Small farmers find niche in Valley

Watermelons the size of a medicine ball filled a wooden bin near the golf ball-sized tangerines and the baseball-sized tomatoes as the breeze circulated through the Gonzalez Fruit Market on a recent morning.

A May report on local food systems by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that direct-to-consumer sales, the kind of business a small fruit stand would do, represent only 0.8 percent of all edible agricultural sales.

But the agriculture industry is not always a game of size.

Despite a small share of the produce market, small vendors of local produce have thrived in recent years, part of what may be a national trend, according to the USDA report.

“I don’t have a social life where I go to parties,” said the market’s owner, Jesse Gonzalez. “I get here at 8 a.m. and I leave at 8 p.m.”

For 45 years, Gonzalez’s family has sold fruit at that frontage road location, off Expressway 77 near the Willacy-Cameron county line.

Local produce is a business Gonzalez knows well. His market has always bought its product from local farmers first, only importing fruits and vegetables when it’s not available locally.

“My business has been good,” Gonzalez said. “About 70 percent of our business comes from retail sales…We have a lot of returning customers and people are coming out on the holiday weekends, which have always been big for us.”

Gonzalez is not the only small produce vendor who has thrived in recent years, despite a decline in consumer spending, their owners said.

Providing more evidence that produce may not be simply a size game, small fruit and vegetable farms have also seen a significant increase over the past two years, local farmers said.

Farmers markets altered the path of Jack Moffitt’s organic farm Bayview Veggies, the farm’s co-owner said.

“My original business plan was to grow a specialty melon or citrus and market it to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Corpus Christi,” said Moffitt, who left his Dallas law firm to grow produce in Bay View four years ago. “I planned on harvesting a big crop every week and shipping it out to those cities.”

But with three weekly farmers markets operating in Cameron County —Harlingen, Brownsville and South Padre Island — Moffitt and his partner, Rhonda Recio, can grow 15 different small crops, harvesting each weekly.

“We’re a complete salad farm in the winter,” Moffitt said. “You can buy all the salad fixings then. Cucumbers, spinach, peppers, different kinds of lettuce. We got the whole salad.”

Farmers markets provided small farmers — Bayview Veggies is located on a 5-acre plot — an opportunity to brand them and market to local restaurants, Moffitt said. A few restaurants on the Island currently buy produce from Bayview Veggies throughout the year.

“You aren’t going to get rich doing this,” Moffitt said. “But it’s about quality of life for us.”

Although it’s not the most lucrative business, fruit stands and farmers markets seem to be satisfying a niche consumer group that values product quality, nutritional value and methods of raising a product, according to the May USDA study.

The number of community-supported agriculture groups increased by at least 23 percent between 2005 and 2010, the USDA report says.

“Sometimes it’s kind of funny,” Brad Cowen, a Hidalgo County Texas AgriLife agent, said. “You can be surrounded by acres of local crops, then go into a store and not see any of it.”

Chain grocery stores look for suppliers that can produce in volume and can produce product year-round, Cowen said.

H-E-B, the San Antonio based grocery chain, allows it’s stores to contract with local growers once the grower has been approved by the corporate quality control and food safety division, spokeswoman Virginia Perez said.

Perez said H-E-B stores mainly purchase through local growers, depending on availability of the product.