06/05/06 Minty Fresh

Minty fresh. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It has been one of the advertising industries favorite lines. Minty Fresh! And when you brush your teeth or chew a stick of gum you recognize that bold mint flavor. And while most of us know what peppermint or spearmint tastes like, few know where it comes from. Rod Christensen is the executive director of the Washington Mint Commission. CHRISTENSEN: Mint in the field looks a lot like hay, alfalfa hay. And it's up to a point harvested pretty much the same way. You go in and windrow the mint, let it lay in the windrow for about 2 to 3 days to dry down and then you pick it up, chop it with a regular hay chopper and blow it into trailers that are all enclosed. They're pulled into a mint still. Farmers not only grow and harvest the mint but distill it. After cutting, steam is then used to distill the natural mint oils from the plant. CHRISTENSEN: And they sell it to a handler who has warehouses in the production area and the handler then reprocesses the oil, redistills it and blends it to specifications for the end user whose the third segment. The end-users are people like Wrigleys, Colgate and Procter & Gamble. As for the use of mint. CHRISTENSEN: You know I'd say 85 to 90 percent of all the mint goes into gum or toothpaste. The candy industry is a much smaller user of mint. Christensen says that the northwest produces the lion share of mint in the U.S. CHRISTENSEN: Spearmint production, we produce about 1.3 million pounds per year. That accounts for roughly 65 to 70 percent of the U.S. production. Peppermint we produce about 2.9 million pounds and that's about 60 percent of the nation. The Washington Mint Commission is holding their annual mint research field day on Tuesday. CHRISTENSEN: Well the field day is an annual event that brings growers and dealers and other interested parties to our researchers. We meet at the irrigated research center in Prosser and look at some of the research plots there. And then usually get on a bus and go out and look at research plots wherever they happen to be. This year they're up in the Paterson area. It gives everybody a chance to talk and interact one-on-one with our researchers. Christensen says the field day is open to anyone interested in the mint industry. For more information contact his office at 509-585-5460. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.