Richard Bianchi, San Benito County vegetable grower

By Richard Bianchi, San Benito County vegetable grower

We just came out of about 10 days of extraordinary heat for the vegetables. We had temperatures as high as 111 to 114 degrees, which was our high point. During that period of heat, the irrigators did a heck of a job keeping everything going, but by the end of it, they welcomed a foggy day to the area. Vegetables are pretty resilient. It’s just a matter of getting water to them. Anything growing on the coast here—leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, celery—water is a main component of everything we do, and it is definitely struggling.

In a lot of areas, it is concerning as we see well-water levels dropping and the prospect of what next year could look like. We start planning now for next year, and it is hard when you don’t know what things look like. When you don’t have the delivered water, then we don’t have it. But when wells start to drop, that adds another layer of concern.

It’s been a long summer for more than one reason. Disease in a lot of the lettuce has hampered production and yields. The romaine, head lettuce and a lot of the leaf lettuces are dealing with a disease that has really hampered us the last couple of years.

Every cost is up: Labor’s up, fertilizer is up, sprays are up, any of our input costs. Everything from pallets to wax cartons to plastic bags, it’s all up, up, up. We figure our costs went up 20%. That’s got to come out of our bottom line, so it makes it tough. I know everybody across the state is dealing with the same issues.

On the bright side, the weather has kind of righted itself. It’s 90 degrees during the day and then cools down into the high 50s or 60s at night. We’ve got three or four weeks before guys start to head south to Yuma. We’re hoping for a strong finish.