California is home to the majority of certified organic farmland in the U.S., and has been since organic farms were first certified. There are multiple reasons why this is the case. The majority of all “specialty crops” — fruits, vegetables and nuts — grown in the U.S. were already grown here. The state has the biggest population in the country, making it an enormous market.
But the single biggest reason why most of the U.S.-grown certified organic food is grown here in the Golden State. The state’s nickname hints at it. The climate here is of course ideal for growing food. But the long dry season here gives organic farmers an enormous advantage over other states with good weather for farming. Some people experience cognitive dissonance when I tell them this: “Isn’t it better to farm in places where you don’t have to irrigate the crops?”. But for organic farmers, the opposite is true.
The single biggest problem with organic farming is weed control: there are no effective organic herbicides. Yet weeds are the largest threat to farm crops. Left uncontrolled, they can quickly overwhelm cultivated plants and choke them out. Without weed killers, organic farmers have to rely on “old-fashioned” control methods: killing them mechanically with tractor-mounted implements or weeding with hand tools or simply with your hands. All of these methods require the soil to be dry for several days or longer before they can be performed. And once they are done, it takes a day or longer without rain for the weeds to die. Herbicides, by contrast, can be sprayed the day after a rain and only require 12 hours to be absorbed into the plant leaves.
Terra Firma of course does grow crops during the California rainy season. But because days are short and the temperatures are low during that time, weeds tend to grow much slower, giving us a longer window to get into the fields and control them even if wet weather continues unabated for weeks at a time. Contrast that with areas like Texas or the Southeast, where much of their rain comes during the growing season, when the weeds grow just as quickly or more quickly than the crops.
During the summer growing season here, we can control how much water we put on the crops and when, but also where we put it. With drip irrigation, we can keep the water right under the plant canopy where weeds are shaded out. We can even bury it a few inches under the ground so that the soil surface stays almost entirely dry Weeds do not sprout in dry soil. But with the copious amounts of late rain combined with warmer temperatures, we are anticipating a large flush of new weed growth in those fields that will be potentially problem as we have crops that are way too big to cultivate mechanically.
Like weeds, fungal diseases also thrive on free moisture from rain. And while there are more options available for organic control of fungi, most of them are preventitive rather than presciptive. Farmers who grow crops such as peaches or tomatoes in areas where it rains frequently during the growing season spray fungicides on a weekly basis. Farmers in California rarely have to spray once the rainy season ends; most modern irrigation methods used on warm-season crops don’t get the plants wet at all. It’s notable that we have done more fungicide spraying of our crops in April than we’ve ever had to do — even in the wettest years, it’s rare to get so much rain after March 31st. Spraying is time consuming and expensive.
Since April 1st, we have had three large storms that have dropped a record amount of rainfall on us for this time period. While we have lost quite a few strawberries, overall the rain so far has been more of an expensive nuisance than seriously destructive. But we are past the time of year where rainfall is 100% beneficial, and rapidly approaching the season where it is 100% detrimental. We are just a week or two away from starting harvest of several crops that have zero tolerance for wet weather: tomatoes, bulb onions, and garlic. No amount of organic fungicide spraying will help keep ripe tomatoes from cracking, or onions and garlic drying in the field from molding.
Thanks,