Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
inant lettuce in the country. A leaf of iceberg inevitably went on nearly every hamburger
sold; shredded, it topped almost every taco.
Iceberg is grown up and down the state of California and even into the Arizona desert,
depending on the time of year. (California alone produces almost three quarters of the ice-
berg grown in the United States, and the two states combined grow about 98 percent.) Ice-
berg is a cool-weather crop, growing best when daytime temperatures are in the low 70s,
cooling to the mid-40s at night. If the daytime weather gets into the 80s or nighttime lows
are in the 50s, the lettuce can bolt, sending up shoots with flowers and seeds and turn-
ing bitter. To catch those optimal temperatures through the different seasons, the iceberg
harvest is almost constantly on the move. During the winter, growers work ground in the
desert areas along the Colorado River in California's Imperial Valley and around Yuma,
Arizona. As the weather warms, they move to the Central Valley for a couple of months.
Iceberg is also grown along California's southern coast, from northern San Diego to Santa
Barbara.
But just about the perfect location for growing lettuce is the Salinas Valley, about one
third of the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Here the pressure cooker heat of the
Central Valley is mod erated by a break in the Coast Ranges leading to Monterey and the
Pacific Ocean. The Salinas Valley calls itself the Salad Bowl of the World, and that de-
scription is only slightly exaggerated. The first major planting of lettuce went into the Sali-
nas Valley in the early 1920s, and lettuce acreage quickly skyrocketed. In 1922 roughly
300 acres were planted with iceberg; by the end of the decade, that number had risen to
43,000. Today there are about 65,000 acres of iceberg in the valley - a little less than half
the state's total. Indeed, driving through the valley during most of the year, you spend what
seems like hours passing through lettuce field after lettuce field with little else in between.
That's because not only is lettuce grown on a massive scale in the Salinas Valley it is also
grown for a long time.
Whereas other areas can harvest for only two or three months before the weather turns
too hot or too cold, in the Salinas Valley lettuce can be cut from April through November.
Between planting and harvesting, lettuce is nearly a year-round crop there. In fact, there
is a county-enforced break in lettuce production during the month of December to break
the life cycle of certain viruses. Farmers there traditionally spend the long Thanksgiving
weekend breaking down the equipment necessary for harvesting and packing lettuce, then
trucking that equipment south to Yuma or the Imperial Valley.
Although lettuce is grown on an industrial scale, it is still sold like a commodity. A
case of iceberg fluctuates in value on a daily basis. The weird thing is that for much of the
