Growers employ plantings to bring in beneficial insects

Flowering plants right in the middle of organic celery plots caught the eye as a bus full of produce buyers from major retailers toured the field outside Salinas.

These non-crop plants towering over the celery were not escapees from a weed control program gone bad, but instead an integral part of managing insect pests without synthetic pesticides.

"You may have seen the intentional weeds, the dill and cilantro that we planted for pest control," said Chris Glynn, director of organics for Tanimura & Antle. "With shorter-season crops like lettuce we might plant alyssum, but the dill and cilantro have long enough to flower with celery."

The bus tour came as part of the annual Organic Produce Summit, which brought together supermarket representatives and the largest Salinas Valley growers in Monterey.

The event this year attracted 1,500 people, including more than 250 buyers from virtually all the largest produce retailers in the United States and Canada, from Albertson's and Amazon to Whole Foods and Walmart, Costco, the nationwide network of independents in the Associated Grocers, and Canadian giant Sobeys.

As demand for organics continues to increase, Salinas Valley vegetable growers are stepping up their efforts to meet the demand.

"This is our second year back in organics," said Jessie Lopez, director of business development at Tanimura & Antle. "We started doing organics again because our customers wanted it. This is one of our artisan lettuce fields. We're doing that conventionally now, but we'll be doing it organically in Yuma this winter."

The company's re-entry into organic vegetables is already growing at a fast pace as retailers look to maintain a steady supply.

"We started the program for the celery in the desert," Glynn said. "We started with four acres a week, and since we moved back up here we've bumped it to 10 acres a week. We harvest two acres of celery a day with one crew out of our total of 10 celery harvest crews."

Tanimura & Antle has already developed an organic line that includes celery and celery hearts, broccoli, cauliflower, romaine and iceberg lettuce, and red onions.

Other tour buses at the organic summit carried produce buyers to a number of Salinas Valley organic vegetable growers.

One tour bus took buyers to learn about Driscoll's organic strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.

Another group of buyers visited Soledad-based Braga Family Farms, where Swiss immigrant Sebastian Braga started a modest dairy and sugar beet farm 90 years ago and his grandchildren now grow 1,200 acres of vegetables.

At Taylor Farms, buyers heard about the company's lines of organic salads, chopped vegetables and stir-fry mixes.

Ocean Mist Farms of Castroville showed its organic vegetables, including artichokes, cole crops, lettuces, celery, cilantro, parsley, spinach, green onions and kale.

Every season, growers find it a challenge to control weeds, pests and diseases well enough using organic methods to meet the high quality standards demanded by the market.

"Everything is drip irrigated, which helps with the weeds; it helps a lot," Glynn said.

The irrigation system helps with the weeds, and flowering plants support biological pest control, but Glynn said he hedges his bets by growing each organic crop at numerous locations, just in case something goes wrong unexpectedly.

"With organics, we need to spread ourselves out to diversify our risk," he said. "We have organic celery now in Salinas down to King City, and up around Hollister."

Just like other Central Coast green vegetable growers, conventional and organic alike, Tanimura & Antle has developed food safety protocols that were explained to the buyers on the tour.

"The Salinas River is running over there," said John McKeon, senior director of food safety compliance for organics at Tanimura & Antle, as he motioned toward an edge of the celery field. "We have fencing to keep out the deer, and we have to watch out for birds, rodents and squirrels."

When McKeon sees signs of animals, he follows their path into the field and creates a buffer around the intruder's path.

"We sacrifice some ground for food safety purposes on a regular basis, every day," he said. "I am out here at this field at least once a week looking for signs of animal intrusion, or of issues that might attract animals. We are out at least weekly doing harvest crew audits to make sure we don't have food safety issues with the harvest."

They also use the standard label and software first developed by a number of the largest retailers to let them trace produce back to the field.

"We use the Produce Traceability Initiative system," McKeon said. "We start with a work order number that follows the box from the field all the way to the store."

(Bob Johnson is a reporter in Davis. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@aol.com.)