A lot goes into keeping America’s winter salad bowl full, and for growers in Yuma County, the work begins long before temperatures cool.
For Matt McGuire, chief agricultural officer for JV Smith Companies, preparations for the winter leafy-greens season start in the summer.
“We start putting schedules way back in June and July, and we’re prepping ground for this season we are in right now,” said McGuire, who has been farming for more than 40 years.
JV Smith Companies farms in four states, including California’s Salinas Valley and Yuma. In late October, McGuire drove through fields near town, pointing out acres of broccoli and romaine that were approaching harvest.
“It’s a little early,” he said the Salinas crop was ending with lower quality.
Yuma County has more than 180,000 acres of agricultural land and supplies about 90% of the leafy greens consumed in the U.S. during winter.
This time of year, every field is active, with fieldworkers.
“You go from really hot and blowing dust to green fields just like this and a lot of activity,” McGuire said. “We go from nothing to 100 miles per hour real fast. It’s really something to watch all the fields green up.”
Each season brings its own challenges.
McGuire said this year they were keeping an eye on the weather.
Heavy monsoon rains in September disrupted early fieldwork.
Beyond day-to-day unpredictability, national economic pressures are squeezing growers.
In October, the Arizona Farm Bureau sent a letter to President Donald Trump warning that farmers were at a “breaking point,” citing collapsing crop prices, rising production costs, and ongoing trade disputes.
McGuire echoed the concern, but said growers have been struggling for years.
“Just because of the poor years we’ve had financially, the industry for a lot of people is at a breaking point,” he said. “How many more cuts can we make? How much can we reduce in the workforce?”
He said his company has reduced its planted acreage by about 30% over the last five years.
“We haven’t bought any tractors in the last two years for that reason. We’re just staying afloat and trying to be a little bit profitable.”
USDA data shows the number of U.S. farms has fallen about 8% since 2017, and total farmland acreage continues to decline.
With fewer acres to manage, pre-harvest staffing has become easier, McGuire said. But during harvest, demand for labor spikes sharply.
“The estimate is 30 to 40% of the workforce moves down,” he said, referring to seasonal migration from California. “The other workers are either here already, or there are a lot of workers that are brought for the harvest.”
JV Smith relies on a mix of domestic workers, farmworkers from Sonora, Mexico who cross the border daily, and H-2A guest workers.
Juan Chung is field supervisor for one of the farming companies in town. He oversees a crew of about 35 local workers. He drives the bus that transports the crew each morning and keeps operations moving.
“We start around seven, always eight hours,” he said. His crew includes workers from San Luis, Somerton, and Yuma. Chung recently returned from Salinas, where he followed the agricultural season.
He’s also in charge of making sure he has enough workers for the day. He said he hadn't had any issue filling up his bus because everyone is eager to work.
Chung said he hadn’t seen any of the immigration raids that occurred earlier this year in Oxnard, though he had heard about them. Images of agents chasing workers across fields circulated widely online.
He believes farmworkers shouldn’t be targeted. “These are workers who are just trying to do their jobs,” he said.
McGuire said he doesn’t expect similar enforcement in Yuma. “We haven’t seen anything in Salinas out in the fields,” he said. “In Arizona, we have E-Verify.”
E-Verify in Arizona requires employers to verify employment eligibility.
The H-2A guest worker program allows growers to employ foreign workers. They're from countries south of the border who are brought to the U.S. seasonal employment in agriculture.
McGuire expects reliance on H-2A workers to remain high. He said during peak harvest time they are about 75% of the labor force.
He said labor can be uncertain at times, but they've also been making changes on the farm to help offset the labor needs.
Automated thinning machines have reduced manual labor needs, but McGuire said the technology is expensive and still being perfected.
“Labor will always be needed,” he said.
A rainy stretch in Yuma recently forced hand-thinning after machines couldn’t operate in wet fields.
Yuma County is also expanding high-speed broadband for farmland to support “smart agriculture” tools. The ag-tech broadband is expected to be fully operational by the end of next year.
For now, growers like McGuire carefully plan their planting, hoping for a plentiful harvest.
“Romaine today is starting to be harvested, as we start the season, the quality should be great, there should be more ample supplies, and hopefully people will go back to eating more healthy,” said McGuire.