California Vegetable Grower Diversifies to East Coast Production Sites
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
California is known as the top agricultural producing state in the nation, but with limited farmland and increased regulation, it’s not the easiest state to farm in. Ocean Mist Farms, based in the Salinas valley, has recently broadened its farming footprint closer to major East Coast markets, which has helped cut down on transportation time and costs, says Mark Munger.
Munger… “We've been farming in California for a hundred years, and for the last two years, we've been running farms in Florida and South Carolina, learning how to grow the same vegetable crops that we grow here, which gives us a little bit more geographic diversity. It also puts some of our commodities closer to the markets, instead of having to put romaine lettuce on a truck and ship it five days to the East Coast. Growing it now a one day truck ride from all the major East Coast markets. And there's a lot of pain in that learning experience because, you know, we know how to farm on the West Coast and so learning how to be East Coast farmers, but, you know, that's just another area where the. The company is really investing heavily because they're saying, you know, we're not going to decrease the acreage that we're farming out in California, but what if most of our growth comes from farms that are closer to the East coast, and that we could then be much more competitive. We're not paying for a truck ride. We're not paying for, you know, we're losing five days of shelf life.”
Munger serves as the senior director of marketing for Ocean Mist Farms.
