In his nearly four decades of growing lettuce, spinach, kale and other leafy greens in California and Arizona, Tony Alameda has seen plenty of bad years. But lately, he said, there have been many more “noticeably bad” years in a row.
“2022 is probably the worst we’ve seen,” said Alameda, vice president of Topflavor farms, a family operation he runs with his brothers. In October and November, dual outbreaks of a soil-borne disease and an insect-transmitted virus ravaged the Salinas Valley and caused thousands of acres of lettuce crops to wilt.
Now, winter growing schedules and changing weather patterns mean the bad luck has migrated from the Central Coast valley that served as the backdrop for John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and other novels, to the desert farming regions near the U.S.-Mexico border.
