Organic farm produces vegetables in Klamath Basin

Harvest season is beginning for an organic vegetable operation in the Klamath Basin, with water shortages added to the other challenges of growing leafy greens along the California-Oregon border.

For Duncan Family Farms, 2021 marks the fourth season growing vegetables in the basin. Why the Klamath Basin? Juan Calderon, the company's director of farming operations for the West region, said he first came to the basin in 2006-07 with a former employer.

"We had a small spring mix program with the local farmers here in the area. When I was there, I really liked the growing area and the community," Calderon said.

When he started working for DFF in 2009, the company was looking to expand its footprint into new growing regions. Calderon already knew the Klamath Basin area, so he suggested expanding there.

"Everybody was interested, and we did some research to make sure the crops we grew would perform well in that area. When we determined it would work, that's when we decided this would be a great location and community to expand our business," he said.

Currently, spring mix items represent about 97% of what DFF produces in the basin, mostly baby lettuces and baby greens. The farm also grows baby spinach, arugula, kale and bok choy.

"We also have a full-size romaine lettuce program, mature kale and a multi-leaf lettuce program," Calderon said.

Some of the crop goes into the spring mix and some is sold individually, he said. Romaine, for instance, is grown to full size, so it's sold as either romaine hearts or chopped salads. Mature kale is either sold as chopped salad or for juicing, and sometimes bunching, Calderon said.

"With the multi-leaf lettuce program, it's more of a teen-size lettuce, a little bit larger than the spring mix and that can be sold as a loose leaf or as a whole head," he said, adding they're doing research and development to determine the feasibility of starting a whole-head program with the multi-leaf.

Currently, DFF raises 100% organic crops in the Klamath Basin, but is also considering a small conventional program in the near future, Calderon said.

Every growing region has its challenges. In the Klamath Basin, water is a main issue, especially with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation closing Klamath Project water deliveries for 2021 due to drought and fish-protection measures.

DFF has access to surface and well water, but with no surface-water allocation, Calderon said the farm will rely 100% on well water.

When surface water is available, he said, higher microbial activity in the water becomes a challenge, particularly with leafy greens. With surface water, algae begins growing when temperatures increase. The algae, at times, can create an environment for more microbial activity to grow and make the water unsafe to apply to leafy greens, Calderon said. When there is a high molecular count on the test results, they switch to well water, he added.

Weather in the basin has been another factor. Some of the baby items are quite susceptible to frost, and a heavy frost will burn them, Calderon said.

High winds and hailstorms have also brought problems.

"The last three years, we've been hit pretty hard with some hailstorms in some of the fields, so that made us think outside the box and invest in some of the hail netting that we are now starting to use," Calderon said, adding other weather factors present obstacles, such as heavy rain that damages the leaves and high temperatures in the middle of summer.

But there are advantages to growing in the Klamath Basin, and isolation is one of them. For example, Calderon said, if in the Salinas Valley a farmer has high mildew or insect pressure that gets out of control, it can infect neighboring crops; being isolated in the Klamath Basin reduces that risk.

The harvest season begins around June 10 and goes through the end of September. Once the season begins, crops are harvested every day, six days a week.

"Some of the crops do multiple cuts on baby lettuces, but spinach, greens and some of those items, as soon as we do the first harvest, we have to prep the soil and replant again," Calderon said.

Finding employees can be an issue, he said, whether recruiting general labor, skilled labor or for management positions.

"We've been really focusing on our continued recruiting efforts," Calderon said, noting that the farm has hired a new team member for that purpose.

In addition, DFF has turned to automation to help fill gaps in hiring.

"We have already invested in some new technology in the last three to five years that can help us with the labor shortage. We are also pushing really hard on autonomous tractors, drones and other automated pieces of equipment," Calderon said, adding that the farm had acquired an automated weeder.

"We're doing the R&D work to see what's going to work best for our type of products," he said. "We're continuing to look at newer technology like laser and oil weeders."

Weed control represents one of the highest costs in an organic operation, and a big challenge, especially in the first two to three years, Calderon said, though there aren't any specific diseases in the basin that impact what DFF grows.

"We have experienced higher damping off—Pythium causes damping off in certain fields. The other disease we are aware of that is semi-specific to the area is white rot, but that doesn't affect our crops," he said.

Crop rotation and growing cover crops are important, but cold winters in the region make it difficult to grow cover crops, he said.

Duncan Family Farms is experimenting with other commodities to see what will grow best in the area, Calderon said, citing melons, tomatoes, squash, beets, broccoli and cauliflower.

(Kathy Coatney is a reporter in Bend, Oregon. She may be contacted at kacoatney@gmail.com.)