Reaping a Global Harvest

Every other day, farmer Javier Restrepo loads 800 boxes of fresh asparagus on a cargo flight bound for Miami. From there it is warehoused, marketed and distributed by California-based Couture Farms and then sold to consumers around the United States.

Restrepo keeps the California operator supplied year-round with a vegetable that was once absent from U.S. supermarkets for months at a time. Never mind that most Colombians have never tasted asparagus. The Coutures, a fourth-generation California farming family based near Fresno, guided Restrepo on planting methods and procedures to ensure that the spears meet U.S. health standards.

The alliance of a Colombian like Restrepo and the Coutures illustrates how the state’s farmers are “following the sun” across the hemisphere to lock up year-round supplies of fruits and vegetables and satisfy American appetites for fresh, healthy foods.

The partnership also affords a glimpse of a future already begun, where the economies of North and South America are melding to produce and deliver goods from food and automobiles to oil and electronics. As with other industries, the meshing of agriculture is helped along by tumbling trade barriers and improving technology.

Agriculture in the hemisphere’s two halves is especially suited to synchronization because the growing seasons often run counter to one another. The months when many Central Valley fields and orchards, including the Coutures’, lie dormant is harvest time for Chilean grapes, Honduran melons, Peruvian artichokes and Restrepo’s asparagus.

“You follow the sun, go around the globe. I’m meeting with people from South Africa now; we might be doing a deal with them as well,” said Jack Pandol, whose Pandol Bros. operation in Delano imports peaches, plums, pears and grapes from Chile and Mexico to complement its own San Joaquin Valley harvest.

But not all is harmonious. For many, each northbound shipment raises potential health alarms. Last year’s high-profile contamination of imported Guatemalan raspberries and Mexican strawberries raised U.S. consciousness--and fears--about imported fruit and vegetables.

Government officials insist there is no evidence that imports are any less safe than domestic crops. But U.S. officials concede that inspection and disease reporting need to be tightened. That is a primary focus of President Clinton’s Food Safety Initiative study, which was launched last year after the outcry over tainted fruits.

Globalization in agriculture is a “good thing as long as food safety can be assured. So far, there is no evidence that it is being sacrificed,” said Joseph Glauber, deputy chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In any case, the skyrocketing demand among Americans for fresh fruits and vegetables suggests a continuing rise in imports is all but inevitable. Health-conscious shoppers now expect more quantity, quality and variety than U.S. farmers, for all their ingenuity and productivity, are able to supply. And they want it all the time.

A typical supermarket produce section today carries 300 items, compared with 50 in the 1970s. More often than not, those offerings include melons from Costa Rica, pineapples from Colombia and bell peppers from Mexico. The 12-month availability is one reason why per capita consumption of vegetables and fruits has risen 16% since 1990.

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Though imports account for less than 10% of the fruit and vegetables consumed by Americans, one in every three tomatoes is imported--compared with one in five as recently as 1994. Half of all asparagus comes from offshore. But the imports have not hurt domestic production, which has continued to rise, USDA economist Gary Lucier said.

“The market for fresh fruit and produce is expanding, and imports have helped expand it,” Lucier said. In melons, for example, the entire increase in consumption “has come during the off season when we don’t have any production.”

A few Californians farm on their own in distant lands, like King City-based Meyer Tomatoes, which grows tomatoes in Mexico’s Sinaloa state and recently announced plans to move its entire operation to Mexico. Delano’s Pandol Bros. grows its own table grapes and kiwis in Chile.

But most follow the Coutures’ approach--forming a loose arrangement with local farmers who do the growing. In Colombia, the Californians provide financing and technical help during the season, then packing or marketing services during and after the harvest. The Coutures have no financial interest in Restrepo’s farm, but pay the air freight and market the vegetables on commission.

In turn, Restrepo is pioneering a new crop that many Colombians have never heard of or eaten. He has also gained an entree into U.S. supermarkets. After investing $10 million in the farm since 1993, Restrepo and his partners expect to turn a profit this year.

“Colombians had tried knocking on supermarket doors in the United States, but that’s not the way to do it. You have to team up with a credible marketing outfit, and that’s what the Coutures have,” said Restrepo, 36, who earned his agriculture degree at the University of Florida.

