Harvesting varieties of artisan lettuce on a farm leased by Tanimura and Antle near Gonzales, CA. The plants are seeded variety in rows so that they can be boxed/bagged in as an assortment in the fields. It's challenging to get the different varieties to be planted and ready for picking at the same time. All workers are employees of T&A with US citizenship, making an average of $20/hour plus medical/dental/vision care and 401k retirement plans. Almost all are immigrants from Latin America. T&A has seen 20% increase in productivity per acre over the past ten years, due to better ground preparation, water management, better and more consistent seeds, and by controlling soil diseases, according to field manager Brett Champlin.
T&A is the largest iceberg lettuce supplier in the US, with 17-20% market share. For this artisan mix, they average 70,000 boxes/week as a spring mix, and the lettuce is all field packed into boxes for transport by refrigerated trucks.
- Filename
- STNMTZ_20160505_1109.tif
- Copyright
- ©2016 George Steinmetz
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- 8688x5792 / 144.0MB
- Contained in galleries
- 21st Century Agriculture
