- South Florida Grower Fills
Ethnic Vegetable Niche
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- By Karen Gentry
Managing Editor
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- With his location in Southwest Florida in the middle of the southern tip, Chuck Obern plants every week for six weeks and is able to get three crops off the same land.
Obern, operator of C&B Farms in Clewiston, Fla. grows 30-40 types of specialty vegetables. Crops are grown on 1,200-1,500 acres, mostly sandy soil in the Devils Garden area of Hendry County.
Land preparation and planting begins in August with successive, weekly plantings throughout the growing season to ensure a constant supply of product. His vegetables are grown on raised beds to ensure proper drainage. In all, he produces one-half million packages of specialty crops. He said he decided to grow specialty crops as the market was saturated with more conventional vegetables.
“I didn’t have the capital to go up against the big guys,” said Obern. After working for some other growers, he started his own operation in 1992 and has turned all the capital right back into the farm.
“I’ve never been in the position to lose money. I can’t have a losing year,” Obern said. Diversity is the key to Obern’s growing operation. Obern produces 36 different vegetables and herbs—arrugula, bok choy, Chinese mustard, daikon, winter melons, basil, mint, chives, hot peppers, specialty eggplants and many other unusual vegetables.
His vegetables and herbs end up primarily at Eastern and Midwest destinations from Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul, Washington, D.C. to New York and Boston. He sells primarily to street or terminal markets.
“It’s cheaper and easier to sell wholesale,” he said.
Although his mix has worked for him, Obern said he has seen many growers go broke with specialty crops. “There’s competition in every market,” he said. Obern advises growers to “identify your markets before you put a seed in the ground.”
Obern has taken a very different path from his father who was a liberal arts professor. Obern was born in Maryland and spent half his life overseas including Brazil and Malaysia. He earned a degree in vegetable crop production at the University of Florida. He started small with his operation at 10 acres and farmed part-time for several years before jumping in full-time in 1992. At that time he had a contract with Pace Foods to grow Jalapenos.
Obern relies on 130 employees, many of them migrant workers who head north to places like Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio when the work is done in Florida. All of his crops are hand-harvested.
“It’s difficult to get people who want to work,” said Obern. He said keeping employees motivated has proved a challenge. “We can make money but we need people to help us make money,” he said.
On a busy day at C&B Farms in late May, Obern was busy overseeing the harvesting of Jalapeno hot peppers, cubanelles, three types of eggplant as well as basil and calaloo, a leafy green. Everything was being field packed and then put into a cooler system. Trucks left his operation for faraway destinations including Raleigh, N.C., Vineland, N.J. and Hammonton, N.J.
C&B Farms has their own dedicated trucks and does all its own sales. Obern is assisted in his operation by his sons, Charles and Michael.
As Southern Florida is full of pests, Obern must deal with worms, mites, bacterial leaf spot, and he has to spray often. He relies on professional scouts and uses the latest IPM techniques. He works with researchers from the University of Florida
(UF), who have done trials with highly reflective plastic mulch vs. standard mulch.
Obern is also working with an UF engineer to look at water measurements in the soil using new technology from Australia that precisely monitors soil moisture. He has adopted a number of cutting edge techniques including the use of windbreaks and cover crops and field packing.
Obern pioneered the use of composting horticultural waste from urban areas for use as a soil amendment and supplemental fertilizer source for vegetables. C&B Farms now includes a 40-acre composting operation, where yard waste is composted to produce a high quality soil amendment that improves the water and nutrient holding capacity of Florida’s poor, sandy soils.
Obern works with Gene McAvoy, regional vegetable Extension agent, on herbicide trials for eggplant and peppers.
Obern is one of about 100 growers in Southwest Florida who produce 60,000 acres of vegetables, according to McAvoy, who works out of the UF/FAS Hendry County Extension office in LaBelle.
Most of these growers are fairly big, he said. “The trend is consolidation. It’s getting so expensive to do anything—you have to be big,” said McAvoy. The main crops are tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupes and specialty items, McAvoy said. He works with one potato grower in Immokalee who grows 2,000 acres of potatoes and one organic grower who produces on 400 acres.
As the region’s soil is sandy and infertile, crops are grown almost hydroponically. “Our production costs are the highest in the country,” McAvoy said. Because of these high costs, most of the produce is sold for the fresh market.
McAvoy said a lot of research is centered around fertilizer management and how to use less fertilizer. Three years ago, 42 local growers agreed to tax themselves $1 an acre for research. The group raised $80,000 for research, with approximately $500,000 contributed counting in-kind donations. They have funded 15 projects to date.
