San Joaquin Valley Overview
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley is the most productive agricultural region
in the world, cultivating more than 250 crops.
Hot Caps
To help prevent early plantings of warm-season vegetables such
as cucumbers, zucchini squash, and fresh tomatoes from frost damage,
individual plants of small acreage plantings are covered with
"hot" caps made from wax paper. The cap has twofold
purpose: first in raising the daytime temperature to get a faster
growth response and second for some frost protection due to the
heat it retains. It has been estimated that the cap gives an additional
2º F of protection to the plant growing underneath.
Tomatoes
Approximately 15,000 acres of fresh tomatoes and 110,000 acres
of processing tomatoes are grown annually in the southern San
Joaquin Valley. Fresno County leads the state in tomatto production.
Tomato culture is similar for fresh and processed tomatoes, although
varieties and harvest practices are distinctly different.
Gondola of Green Tomatoes
Fresh tomato harvest commences in early June and continues through
November. Fresh tomatoes are hand haravested at a mature green
stage, transported to a packing shed where they are washed, sorted,
graded, boxed and exposed to ethylene (a natural ripening hormone
found in many fruits such as tomato) to provide uniform ripening
conditions.
Processing Tomato Harvest
Processing tomatoes are machine harvested when they are red ripe
and trucked to the processing plant in large trucks and trailers.
CDFA Inspection Station
Every truckload of tomatoes is sampled and inspected prior to
processing by the California Department of Food and Agriculture
(CDFA) to insure a standard of tomato quality for the state.
Lettuce Field
Lettuce is grown year round in California and accounts for 20%
of the total value of vegetable production. The San Joaquin Valley
is a major lettuce supplier two seasons per year. Iceberg and
specialty lettuces are planted in midsummer for a late fall harvest
and planted in late fall for a midspring harvest.
Lettuce Harvest
Skilled labor crews travel to production areas around the state
with sophisticated harvest aid and packing equipment to maintain
efficiency in the highly competitive lettuce industry.
Carrot Harvest
California is the major supplier of carrots for the US, and Kern
County in the San Joaquin Valley is the major producer in California.
Green-top bunch carrots are extremely field labor intensive at
harvest, whereas cello and value-added carrot packs require labor
and machinery in a processing facility.
Pesticide Application of Garlic Field.
Garlic (pictured here), onions, melons, peppers and broccoli are
some of the other vegetables with substantial acreage and production
value in the San Joaquin Valley. Commercial fields are rarely
less than 40 acres in size, typically averaging 80 acres, and
in rare instances, are as much as 640 acres planted to a single
commodity.
Strawberry Harvest and Young Corn
Field.
Also prevalent in the San Joaquin Valley is the small-scale vegetable
and/or strawberry grower. Twenty-acre parcels are often subdivided
among producers for the cultivation of miscellaneous vegetables,
such as sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, summer and winter
squashs, asian vegetables and herbs.
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