Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508250009
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LAUREL FORK LENGTH: Long
Workers pack 50 pounds of cabbage into the boxes and put them on a conveyor made up of thousands of small steel wheels. As they slide down the track, the boxes pick up speed; and the sound of spinning steel grows into a high-pitched screech.
For many years cabbage growing has been a big - if not well-publicized - business along the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia. It's a business that is dying now because farmers like Belcher find they can no longer make a living at it.
During the past three years, the land planted in cabbage in Carroll County and adjacent Patrick County has dropped from roughly 2,000 acres to about 500. The number of growers in Carroll County over the same period of time has declined from 35 to about half of that, county farm agent Gary Larrowe said.
It's a puzzling development, because those who know cabbage say some of the best in the world is grown along the crest of the Blue Ridge in Southwest Virginia. The soils of the mountain region and the warm days and cool nights of its growing season are perfect for producing a solid, tight cabbage with a sweet taste that cooks prefer for slaws and salads.
Farmers, though, say the 6 cents a pound they've been getting for their crop this summer is only enough to cover the cost of growing it, leaving no room for profit. Meanwhile, they see their cabbage selling in the chain grocery stores for 39 cents to 49 cents per pound.
Growers in the region sell most of their cabbage to a Boone, N.C.-based broker or middleman, who supplies grocery chains up and down the East Coast. They lack other consistent buyers for their crop, so the growers say they must accept the broker's price.
Because competition is limited on the brokerage level, Rep. Rick Boucher, Carroll County's congressman, asked the U.S. Justice Department earlier this year to determine whether any antitrust laws are being violated in the marketing of cabbage. "The Justice Department is doing so," Boucher said earlier this month.
But rather than sell through brokers, vegetable specialists with the Cooperative Extension Service at Virginia Tech say the farmers should take more control over their fate. Growers, they say, should develop a brand name for their cabbage and market it directly to grocers and supermarket chains.
|n n| Looking at the light red strands of hair falling from under the brim of his cowboy hat, it's easy to see how 54-year-old Red Belcher, a former construction worker and the son of a farmer, got his nickname. Belcher has been raising cabbage with partner Wayne Bowman since 1978.
During the four- to five-month harvest, Belcher's workday begins at 7 a.m., when he and his crew head for a field to cut enough cabbage to fill a tractor-trailer. By about 1:30 in the afternoon, they've gathered 43,000 pounds and loaded 820 boxes. Sometimes they'll cut another truckload before quitting for the day.
"I get home about 8:30 p.m., eat a little supper, lay down, take a little nap and go again," he said.
Belcher works six and sometimes seven days a week during the harvest, which lasts from late June through November. This year he is growing 75 acres of cabbage, each acre amounting to roughly a truckload. By the time it's on the truck, it costs him $2,500 an acre to raise his cabbage, about the same he's selling it for this year, he said.
Mountain cabbage growers had their last good year in 1991. Belcher earned a profit of $100,000 that year, but he lost all of that plus another $50,000 during the next two growing seasons. He's thought about quitting the cabbage business after this year, Belcher said, because there's no longer any profit in it.
He's not alone. Southwest Virginia farmers whose families have grown cabbage for generations are considering giving it up - or already have. "It's a habit that's hard to quit," Belcher said.
Longtime cabbage grower Donald Brady planted seven acres of cabbage this year, down from 100 acres in years past. Brady, who pioneered a system of growing cabbage three rows abreast that increased production by a third, said he is quitting after this year and parking his $500,000 worth of farming equipment in the barn.
"We don't want to quit this; we know how to produce," said Brady, who farms with a daughter and is probably the most outspoken of Carroll's cabbage growers. "There's no way in hell we're going to work and lose every year," he said.
Dale Akers, who is 40 and has been growing cabbage since 1982, said he has watched a slow decline in the number of cabbage farmers in Carroll County. "A lot of them just got old and quit, and the younger ones went broke," he said.
Akers, who makes more money raising beef cattle, is growing 45 acres of cabbage this year but said he hasn't made a profit on it yet. "I don't know that I will," he said.
Consumers need to be told that what they're paying for cabbage is not what farmers are getting for it, Akers said. He hesitates to criticize Dale Greene, the North Carolina-based middleman that he and most other county growers sell their cabbage to.
"The biggest culprit in this business is food chains," he said, plotting out on a notebook page the mark-up that the chains get on a box of cabbage compared to what the farmer and broker gets. "They [the chains] don't need to be getting rich while I'm going broke," he said.
