Vegetables grown locally take side trip

The winter brings vegetable production to the Yuma area along with questions from residents and visitors about why all that bounty isn't more available to local shoppers.

"I get that question all the time," said Kurt Nolte, director of the Yuma County Cooperative Extension.

In actuality, grocery stores in Yuma do carry produce grown locally in the winter, he said. It's just that it has taken a little trip before finding its way to the local produce sections.

That's because the production here "is so immense that a store could be supplied with an entire semi-truckload of just iceberg lettuce or some other vegetable," he said. For Yuma-area stores, that isn't practical.

Therefore, the vegetables are trucked to the warehouses of the various shippers, Nolte said. There, trucks are loaded with a mix of vegetables that are then distributed to stores in Yuma and other communities across the nation.

Those mixed loads likely include all the vegetables found in a fresh produce section, such as potatoes and onions from other parts of the country as well as lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower grown in Yuma, he said.

As for the question of why farmers don't sell their produce locally themselves, Nolte explained that production here is on a national scale. "There are no 'you-pick' operations and few roadside stands."

Growers have millions of dollars in the infrastructure to grow the lettuce and vegetables to supply the entire U.S. as well as foreign markets.

"To produce a small amount for a local stand would disrupt that national production," he said.

For example, Nolte said, a grower might cut 40 acres of lettuce a day to help supply the national need. That 40 acres would fill about 40,000 cartons, with each carton containing 24 heads.

"That's almost a million heads a day by one grower alone in the winter," he said. "A local stand might sell one carton a day. Production just isn't geared to the local market."