It was easy to be overwhelmed. The ocean of color stretched literally to the horizon: purples, whites, reds, yellows, pinks—some in solid swaths, others jumbled together in a firework display. People came from all over the world to see the flower fields of Lompoc.
Today, people still come, but they have to search a bit more to find the blossoms. Whereas once the majority of Lompoc’s southern agricultural land was festooned with flower fields blooming across the valley, now only a few scattered fields remain.
Of those, only one is still dedicated to the sweet pea seeds. Sweet peas were the first flowers grown commercially in Lompoc and eventually gave rise to the flower seed industry that earned the Valley of Flowers its name.
Fading fields
Dennis Headrick, with the Lompoc Chamber of Commerce, remembers when the flower seed industry, with its acre after vibrant acre, was king in Lompoc.
“Forty to 50 years ago, you could drive down the lower valley and be surrounded by flowers,” he said. “Now you have to go hunting them.”
His frustration is easy to understand, considering Lompoc’s heritage as the flower seed capital of the world.
“The whole flower seed industry, part and parcel, was located here: R&D, developing new species and colors, greenhouse testing, growing, harvesting, seed processing,” he explained.
A global marketplace and a declining economy, along with lessening consumer demand for seeds (flowers grown for seed made up the majority of Lompoc’s famous fields), have played their part in the shrinking flower fields.
“That whole industry has been decimated,” Headrick said. “Today, we have growing and harvesting, but who knows where it goes for processing and packaging?”
That decline hit bottom earlier this year. Bodger Seeds—the last major flower seed producer in the valley—closed its Lompoc facility doors with a clang that rang out what seemed the death knell for the flower seed industry in the area. The community worried.
“When Bodger pulled out, yeah there was doom and gloom, a sense of ‘Oh, the flowers are gone,’” Headrick said.
Still, one grower is helping keep Lompoc’s flower seed heritage alive.
Bob Campbell is a fourth generation farmer. A bean grower at heart, he’s trying his hand at the flower seed business for the first time.
When Bodger Seeds closed up shop, Dutch company Hem Zaden purchased several product lines, then contracted Campbell to plant 45 acres of sweet peas for seeds. The Dutch are helping, at least for the moment, to keep the historic industry alive in the area.
Headrick is honest about the fact that a decreased demand from the public for seeds has played a role in the declining industry.
“People would rather buy a seedling and put it in the ground for instant gratification rather than seeds you have to plant and wait for,” he said. “Our society is one of convenience.”
Campbell said he sees something like the withering demand for seed as a symptom of a growing disconnect in the United States of where agricultural products come from.
“‘What do you mean milk doesn’t come from the store?’” he said, shaking his head as he quoted an unknown consumer.
He was only half joking.
“I remember reading that, in 1810, 90 percent of the jobs in America were agricultural related. Farmers. In 1910, it was 30 percent. In 2000, it was less than 2 percent.”
Critical harvest
Though flowers make up only a small percentage of his nearly 2,000 acres (45, to be exact), Campbell’s attempt to grow their seed reflects a trend in the farm industry overall—not just in Lompoc, but the rest of the country.
Growing sweet peas, he explained, is more complicated than growing other crops. On the one hand, there’s a lot more variety to the sweet pea crop—literally. In 45 acres, he sees 26 different varieties of the plant.
Compare that to his bean crop: In 1,000 acres, there are just 10 varieties.
Twenty-six varieties of sweet pea means he has to change and clean the harvesters 26 different times. The process, Campbell said, can sometimes take longer than the actual harvesting itself.
“It takes us just as long to turn the tractor around as it does to actually harvest the seeds,” Sal Reyna said with a rueful chuckle.
Reyna is Campbell’s flower guru; he spent 32 years working for Bodger Seeds and is one of the reasons Campbell is so confident for a first-time sweet pea seed producer.
Cleaning is critical, Reyna added, because once the seeds are harvested, there’s no way of telling one variety from another.
The same careful attention will be given to the milling process, and—just like during the harvesting—cleaning the milling equipment will sometimes take longer than the actual milling. The laborious effort required to harvest sweet pea seeds is why farmers don’t plant varieties in lots smaller than a quarter acre; it’s just not worth the time.
So why bother? The bottom line is, well, the bottom line.
