Unless youre a homesteader, a Sunbelt resident who eats only food from your local farmers market, or an extremely devout carnivore, youve almost certainly eaten lettuce from Yuma, Arizona, a city of 93,000 at the nexus of Arizona, California and Mexico. The Yuma area, including the Imperial Valley across the California border, produces about 90 percent of all the leafy vegetables grown in the United States from November to March, when its too cold to grow produce in most of the rest of the country.
If youre familiar with the geography of the American Southwest, youre probably scratching your head right now. Because Yuma is in the middle of the desert. Its probably most famous today as the sandy setting of the 2007 Western “3:10 To Yuma.” So you may think Yuma looks something like this:
And youd be partially right. Both of those photos were taken on the outskirts of Yuma — the first in the middle of Yuma Proving Grounds, a military testing site, and the second on the eastern edge of the Yuma Mesa. However, Yuma also is on the eastern bank of the Colorado River — a rich source of water and fertile soil for thousands of years. Over the past couple of years, the city has established a vast park along the riverfront, illustrating its heritage as a kind of oasis in the desert. Heres a view of the park from near the center of Yuma:Advertisement
The river — along with almost constant sunshine, warm weather and ready access to a deep pool of skilled farm workers from across the border in Mexico — has allowed Yuma to become one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. Yuma farmers grow a host of crops: wheat, oranges, lemons, dates, alfalfa. But the crown jewel is lettuce.
Driving through the city in the winter, you pass countless fields of emerald green heads of lettuce.
You even see the occasional field of red or white lettuce, destined, possibly, for a bag of spring mix.
If youve ever visited a lettuce farm in, say, the Hudson Valley of New York, it can be a little unsettling to see a huge field of lettuce in Yuma with palm trees and mountains in the background.
Of course, it takes more than scarecrows to tend to this bountiful crop. Six days a week, about 45,000 farm laborers — many of them legal guest workers who commute across the border into Yuma every day — harvest, trim and pack lettuce in crews ranging from two to 30 people. Advertisement
Here, a crew picks heads of iceberg lettuce on a field contracted to Dole, one of the biggest lettuce shippers in the region.
(This might be a good time to note that, although Yuma holds the Guinness World Record for the sunniest place on earth, with sunshine an average of 91 percent of the time it could possibly shine, it happened to be cloudy on two of the three days when I visited.)
The laborers work through the fields, accompanied by workstations attached to trailers. Sometimes, as in the following picture, theyll work in teams of two, with one person (usually male) picking the heads of lettuce and then passing them to another person (often female), who trims them.
Here, four women cut heads of romaine down to usable size, wash them in chlorinated water and put them on a conveyor belt that loads them onto a truck.
Huge trucks stand at the ready to take lettuce away. At the height of the vegetable season, one grower told me, 1,000 trucks, each carrying about 1,000 boxes of produce destined for grocery stores and restaurants from Seattle to Miami, leave Yuma every night. Advertisement
Yuma only gets an average of three inches of rain a year — and lettuce requires a lot more water than that to grow. So Yumas farmers get almost all their water from the Colorado River, seen here 10 miles north of Yuma, with the picturesque Castle Dome in the distance.
In the lower left corner of this photo, a few metal bars mark the beginning of the Imperial Dam, the last of the great dams on the river, which was completed in 1938. At this point, water from the Colorado is sent in three directions. Some goes east to the Gila Valley, and some continues in the Colorado River down to Mexico. But the bulk is diverted into the All-American Canal, which supplies water to Yuma and the Imperial Valley. The bars in the picture are part of a structure that filters logs, trash and other large refuse out of water destined for the All-American Canal.
The water then passes through the main portion of the dam into a basin that removes silt, and then onward to the canal.
In this photo, you can see the portion of the water, at left, that goes to Mexico, and the part, at right, that goes to the All-American Canal.
Water from the All-American Canal is distributed to individual farms in Yuma through a vascular system of ever-smaller irrigation canals, which cut through the entire Yuma region. Advertisement
Farmers submit orders for water to their local irrigation district. When it arrives, about three days later, they open gates of the small canals adjacent to their fields and allow water to run through the furrows between rows of lettuce, saturating the soil in the beds.
The farmers also sometimes hook pipes and electric pumps to the outlet of the canals to propel water into the air through sprinklers. Sprinklers are used to irrigate fields of seeds that are just starting to germinate, as well as those with beds too wide for furrow irrigation.
A few miles west of Yuma, as the All-American Canal heads toward the Imperial Valley, it passes through the stunningly beautiful Algodones Dunes — which stood in for the desert planet of Tatooine in “Return of the Jedi.”
Make no mistake: Were it not for irrigation canals like these, Yumas farms wouldnt be nearly as productive as they are. This photo, taken in Dome Valley, east of downtown Yuma, shows the contrast between the high desert around Yuma and the fertile farms within it.
