Chard has finished up its season in Brawley, California. As temperatures increase, so does bug pressure and product quality declines. “That’s what dictates when we have to pull the plug,” said Patty Emmert, specialty crop manager at Duncan Family Farms. All of the farm’s produce is 100 per cent certified organic. “We just completed our season in the desert and will transition up to the Central Coast in the Santa Maria area for summer production. The heavy rains in California the past few months have prevented us from getting in and planting in a timely manner which will create a gap with our chards for approximately 3 weeks.” Not all crops will gap and we are taking measures to minimize and/or eliminate any disruptions in our supply. The farm grows red, green and rainbow chard (as well as kales, beets, parsley, cilantro, broccoli, cauliflower, culinary herbs, strawberries and baby lettuces).
Quality hit and miss for next few weeks
There is product available in the market but Emmert thinks product quality will be hit and miss for many growers. “We’re anticipating the next 4 to possibly 6 weeks to be a little rocky.” Price currently stands around $18 FOB for a 24 count. Not terribly high, but she says when price hits $20 and above, she knows supply is becoming limited. Retail markets across the US all regularly stock chard so it is a high demand item. “We have not seen the huge increases in the overall consumption of chard as we have seen with Kales,” she said. There has been an increase in demand for beets, she’s noticed. “We attribute much of this to the growing sector of “value added” product in the marketplace.”
Room to market more chard
Chard seems to be a vegetable that they have pretty good luck growing overall. “We definitely struggle with aphid pressure when the temperatures start increasing but overall it’s not an extremely challenging crop to grow,” she said. “Kale definitely is one of our biggest movers. We’re seeing its use increase significantly in value added salads and more requests for large volume contracts from our customers.” The popularity of kale in the foodservice and on food blogs has also increased interest. “I think people are more familiar with kale because its’ being used everywhere. Kale is a great, healthy green but personally I love chard. It is a versatile veg and there’s a lot you can do with it creatively in recipes. I think there’s definitely room to hype up the marketing a bit more.” Its flavor profile is different than kale and Emmert says it can take on a salty flavor, depending upon the time of year and type of soils it is grown in.
Expansion of growing operations
The farm has recently expanded growing operations into other states and has plans to expand further. Duncan Family Farms just released an organic strawberry program under their label this past winter. Currently, they are the only farm growing strawberries in Arizona. Their season runs from December through the first part of April. “We saw an opportunity to grow an organic berry typically in a timeframe where there is not much US grown strawberries available,” Emmert said. “With the rains this year the berry market took a big hit so we were able to provide fruit to our customers when the markets were tight.” This is the first year they distributed Arizona berries after being in trials over the last two years. “We are proud of our label and we’ve had a really good run with it this season. We’re really excited about the program.” Berries were mostly distributed on the west coast but customers in other areas also expressed interest with some of their product shipping into Canada. Their strawberry season runs from December through the first part of April. The farm is launching new regional growing operations in upstate New York and northern California/southern Oregon this summer. “We’re going to be diversifying our growing regions and product portfolio which is very exciting.”
