Winter Crops Keep Sinaloa Healthy : Fertile Mexican State Becomes Major Produce Supplier

The harvest is beginning in the fertile valleys of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, bulging with tomatoes and other winter crops destined for U.S. markets.

Now through May laborers will pick the produce that makes this northwestern state the No. 1 foreign supplier of winter vegetables for the U.S. dinner table.

“Florida is our only competitor in winter,” said Hector Gonzalez, president of the Federation of Mexican Fruit and Vegetable Growers Assns.

“We’ve adopted techniques that allow us to compete in the foreign marketplace,” Gonzalez said in an interview at the association’s headquarters in this state capital, 600 miles south of the Arizona border.

“Mexico provides 40% to 50% of all fruits and vegetables consumed in the United States during the winter months. About 90% of that comes from Sinaloa,” said George H. Uribe, executive vice president for the West Mexico Vegetable Distributors Assn., which handles Mexican produce from its base in Nogales, Ariz.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, cantaloupes, strawberries, grapes and zucchini squash top the state’s list of exported produce. Eggplant, okra, snow peas and cherry tomatoes are grown primarily for the lucrative export market because consumption of those products is low in Mexico.

Known for Tourism

This state of 2.8 million people--known also for fishing, mining and tourism--exported 620,000 tons of winter fruits and vegetables during the 1985-86 season, according to Jose Antonio Mendoza, manager of the Sinaloa State Confederation of Agriculture Assns.

But the vine-ripened tomato is Sinaloa’s leading horticulture export.

Nearly half--312,542 tons--of its winter exports last year were tomatoes and they brought in $136 million in badly needed foreign dollars, Mendoza said.

“Sinaloa has suffered less than other parts of the country during the (economic) crisis because it has exports,” Gonzalez said.

The daily financial journal El Financiero in Mexico City reported that “the tomato stands out” among 33 products that doubled in sales this year over last year.

From January to August, 1985, export sales of tomatoes totaled $173.3 million. The total was $385.4 million for the same period this year, El Financiero reported.

A climate comparable to Florida’s and a high-quality water supply are nature’s contributions to Sinaloa’s produce production.

“Conditions favor Sinaloa but people put together the infrastructure that made Sinaloa important,” said Diego Ley Lopez, whose family owns about 1,500 acres of cropland in the lush Culiacan Valley west of the capital.

State-of-the-Art Equipment

Sinaloa and its northern neighbor, Sonora, have gained a reputation for using state-of-the-art equipment and production techniques, much of it developed in the United States.

Refrigerated trucks transport tomatoes fresh from the vine in less than 24 hours across the border to Nogales, where 95% of Sinaloa’s produce enters the United States.

Farmers here still import about 70% of their seeds from the United States. Some soil and mulch are imported from Canada. But laboratory technicians are working to develop home-grown seeds, plants that resist pests, and fertilizers.

Packing is mechanized, greenhouses are a recent innovation for growing seedlings and advanced irrigation techniques are being studied.

Additionally, Sinaloa contributes significantly to Mexico’s wheat production, which has helped the country become a surplus producer of the crop it had to import for many years.