Last weekend, the city of Yuma commemorated the crown jewel of its agricultural ecosystem with its 16th annual vegetable-themed festival, Lettuce Days.Advertisement
Thousands of people came to the University of Arizonas Yuma Agricultural Center, this years venue, to attend panels on lettuce, taste delicious salads, listen to music and peruse souvenir stands.
The biggest booth was run by Dole, but a few smaller farmers also were selling their wares.
The next Lettuce Days isnt for a year. But there are still a few weeks left in Yumas lettuce season, before the bulk of the production shifts to the cooler Salinas Valley in central California. So if youd like to taste Yumas bounty, all you have to do is visit your local grocery store and buy some lettuce.
Sponsored by
Main Street, Inc., it is held in the historic downtown section of Yuma, which is known as the “Lettuce Capital of the World.” Yuma County is renowned for its winter-grown produce; over 90% of the world’s lettuce crop is grown in the region’s fertile soils from November through March.
“It’s wasteful to have a big head of lettuce when most folks only eat half,” said Nolte. “The new minis are about the size of a softball — a much more manageable size for the average family.”
Besides the produce and spices like spearmint, basil, dill and sage, there’s the just plain bizarre. Guayule is harvested for its sticky properties and is used in the production of rubber. For example, gloves for folks who have an allergy to latex are made from the Guayule plant.
And as food safety continues to remain in the headlines, usually for such things as listeria outbreaks or salmonella, farmers are developing fruits that are resistant to the bacteria that can devastate an entire crop and worse, cause serious illness. The smooth-skinned orange honeydew melon is grown as an alternative to the cantaloupe, the rough skin of which is notorious for trapping bacteria.
So do Yuma’s prodigious fields live up to their claim as the winter vegetable capital of the world? You bet. Oh, and don’t forget the beer. Yuma’s rarefied two-row barley is used in none other than the great American lager itself: Budweiser.
The bins at Yuma’s farmers markets overflow with crimson red tomatoes, plump zucchinis and row after row of all varieties of lettuce. Michelle Moll is a regular at the Tuesday morning downtown market where the blogger for the popular site YumaMom.com stocks up on everything from strawberries to leafy greens.
Follow Us Part of HuffPost Food & Drink. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.
Unless youre a homesteader, a Sunbelt resident who eats only food from your local farmers market, or an extremely devout carnivore, youve almost certainly eaten lettuce from Yuma, Arizona, a city of 93,000 at the nexus of Arizona, California and Mexico. The Yuma area, including the Imperial Valley across the California border, produces about 90 percent of all the leafy vegetables grown in the United States from November to March, when its too cold to grow produce in most of the rest of the country.
If youre familiar with the geography of the American Southwest, youre probably scratching your head right now. Because Yuma is in the middle of the desert. Its probably most famous today as the sandy setting of the 2007 Western “3:10 To Yuma.” So you may think Yuma looks something like this:
Or this:
And youd be partially right. Both of those photos were taken on the outskirts of Yuma — the first in the middle of Yuma Proving Grounds, a military testing site, and the second on the eastern edge of the Yuma Mesa. However, Yuma also is on the eastern bank of the Colorado River — a rich source of water and fertile soil for thousands of years. Over the past couple of years, the city has established a vast park along the riverfront, illustrating its heritage as a kind of oasis in the desert. Heres a view of the park from near the center of Yuma:Advertisement
The river — along with almost constant sunshine, warm weather and ready access to a deep pool of skilled farm workers from across the border in Mexico — has allowed Yuma to become one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. Yuma farmers grow a host of crops: wheat, oranges, lemons, dates, alfalfa. But the crown jewel is lettuce.
Driving through the city in the winter, you pass countless fields of emerald green heads of lettuce.
You even see the occasional field of red or white lettuce, destined, possibly, for a bag of spring mix.
If youve ever visited a lettuce farm in, say, the Hudson Valley of New York, it can be a little unsettling to see a huge field of lettuce in Yuma with palm trees and mountains in the background.
These fields stretch for miles to the east of Yuma, up the often-dry Gila River.
Of course, it takes more than scarecrows to tend to this bountiful crop. Six days a week, about 45,000 farm laborers — many of them legal guest workers who commute across the border into Yuma every day — harvest, trim and pack lettuce in crews ranging from two to 30 people. Advertisement
Here, a crew picks heads of iceberg lettuce on a field contracted to Dole, one of the biggest lettuce shippers in the region.
(This might be a good time to note that, although Yuma holds the Guinness World Record for the sunniest place on earth, with sunshine an average of 91 percent of the time it could possibly shine, it happened to be cloudy on two of the three days when I visited.)
The laborers work through the fields, accompanied by workstations attached to trailers. Sometimes, as in the following picture, theyll work in teams of two, with one person (usually male) picking the heads of lettuce and then passing them to another person (often female), who trims them.
Here, four women cut heads of romaine down to usable size, wash them in chlorinated water and put them on a conveyor belt that loads them onto a truck.
