ers from throughout the region to discuss and adopt a plan intended for long-term sustainability of groundwater in the region. We continue to evaluate local infrastruc- ture. The Highway 101 corridor that runs through the valley is certainly busier this time of year, with people, equipment and product being moved. Being the sole thor- oughfare for not only our local community and ag economy, but also a statewide route that moves product nationally, has local stakeholders evaluating improvements that will be necessary for the continued movement of goods in the future and, most importantly, a safe route for all motorists.
cardboard boxes have gone up. Anything that is a supply item has gone up like crazy. There’s been a shortage because the supply chain has been disrupted, and there’s things that we get from China that aren’t getting offloaded in time. We’re just happy to get what we can get, so we’ve been scrambling. Where we can, we have to cover our costs. Since prices of those items have gone up, we have to charge more, so people will start seeing a little uptick in pric- ing for things that require a lot of packaging. Also in 2021, labor costs have gone up across the board. Where normal (working) time used to be maybe 50 hours a week, this year it’s 45 hours. They’re trying to get agricultural workers overtime after eight hours, so that’s creating more of a cost for the farmer. It’s a benefit for the employee; I can understand that, but it’s a bigger cost for the farmers. For the summer, we’re scaling back. Mushrooms are a year-round product and it’s all grown indoors. We have employees that will leave around this time of year, because they’ll get paid higher wages (picking) berries or chilis, so we do have a little bit of a problem with labor. When I talk to other mushroom farmers, they’re saying they’re not picking what’s called the third break. When we do a crop, we grow it until it’s mature and then we pick them off. It grows back, and that’s the second break. Those get picked off, and then there’s a third break. People scale back by not pick- ing the third break because of lack of labor or there’s overtime costs involved. During the summer, there’s always a little bit of
scale-back, at least for us—not a whole lot, but maybe 5% to 10%. Once all the (other) crops are finished in September, then the workers all come back, because we’re one of the few crops that are here for the fall, winter and early spring. Joe Colace Imperial County farmer We grow a lot of melons this time
is more stable here. The one area that right now remains a little more inconsistent is labor availability, and when I say labor, I mean true, qualified labor. There’s been labor shortages, not just in the field harvest but also in the semi drivers who move product from the farm community into the different cities, so that’s made it a little more difficult. A year ago at this time during the pan- demic, the food-service sector was strug- gling. Now, your restaurants are starting to open up. The consumer last year was very focused on the grocery store. Currently, you are seeing more of the population returning to restaurants and some of what we might refer to as food-service items, but we do think retail has remained strong and are hopeful that that will be the case. We are up in acres from a year ago to this point. We’re probably up 10% to almost 15% on sweet corn acreage and probably up 5% to 8% in the melon category. We would like to believe we’re very close to upper management within the retail sector, and we try to maintain a very open line of communi- cation with them on what trends they see in what specific commodities or varieties, and then we try to react to that. To our readers: I f you wou l d l i ke t o be a contributor to From the Fields , please submi t your name, county and contact information in an email to agalert@cfbf.com.
of year, along with sweet corn. We’ve been in our sweet corn harvest go- ing into our sixth week; we started a couple of days
Christine Kubogamell SantaClaramushroomfarmer
It seems like demand has been picking up since the worst part of the pandemic over the holidays, when everything was shut down. Cafes and the
late for what we consider to be normal. The cooler spring had an effect, but our quality has been nice. We’re also now harvesting the melons—the cantaloupes, the honey- dews, the variety melons. All in all, we’re real pleased with how things have started with both production and quality. It’s all about weather, and right now the weather seems to be very favorable for the early summer crops, and that really has been exceptional for the quality—and very dry conditions. Of course, that’s kind of a double-edged sword. We need rain desper- ately in the western United States. Down here in the Imperial Valley, we receive Colorado River water. We’re one of the high-priority areas, based off our past water agreements that were estab- lished way back at the turn of the 20th century. With that, our water availability
places where you sit down, we’re starting to see some of those customers come back. We do have our retail side, and that definite- ly has been steady. With COVID, it changed people’s habits: Instead of dining out, they cooked at home. People are still kind of in that new habit. The demand is there, but the problem is that our costs have gone so high. For exam- ple, our tills for the grocery store baskets have gone up. Baskets have gone up. The
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May 19, 2021 Ag Alert 5
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