Couture Farms, headed by 80-year-old Paul Couture and his two sons, first went into South America in 1984 under a U.S. foreign aid program. The government wanted Couture to help Peruvian farmers diversify from cotton, grain and potatoes. So Couture helped about 40 growers in the southern Peru city of Ica organize as an asparagus cooperative.

Four years ago, the Coutures ventured to Colombia and hooked up with Restrepo.

Restrepo’s quality is good, and the freight rate is much lower from Colombia than Peru. The quality edge is partly due to consistent rainfall and climate. Although Restrepo’s farm is just two degrees north of the equator, it’s at an elevation of 4,000 feet, where temperatures are mild year-round.

Restrepo comes from a prominent Cali sugar farming family. His partners in the Popayan farm, about 90 miles south of Cali, include wealthy friends who, besides making money, wanted to meet a social goal of creating jobs.

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Restrepo’s group settled on asparagus because it is very labor intensive--the farm employs 400--and because the market is strong. Inquiries around California brought Restrepo together with Couture in 1993, and a partnership was cemented with nothing more binding than a handshake.

“Like so many businesses, this is a people business, and we have found Javier and his people to be just outstanding,” Couture said.

For their part, the Coutures get high-quality asparagus--Colombian spears fetch the highest price of any import--and a year-round market presence. Before going international, they could sell only the asparagus they harvested at their Kettleman City farm from February through May.

Their partnership is helped by the fact that Restrepo pays no duty on his asparagus exports because of special treatment the U.S. began offering farmers in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in 1991 as an incentive to spurn the crops from which heroin, cocaine and marijuana are made.

The Restrepo-Couture link also shows the reach of California’s leading-edge farm technology. Restrepo uses an asparagus seed developed by UC Riverside plant geneticist Frank Takatori and plants them on his 500-acre farm. He also gets tips from the Coutures. In one case, they advised him to use chicken manure to soften up the crop beds so that the asparagus spears can easily shoot up through the soil.

The partners also benefit from improved transportation that has slashed the time and cost of getting South American crops stateside, extending shelf life. High-speed refrigerated boatloads of table grapes, for example, take only 12 days to get from Chile to supermarkets in Los Angeles, compared with 20 days a decade ago, Pandol said.

But consumer fears about safety remain. Last year’s highly publicized contamination incidents shocked many who didn’t realize so much of their food is imported. Except in Florida, supermarkets and wholesalers aren’t required to label their produce with country of origin.

In the case of the Guatemalan raspberries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found evidence of cyclospora contamination in the field and has since barred imports. But in the Mexican strawberry case, the agency could not pinpoint whether the contamination occurred in the Baja California field or a San Diego packing house. The tainted strawberries exposed dozens of Michigan schoolchildren to hepatitis A.

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The FDA’s position is that illnesses result from the ingestion of both domestic and imported fruits and vegetables, and there is no statistical difference in the frequency. But both the FDA and USDA say poor medical reporting procedures mean there is a shortage of reliable data on illness caused by food contamination.

The Coutures say Restrepo’s asparagus in Colombia receives the same safety precautions as vegetables on their San Joaquin Valley farm--that they are transferring not just good farm technology but higher safety standards. With the $10-million investment in his farm, Restrepo said there is too much to lose by running afoul of the FDA and gaining a stigma that could take years to erase.

Restrepo installed the same antimicrobial machinery and handling procedures in his packing shed as the Coutures have in Kettleman City. Restrepo’s $1-million facility, built with help from the Coutures, includes a sophisticated water purification and chlorination system and a room kept at 38 degrees to prevent spoilage. Employees follow a strict cleanliness program, Restrepo said.

Barring a catastrophic health scare involving imported produce, experts expect the tide of foreign fresh foods--and California farmers’ international marketing alliances--to continue and for more California farmers to follow the example of Lindemann Produce Inc.

Once a melon farmer near Fresno, Carl Lindemann quit growing to become a full-time Reno-based marketer of produce harvested by 80 growers from Ecuador to Texas.

“The economics change and you want to be in front of it, not behind it,” company President George Lindemann said.