Bus tour of fields becoming tradition at Southwest Ag Summit
Friday morning about 20 food industry professionals ranging from growers to chefs were taken on a bus tour in what is becoming another tradition tied to the Southwest Agricultural Summit.
Chef Carmen Rodriguez, one of five chefs who prepared the annual Harvest Dinner the night before, said he wasn’t on the tour just as a culinary professional.
He is a chef/educator with a Santa Rosa culinary mentorship program, Worth Our Weight, which offers a 12-week apprenticeship program for disadvantaged young adults, which recently received a threeacre donation from a nearby vineyard. “That’s why I’m re-
ally happy to be able to do this.”
His wife and sous-chef, Penny Rodriguez, also works with the nonprofit.
“Finally these kids will have the experience of real farm-to-table work, and maybe they’ll find out they’re better at the table end of things, or they’re better at the farming. It’s just an added dimension to what they do,” said Penny Rodriguez. The couple is in town through the weekend to prepare and serve a dinner for 12 which was auctioned off at the Thursday Harvest Dinner, netting $4,500 which will go toward local scholarships.
The tour was again led by JV Farms General Manager Matt McGuire, who said the tour also brought along representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a major ag chemicals company, bringing in other facets of the food production industry, which has an estimated $2.8 billion impact on the Yuma County economy.
The bus took passengers to fields in the Yuma Valley west of Yuma International Airport, getting to see iceberg, romaine and kale crops close up, leading to many photos taken and debates on the relative merits and costs of kale, the relative newcomer on the block.
Industry veteran McGuire said on the bus that broccoli leaves, now shaved off from the heads of that healthy vegetable, may be the next big “new” crop, but he marketed them about 20 years ago as “western mustard greens” for a couple of years, until a government edict came down that no more “greens” would be marketed as Western.
“I didn’t know what I had,” he said.
A work crew tackling a field of kale waved obligingly at the tour bus as it arrived and left the site, next to a canal and several parked cars which McGuire said were indica- tions the farm laborers are among the 5,000 or so who live on the northern side of the international border 20 miles away, and choose to drive themselves to work.
Another 25,000 to 30,000 cross the border daily, he said, most on H-2A visas which require growers to provide housing, whether they need it or not.
The tour ended at SkyView Cooling on Gila Ridge Road, where JV Farms rushes its fresh-picked product to be cooled down before shipment, primarily by vacuum tubes which suck the excess moisture out, taking the “field heat” out with it. Broccoli, cauliflower and other dense crops are generally cooled by water or ice.
After that process, which can take up to half an hour, the veggies are loaded onto trucks to begin their journey up Avenue 3E, to their ultimate destination market, or in some cases loaded onto trains rolling along the tracks directly to the south of the facility.
“Sometimes we piggyback, we load vans onto the trains and ship (crops) to the East Coast that way,” McGuire said.
This season’s warm temperatures followed by frequent rainfall has fueled a quicker pace this year, McGuire told the group, which could leave workers with a couple of weeks on their hands. The season could wrap up as early as March 10, he said, well short of the March 24 date they were originally expecting.
Kristan Sheppeard of Limelight Creative Group, a spokeswoman for the Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association and one of the ag conference’s organizers, said this is the third year the tour has been offered, and it has grown in popularity each year.
Overall SWAG attendance has swelled as well, she said. She did not have final figures available, but said the second-day lunch had record attendance. Those interested in signing up for the 2018 event can watch for information at swagsummit.com, she said.