Vegetable bins are loaded during the peak harvest season.
About 140 acres of green beans and 60 acres of cucumbers and squash were left in the fields. In normal years the cruise ships take the produce that is not pretty enough to please picky supermarket shoppers. The foods they buy is chopped up in salads for passengers. Although that market was lost due to COVID-19, most retailers were flexible in their choices because they wanted to make sure they had ample supplies. “We did have a glut of product that would have gone to food service,” LaSalle explained. “We donated some of it through Feeding Florida. Over the past 10 years we have donated 25 million pounds of produce. Even the food banks got to the point where they were overwhelmed. It’s a perishable product.” By the season’s end in May, pricing once again became profitable. “We ended up making the best we could out of the situation,” he said. Norman Thomas, the company’s CEO, had wanted
to start direct-to-consumer box sales for years, and during the shutdown, the timing was perfect. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the family members started up their retail Mobile Green Markets – a big hit with consumers, selling an estimated 40,000 boxes of vegetables at $10 and $20 each. The company plans to start the box sales again by Nov. 1. Thomas Produce may one day expand its acreage again if there is a trade agreement to protect Florida’s producers from cheap imports. “It is too much capital risk to be putting it out there, to have all that money tied up in the crop and not knowing if you are going to get it back. Mexico could start dumping produce on our markets at way below our production costs, and even below their production costs. “You have spent four generations building something. You don’t want to lose that in a few years with some bad markets. We are trying to be smart. We have good chain store business, good
retail business and good partners,” LaSalle said. The Thomases will continue to farm sustainably. “We use cover crops such as sorghum, on all of our acreage to build up the organic material and break up the soil,” LaSalle said. “A lot of the fertilizer we have moved to is a slow release fertilizer. During a big rain, it will not leach phosphorus. We are also moving forward with drip irrigation on all our family-owned property.” The biggest marketing change for the business in the last five years has been more direct sales to retailers without first transporting the crop to distributors. “The stores get fresher stuff. They get to deal with the farmer directly, who has the real investment in the crop. They like that. They like coming out and seeing the dirt and seeing the crop grow,” LaSalle said. FLORIDAGRICULTURE | JULY 2020
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