From weather to the pandemic, many factors affect cost of produce
Yuma is amazing! Two weeks ago I was still in my pool and nighttime temperatures were in the 90s. Today, days are in the 90s and nights are headed into the 60’s or 70s, depending on where you are located.
The crazy lightning and thunder show of last week was really amazing. Luckily for the growers, it was not accompanied by heavy winds and pounding rain, which is so damaging to the farm fields.
The heavy rains break down the carefully engineered planting beds for lettuce seed and the variety of transplants farmers are now using. 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 that at harvest time the mature plants are at the peak of quality and health. To achieve this, a number of fields may be seeded at the same time, but the irrigation sprinklers for germination are staged to start days apart.
If a rainstorm occurs, it causes all the seeded fields to start to grow at the same time. If the off-schedule fields are not destroyed, at harvest there will be way more product needed for November and not enough product for January.
With the produce season starting somewhat later this year, there is still a lot of tillage happening. Growers use GPS (satellite) systems to guide their equipment so that the seed row can be exactly identified.
When thinning, weed control and fertilizer applications are needed, the tractor operator connects into the same satellite that was used for laying out the rows, lines the tractor up, puts it in the proper gear and takes his hands off the wheel.
At the end of the row, the driver turns the tractor around, lines it up on the next set of rows and repeats the process. An additional big benefit is that all these operations can be done 24 hours a day, greatly increasing the efficiency of farming operations.
All of the uncertainties that continue as the world fights the COVID-19 virus and its variants create
problems for farmers and ranchers everywhere. Many of the customary purchasers of agricultural products are in limbo.
As I shop at the local grocery stores, I am noticing that the price of salads, vegetables and fruits is going up. Whether it is the reduced workforce in the areas they are produced, a lack of truck drivers to transport product for
processing or to deliver product to consumers, it is affecting everyone.
Certain items such as pet foods are in short supply, not because of a lack of food, but because the packaging materials are unavailable. I, like most, have been so comfortable with always having a selection of products to choose from, reasonably priced and readily available, that
the changes to the marketplace are alarming.
Yuma County’s agricultural industry will continue producing the safest and highest quality lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, greens, herbs and cauliflower and a myriad of 150 different crops typically produced from October to April.