Huge trucks stand at the ready to take lettuce away. At the height of the vegetable season, one grower told me, 1,000 trucks, each carrying about 1,000 boxes of produce destined for grocery stores and restaurants from Seattle to Miami, leave Yuma every night. Advertisement
Yuma only gets an average of three inches of rain a year — and lettuce requires a lot more water than that to grow. So Yumas farmers get almost all their water from the Colorado River, seen here 10 miles north of Yuma, with the picturesque Castle Dome in the distance.
In the lower left corner of this photo, a few metal bars mark the beginning of the Imperial Dam, the last of the great dams on the river, which was completed in 1938. At this point, water from the Colorado is sent in three directions. Some goes east to the Gila Valley, and some continues in the Colorado River down to Mexico. But the bulk is diverted into the All-American Canal, which supplies water to Yuma and the Imperial Valley. The bars in the picture are part of a structure that filters logs, trash and other large refuse out of water destined for the All-American Canal.
The water then passes through the main portion of the dam into a basin that removes silt, and then onward to the canal.
In this photo, you can see the portion of the water, at left, that goes to Mexico, and the part, at right, that goes to the All-American Canal.
Water from the All-American Canal is distributed to individual farms in Yuma through a vascular system of ever-smaller irrigation canals, which cut through the entire Yuma region. Advertisement
Farmers submit orders for water to their local irrigation district. When it arrives, about three days later, they open gates of the small canals adjacent to their fields and allow water to run through the furrows between rows of lettuce, saturating the soil in the beds.
The farmers also sometimes hook pipes and electric pumps to the outlet of the canals to propel water into the air through sprinklers. Sprinklers are used to irrigate fields of seeds that are just starting to germinate, as well as those with beds too wide for furrow irrigation.
A few miles west of Yuma, as the All-American Canal heads toward the Imperial Valley, it passes through the stunningly beautiful Algodones Dunes — which stood in for the desert planet of Tatooine in “Return of the Jedi.”
Make no mistake: Were it not for irrigation canals like these, Yumas farms wouldnt be nearly as productive as they are. This photo, taken in Dome Valley, east of downtown Yuma, shows the contrast between the high desert around Yuma and the fertile farms within it.
Last weekend, the city of Yuma commemorated the crown jewel of its agricultural ecosystem with its 16th annual vegetable-themed festival, Lettuce Days.Advertisement
Thousands of people came to the University of Arizonas Yuma Agricultural Center, this years venue, to attend panels on lettuce, taste delicious salads, listen to music and peruse souvenir stands.
The biggest booth was run by Dole, but a few smaller farmers also were selling their wares.
The next Lettuce Days isnt for a year. But there are still a few weeks left in Yumas lettuce season, before the bulk of the production shifts to the cooler Salinas Valley in central California. So if youd like to taste Yumas bounty, all you have to do is visit your local grocery store and buy some lettuce.
Want to read more from HuffPost Taste? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.
Where is the lettuce capital of the world? 7 Answers from experts:Answered by Jamare
Here, a crew picks heads of iceberg lettuce on a field contracted to Dole, one of the biggest lettuce shippers in the region. (This might be a good … Answered by Delani
Developing markets like olives are also making headway in Yuma on small plots of 40-50 acres, as are the ever-popular mini categories. “It’s wasteful to have a … Answered by Emelia
TOURING THE WORLD’S LETTUCE CAPITAL. EL CENTRO, once renowned as the Lettuce Capital of the World, is in California’s Imperial Valley, … Answered by Etheleen
Yuma “Lettuce Capital of the World” Salad Ingredients 2 Heads of Romaine torn into small pieces 2 Mangos peeled and diced 1 Jicama peeled and diced 1 Bunch Radishes sliced 1 Cucumber Sliced 1 red bell pepper diced 1 Bunch Cilantro, stemmed and chopped Dressing: ½ cup olive oil 3 T seasoned rice vinegar Juice of 1 lemon 2 cloves garlic minced ½ cup mayonnaise ¾ cup … Answered by Alexandr
In the 1920s and ‘30s, Kent was known as the Lettuce Capital of the World. The lettuce fields eventually made way for the Boeing Space Center where the Apollo Lunar Rover was built in 1965. March 22, 2017. Ryan Millard. Comments Off on Curious about Kent? Check out these fun facts. Answered by Gianlucca
Customers are left fuming over KFCs lettuce alternative as the cost of the burger staple skyrockets: It tastes bitter Head of Aussie lettuce skyrocketed to $12 after east coast farms hit by floods Answered by Krislyn
19 hours ago · A man in Texas has been charged with the capital murder of his girlfriend and their unborn baby girl, after he allegedly told police that “rough sex” was the cause of the expectant mother’s death. Paul Raymond Chandler, 20, was placed under arrest for the beating and strangulation death of Kaycee Wofford, 19, according to the Wichita Falls Police Department. …
FAQ
What city grows the most lettuce?
What state produces the most lettuce?
Where does most of us lettuce come from?
