Recent storms damaged local farm fields, crops
Yuma is amazing! Two weeks ago we thought that summer would never end and now the weather is what the rest of the country envies. Normally, over the past decade, we have gradually had our night temperatures work down into the 60s and 70s. I am so enjoying opening the house every day, turning off the AC and enjoying life indoors and outdoors.
The rain we experienced was a big event in terms of the damage it did to the farm fields and the crops already planted in various areas. One of the normal patterns of Yuma monsoons is that the rain does not fall evenly over the area. I had one and one-half inches in my rain gauge from Oct. 6-7. The rain was a pounding rain, large drops that were propelled by the wind. It tore leaves from my trees, damaged yard umbrellas and produced more water than my yard could handle for a short period of time.
The same thing occurs in the farm fields; the pounding rains break down the carefully engineered planting beds of lettuce seed and cauliflower and broccoli transplants. With the transplanted crops, the violent rain can break the young plants, wash them out of the soil or cause other problems.
All of our vegetable crops are planted on strict schedules to assure at harvest time the mature plants are at the peak quality and health. To achieve this, a number of fields may be seeded at the same time, but the irrigation sprinklers for germination staged to start the plants every five days. If a rainstorm occurs, it will cause all of the seeded fields to start to grow at the same time.
If the grower does not destroy the fields that were now growing off schedule, at harvest there will be way too much lettuce in October and not enough quality product in December and January.
If you have traveled by the farms at the end of last week and this week, you saw tillage equipment removing the damaged rows and reshaping the produce beds for replanting. With seed costing $400,000 to $500,000 a pound, this is a costly process, not to mention the labor and equipment time.
Growers use GPS (satellites) to guide their equipment so that the seed row is can be exactly identified. When thinning, tillage, fertilizer application or weed control operations are needed, the tractor’s GPS ties into the same satellite that was used for planting and the operations do not disturb any of the growing plants.
An additional big benefit is that all these operations can be done 24 hours a day, greatly increasing the efficiency of farming operations.
One thing that growers cannot recapture is the time that is lost when storm events occur. They just have to adjust and rework their planting and harvest plans to make sure the contracted products are ready on the designated date. The vegetable industry has no safety net or crop insurance to make up for shortfalls in income.
It’s a perishable crop and the grower has to roll with events. It has often been said that there is a better chance of making money on Las Vegas gambling than in the produce industry. I for one am thankful for all the tasty, healthful crops that our Yuma County farmers grow for us and the world.