\ Carroll County's soils come from the erosion of granite-like rock that formed the Blue Ridge about 500 million years ago. They consist primarily of quartz, feldspar and mica.
The quartz, which sometimes shows up in large white boulders beside the roads, is unimportant to the growing of cabbage. But feldspar, which gives the soil its red color, is rich in potassium; and the mica, which sparkles like glitter on the rocks, provides iron, manganese and calcium, Virginia Tech soil scientist Jim Baker explained.
The cool climate, an average yearly rainfall over 40 inches and soils that accept fertilizer more effectively than those elsewhere make Carroll County a good place to grow cabbage, Baker said.
A member of the mustard family, cabbage is native to England and northwestern France, but is now grown around the world. It comes in three varieties - white, red and savoy - and is second only to garlic among foods recommended for their possible cancer-preventive qualities.
Cabbage contains 11 of the 15 families of vegetable-related compounds that have been found to prevent cancer, according to Wendy Demark of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. But, despite its healthful qualities at a time when people are more health-conscious, cabbage doesn't sell as well as many other vegetables.
Kevin Semones, manager of the state-operated wholesale farmers' market in Carroll County, calls cabbage "a different kind of crop," one that has to be spread over a large geographic area in order to move large quantities of it. Last year, 40,000 to 50,000 bags of cabbage went through the state market, only a fraction of the county's production potential, he said.
The market on Interstate 77 was opened a few years back to help Southwest Virginia farmers sell their crops. It has provided an outlet for crops, such as peppers, tomatoes and sweet corn, that cabbage growers have been switching to as they search for other sources of income.
Most of the county's cabbage is loaded directly onto tractor-trailers in or near the fields where it is grown. And those trucks probably belong to Hollar & Greene Produce Co. Inc. of Boone, N.C. Hollar & Greene deals mostly in cabbage, and supplies stores up and down the East Coast.
On Aug. 15, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services reported Southwest Virginia cabbage selling for $4 to $5 in 50-pound cartons and $3 to $4 in 50-pound sacks, not including the cost of shipping. Those prices are about the same as cabbage was bringing at markets in New York and Wisconsin. The prices are low but better than last year, when 50-pound sacks, which wind up with institutional buyers like hospitals and schools, brought $1.75.
Cabbage broker Dale Greene said some Southwest Virginia growers have brought on their own financial troubles through overproduction and rough handling of the crop during packing. The quality of their cabbage is not as good as in the past, he said.
At one time, everyone preferred mountain cabbage, and it brought as much or more than cabbage from other shipping points, he said. Some growers in Southwest Virginia still do a good job, Greene said; but he has had to turn to other growing areas, where the cabbage is packed in sheds, to find the quality he's looking for.
Greene's response to complaints from Southwest Virginia growers that he's not paying the price they need for their cabbage was that he's not satisfied with the price he's getting when he sells it, either.
Around the country, more people are growing cabbage now than in the past and in larger quantities, helping drive the price down, Greene and others said. Greene said he never thought he would have to worry about competition from Canadian growers, but now they can move their produce into the region overnight to compete with what he's selling.
Greene said he was aware of talk about a government investigation of the cabbage business, but he hasn't been contacted by anyone about it. And he said he hasn't had any complaints about his business practices from growers or anyone else. "I don't make them sell me their cabbage," he said.
Although they may complain about the price, Carroll County cabbage growers concede that Greene provides a ready market for their crops, pays on time, and provides good service.
Larrowe, the county extension agent, and vegetable specialists at Virginia Tech have tried for years to get Southwest Virginia growers to market their own cabbage and rid themselves of their dependence on brokers. "We brought a buyer from Kroger in here, but couldn't get the growers to talk with him," Larrowe said.
Charlie O'dell, a vegetable specialist at Tech, said if growers dealt directly with stores, they could double or triple what they make selling to a broker. Southwest Virginia growers should develop their own logo for mountain cabbage and put little stickers on each head, as is now common with other types of produce such as apples and bananas, O'dell said.
The growers could exercise a lot of power in the market if they would work together, O'dell said. "They've got the product just like the Arabs had the oil," he said.
"Nowhere else in the world can anyone achieve the yield and quality they can in Carroll County," O'dell said. "Because of their natural advantage, they should be the last people to give it up."
by CNB