Peas play an important role for state farmers

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, July 9, 2006

GEORGE – Seven huge harvesters creep through the field, metal drums spinning so fast that you can’t see their metal fingers stripping pea pods and leaves from plants.

Like monstrous bugs with ravenous appetites, the machines cut 13-foot-wide swaths, separate peas from pods and discharge pods, leaves and stems out the back in continual streams, leaving neat little rows.

The aroma of peas is strong, but dissipates the longer you stay in the field.

A harvester stops when its hopper is full – 2,500 pounds of peas – and a truck pulls up beside to take the load to Quincy Foods Inc. for processing into frozen peas.

Within 14 hours, the crew will have the 125-acre field done, harvesting approximately 800,000 pounds of peas, and will move on to another field.

While the cherry harvest is center stage in Eastern Washington agriculture right now, the harvest of row crops in the upper Columbia Basin started June 1 with green peas and a week later with sugar snap peas.

Asparagus was in mid-May but no longer is a main crop in the area, grown only in small volumes for local, fresh-market sales.

The same Quincy Foods crew harvesting peas on the Horning family farm a couple of miles east of George last Wednesday will be harvesting sweet corn on area farms by the end of July.

Growers plant peas, corn and lima beans under contract with major processing companies like Quincy Foods. Growers water and care for the crops but the companies do the harvesting so they can control crop flow into their plants. Weather can disrupt harvest scheduling.

The Hornings moved to the Black Sands area, east of George, in 1970 from a farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley because they wanted to raise potatoes and viewed the Black Sands as a land of opportunity since it was just being developed as farmland.

The family grows potatoes and onions but grows peas as a rotation crop to reduce potato diseases.

“The thing we like about peas is they are an early-harvest crop. It gives you a chance to put in a cover crop (to hold soil against wind erosion) for next year’s potatoes,” said Allen Horning, who runs the farm with his brother and father. “This ground in the Black Sands blows real easy if it’s bare,” he said.

The biggest risk this time of year with peas is prolonged hot weather, Horning said.

Heat accelerates maturity, sometimes causing peas to change grades in 24 hours. Peas are graded by tenderness. Growers make more money on tender peas. They can quickly fall behind in watering when it’s hot and harvest can get hectic.

“Crops are a lot like we are. If it’s 70 one day and 100 the next, we don’t adjust very well,” Horning said.

Pea harvest was a few days later than its normal Memorial Day kickoff this year because of cool spring weather, said Dan Robinson, field department manager of Quincy Foods Inc.

Frost damage close to bloom in early May was fairly severe, reducing yields. Rain storms in May and June caused growers to cut back on irrigation but didn’t damage peas, Robinson said.

Quincy Foods processes about 15,000 tons of green peas and 4,000 tons of sugar snap peas each season, Robinson said. It’s the only plant in Washington that processes sugar snap peas, which make up the smallest part of the pea market.

Sugar snaps are the ones sold still in their pods, commonly used in stir fries and salads.

Green peas and sugar snaps are washed, steamed to 190 degrees for preservation by deactivating their enzymes and for sterilization, and then frozen for domestic and export sales.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service doesn’t track sugar snap peas because it’s too small a crop, but the service’s reports show Washington produced 89,140 tons of green peas for processing in 2005, at a value of $17.2 million.

Washington ranks second in green pea production in the nation, following Minnesota, according to NASS reports. And Grant County is the top green pea producing county in the state, Robinson said.

Climate, soil and plenty of irrigation water make Grant County prime pea country, he said.

Growers averaged $193 a ton on green peas in 2005. They can make $260 a ton on sugar snaps, but they also cost more to produce, Robinson said.

Margins are narrow.

“You always hope they can make at least $20 an acre, which is pretty low,” he said.

“In the good old days, when growers made a lot on potatoes, they just looked to break even on rotational crops like peas. But now, with margins narrow on potatoes, we try to help them make a profit with all crops,” Robinson said.