Money doesn’t grow on trees, but check your lettuce patch…money could be growing there!
Lettuce prices are at an all-time high, and home gardeners are hitting paydirt by growing their own salad greens. The savings of growing your own lettuce right now is crazy!
According to the USDA and The Packer , a business news source of the produce industry, romaine and iceberg lettuce heads are commanding prices that are two to three times higher than they were just one year ago. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture, consumers across the US are seeing startling price increases in lettuce, with the wholesale price of a carton of lettuce going from around $20 a year ago to more than $100 just last month. The Mercury News has reported in a recent article that some grocery outlets were pricing lettuce as high as $10.99 for one head of organic lettuce. The US food inflation rate hit 10.4% according to a US Bureau of Labor Statistics report, and that was the highest rate since May 1979. As I’m writing, food inflation is the highest category rate even ahead of energy. Consumers are seeing the high energy and fertilizer prices farmers were paying last summer trickling down to the grocery store.
But why have lettuce prices shot up so much more?
Xalbadora and Pomegranate Crunch lettuces
The answer can be found in the Salinas Valley in Monterey County California. There, crops are being decimated by dual outbreaks from an insect-borne virus called Impatiens Necrotic Virus (INSV) that is spread by thrips and Pythium wilt, a soil-borne disease from fungi-like pathogens that can create root rot and cause infected plants to wilt and ruin. Together they are ravaging through the highly productive 90-mile long, 8-mile-wide valley. The Salinas Valley is known as the nation’s salad bowl, and for good reason as 61% of the entire nation’s leaf lettuce and 56% of head lettuce types are grown there. According to reporting by the California Farm Bureau Federation between the INSV virus and Pythium Wilt approximately 80% of recent lettuce crops have been destroyed. Normally around the month of December the nation’s winter lettuce supply shifts from Salinas Valley south to the desert areas around the Imperial Valley in California. The winter lettuce production in the Imperial Valley is substantial, accounting for 13% of the total national supply. Currently those desert farms are having unusually cool weather that is slowing down the maturity of the lettuce crops with freeze warnings and reports of some lettuce fields iced over in the mornings. While representatives of the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California think market prices could stabilize and perhaps come back down in the coming weeks, they also say that doesn’t solve the disease and virus problems back in the Salinas Valley. The farming season starts there again in February after a short break in their otherwise year-around production schedule. The real concerning news here is that California Farm Bureau officials say that as of now, they have no meaningful control over the diseases at all. Experts are working to find solutions and so far, researchers and seed breeders are working to single out varieties of lettuce that demonstrate some disease resistance, and that is promising. Throughout history seed breeders have been developing new varieties to withstand specific disease pressure just like we are seeing now in California. This may take some time as conventional breeding efforts do not happen overnight. What does happen very quickly is farms in other regions of the country that are suitable to growing lettuce will adapt to the opportunity. Maybe these areas are not as perfectly suited for near year-around lettuce production as in Coastal California, but the market demand for lettuce will present at least seasonal opportunities for both large and small farmers and organic growers. This reminds me of the old farmers adage, ‘show a farmer a profitable crop-he will show you an oversupply’.
Lettuce is expensive in the store, but for the home gardener, lettuce is an easy, quick crop that even thrives in containers.
The recent Mercury News article previously mentioned showed organic head lettuce reaching an astonishing $10.99 a head, Little Gem Romaine lettuce near $10.00 a head and another romaine lettuce types at $6.00 a head. I would hope these represent the extreme, but even at the low end many parts of the country are reporting $3.00 to $4.00 a head.
With these prices, gardeners are realizing that perhaps they really can ‘grow money.’ There is an incredible savings in growing one’s own food right now, from artichokes to turnips because of food inflation, however the current situation in California brings real value in growing naturally quick-to-mature lettuce.
Let’s look closer at how you can mine savings in your own garden. Applying the data provided in your Territorial Seed catalog you will find that most lettuce varieties offered contain ½ gram of seed in the smallest size seed packet. Note that some of the specialty lettuce types offered have ¼ gram. A full gram of lettuce seed contains approximately 800 seeds. So, in the following example we will use Little Gem Romaine lettuce, the same variety in the Mercury News article. There are approximately 400 seeds in the ½ gram Little Gem packet. Current price of a packet of Little Gem seed is $3.65. Eighty percent is the minimum in-house lettuce germination rate standard we will allow for sale. I can assure you that most lettuce varieties we sell are in the high 90’s for germination. But let’s use the minimum 80% germination rate for this example. Most gardeners would not do this, but if you were to plant all 400 seeds at the same time, and seed germinated at 80% this would result in 320 seeds successfully emerging. Let’s now imagine that out of those 320 lettuce seedlings some of those succumb to garden pests, hoe blight, or needing to be thinned in the row. Then let’s assume that 35 to 65 days later a conservative 275 lettuce plants have grown to full maturity. What is your home-grown bounty worth as compared to store bought? Now mind you, we are not figuring in all the costs for the other inputs to grow the lettuce, but just the relationship from raw seed to mature plant. Given lettuce is one of the easiest and fastest crops to grow, and with the value of the lettuce shown here, I think you would agree there is a lot of margin left for all those other input costs.
Crazy numbers: Using the lettuce price points reported from various news sources and the USDA, those 275 lettuce heads you grew multiplied by $4.00 a head equals $1,100 total retail. And if you used the $10.99 a head in the Mercury News article, that’s $3,022. You will need to deduct the raw seed packet price of about $3.65 for the Little Gem packet.
The current lettuce virus and disease situation in California highlights the perils of having more than half of our nation’s lettuce supply being so dependent on two relatively small regions of California with a limited number of farms representing the lettuce food supply. Granted, the micro-climate of the Salinas Valley is ideal for cool season vegetable crops like lettuce that love the maritime influence of the Pacific Ocean, but when disease and virus issues erupt, they can quickly run through the whole valley. When that happens, we once again see how quickly it effects prices in the grocery store. This event is a reminder that we need to expand and support our local food system, and as consumers we should strive to buy as much locally—from local farmers as possible. Like our ancestors, who sourced food from our own gardens or neighboring organic farmers and producers.
Author: Territorial Tom
