Local produce feeds nation, world

Kurt Nolte, director of the Yuma County Cooperative Extension, and his fellow researchers find themselves sometimes as glorified dog poop scoopers along the canals that snake through the area.

So what would researchers with doctoral degrees find so interesting about such a mundane thing?

Turns out, the answer is a lot. Hanging in the balance is the area's fresh vegetable production that feeds much of the nation and even world populations in the winter months.

It's all about food safety, the huge new issue facing growers and in particular the fresh vegetable industry, Nolte told those gathered for January's Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation quarterly investors luncheon.

To illustrate the seriousness of the situation, Nolte told of a recent phone call he received from a grower's food safety specialist.

A few days after a romaine crop was harvested, an auditor found a dog print in the field and a pile of dog waste near the field.

"This was considered raw manure," Nolte said. As a result, the grower won't be allowed to grow lettuce on that field for a year.

Nolte said that in the 100 years vegetables have been produced in the area, there has never been an foodborne illness outbreak attributed to produce grown here. He attributed that to the dry, cold winter conditions under which vegetables are grown here.

But a foodborne illness outbreak that originates elsewhere has a sweeping impact on the entire industry. The outbreak that occurred in 2006 in spinach was devastating to the industry here, an impact from which growers are still recovering.

As a result, Nolte said, Arizona and California have adopted the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement that spells out strict standards for producing vegetables. It's an agreement that could well serve as a model for the rest of the nation. If a nationwide standard is adopted, that would also apply to imports that aren't currently subject to strict food safety guidelines, he said.

In a lighter moment, he had a pop quiz for those attending Tuesday's luncheon to test their agriculture sense.

It turned out that most of those present were pretty savvy about the area's agriculture industry - that it is responsible for more than a third of the local economy and a third of Arizona's $9 billion agriculture production, it's a high-tech, big-stakes industry and it provides more than 90 percent of the nation's winter fresh vegetables and it exports around the world. There are nine salad plants in Yuma County and each one on average processes 2 million pounds of lettuce a day during the peak of the season.

The diversity of crops grown here is rather amazing as well. Nolte said about 150 different crops are produced here ranging from organic herbs to a mesquite nursery, seed crops to dates and hay. Yuma County is the leading producer in the state not only for winter vegetables but also pima cotton, durum wheat, field corn, citrus and melons. It's third for upland cotton; it would be higher except growers cut the season short in the fall to get winter vegetables back in the ground.

In 2008, more than 99 percent of U.S. lettuce was grown in California and Arizona, with most of Arizona's production in Yuma County. And the U.S. is led only by China in the production of lettuce.

Nolte also noted that 100 percent of the 175,000 acres of irrigated farmland in Yuma County is farmed with equipment that has GPS, or global positioning system, onboard for precision farming.

Finally, he noted that it takes half the energy of one power plant to run the pumps to carry Colorado River water from Parker to the Central Arizona Project.

Most of Yuma County's fields are irrigated through gravity flow, he said.

That's an argument for protecting Yuma's water rights and its agriculture, he said.

"Agriculture is important to Yuma County and it should be for the state and nation. If we lose it, we will be in bad shape for the safety and quality of food on your plates."

Joyce Lobeck can be reached at jlobeck@yumasun.com or 539-6853.