunday. And they don’t stop growing because it’s Christmas. And I mean, don’t get me wrong, we don’t usually work Christmas, but at the same time, we work a lot of Sundays. And so that’s the risk-reward, and that’s the trade-off. But if you work hard and you’re paying attention to that crop, chances are you’re going to be more successful more times than not. The other side of it is, and I’ll be honest with you Monica, you got to have a short memory. Like in the last couple years the mark’s just been terrible. And so even though you’re working hard, you’re just losing. And so, all it takes for somebody in agriculture is to have a couple weeks where all of a sudden, you have some good markets and some good crops to go with those good markets. And all those weeks of kind of loss and misery are forgotten and you’re looking to the future and you’re looking for hope because you know darn well things can change in a hurry, and that’s what you’re in it for. And that’s what makes it exciting.
About the Author
Monica Reinagel is a board-certified licensed nutritionist, author, and the creator of one of iTunes’ most highly ranked health and fitness podcasts. Her advice is regularly featured on the TODAY show, Dr. Oz, NPR, and in the nation’s leading newspapers, magazines, and websites. Do you have a nutrition question? Call the Nutrition Diva listener line at 443-961-6206. Your question could be featured on the show.