Turns out that even with higher overhead costs, sweet peas still maintain a higher profit margin per acre. Part of that comes from the fact that, according to Campbell (and, it seems, the Dutch), Lompoc sweet peas are the best in the world.
“Hem Zaden told us they’ll pay a premium to grow and process seed for sale in Europe,” he said. “The cost of land and labor is higher here, but you get what you pay for.”
The other reason Campbell is growing sweet peas has to do with the “milling” part of Lompoc Seed and Milling.
For Campbell, flower seeds are another way to keep his mill, built in 1959, running. Once harvested, the product goes to Campbell’s milling facility on Laurel in Lompoc for processing.
Run of the mill
On July 12, the “seeds” to be processed are fava beans—yes, those fava beans, the ones that go great with Chianti and liver—but in the next week or two, the equipment will be processing sweet pea seed.
The product is weighed and then placed in wooden bins marked with lot numbers and weight. Proper tagging is always critical, but will be even more so for the sweet pea crop.
From here, the product is dumped into the pit: a large hopper next to an elevator that carries everything to the top of the cleaner, a two-story machine that takes the seed through a process that filters out dirt, rocks, and weeds with a series of screens, shelves, and blasts of air. This is also where the chaff—the stalks and other plant material—is separated from the seed, a process known as threshing.
Shouting to be heard above the din, Campbell leads a tour of the machine. Standing on the walkway above is like experiencing an earthquake on speed. The whole structure feels like it’s whipping back and forth hundreds of times a minute. Come to think of it, the whole structure is whipping back and forth hundreds of times a minute.
Back outside and able to hear again, Reyna explains that the entire machine is built on a hardwood frame to better absorb the forces involved.
Another holdout
While Campbell represents the last of the sweet pea seed producers in the Valley of Flowers, there’s one other branch of the industry that’s managed to hold on here: research.
“We’re transferring characters from one plant to another through traditional plant breeding,” said Paul Talmadge, director of research for U.K.-based plant breeder Floranova, whose research facility is the last of its kind in Lompoc.
Talmadge added that because their focus is on research—the Lompoc facility doesn’t produce or sell anything—the decline in the seed industry that forced most other flower companies out of the area hasn’t really affected them. Add Lompoc’s ideal climate into the equation, and he doesn’t see Floranova’s facility going anywhere.
“You can put up a very simple structure here in Lompoc because we have a nice cool climate. We can do research year round. We have high light quality in the wintertime,” he explained. “It gives us a big advantage over companies based in areas like the northern United States or Europe, or even Asia for that matter, because of our temperate climate.”
Is it enough?
One research facility and one field of sweet peas are a far cry from Lompoc’s heyday as the flower seed capital of the world, but the important thing, Reyna noted, is that flower seed production is still happening in Lompoc.
“The environment here is so critical to growing sweet peas,” he said. “You go on the other side of those hills and you can’t grow them.”
At the edge of a sweet pea field with 45 acres of brilliant color, it’s easy to imagine Lompoc in its glory days. In another field, a harvester scoops up the cut stalks of fava beans, chaff belching out behind. In another week, a smaller version of the machine will be doing the same thing to the sweet peas.
Campbell Ranches is the last sweet pea seed grower in Lompoc, and, as far as Reyna knows, the last one in the state.
“It’s important we make this work,” he said.
“Making it work” will mean hitting their goal of harvesting 600 to 800 pounds of seed per acre and, more importantly, an 85 percent to 90 percent germination rate. It wouldn’t matter if they were harvesting a ton of seeds per acre if half of them didn’t bloom when planted.
After the harvest and processing, seed samples will be sent to an independent laboratory to test the germination rate. When those results come back with the rates they’re looking for, Campbell and Reyna will be able to breathe a sigh of relief. So should anyone hoping to enjoy Lompoc’s famous flower fields in the future.
Success means, if only on a small scale, Lompoc’s heritage as the Valley of Flowers will be safe for the foreseeable future.
Campbell is optimistic.
“Lots of people are disappointed to see the flower seed industry here in decline,” he said. “If we can make a profit at it and produce a quality product, then I’m excited to do it.”
Contact Staff Writer Nicholas Walter at nwalter@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 15-22, 2010.
