Sriracha pepper farmer looking to Texas for hot pepper crop
Last week, a delegation of Texas politicians, who have actively courted Tran via social media and open letters, toured the Azusa Canyon Road factory.
Texas is known as a pepper-growing region, however, Craig Underwood, who grows all of the jalapeños that are crushed into the iconic roster sauce, said it would take years to start growing crops for processing in Texas.
“Moving or even expanding an operation like this is a huge challenge,” Underwood said in an interview. “It’s taken us years to find varieties and growing areas here.”
Testing a variety, which must be bred, to putting it into production takes at least three to four years, he said.
The majority of Texas-grown peppers are sold at markets and not processed in hot sauces or salsa, agriculture experts said. In a survey last year of the pepper crop in Texas, about 450 acres were dedicated to growing chilli peppers, said Marco Palma, an associate professor and economist in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M.
Underwood will plant 2,000 acres of peppers this season on dozens of farms in Ventura and Kern counties, which will produce about 58,000 tons of chillies.
Ten to 15 years ago Texas had a larger crop of hot pepper varieties, but that market has moved to Mexico, said Daniel Leskovar, director of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center and professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. About 1,500 acres of Texas farms are dedicated to growing all varieties of peppers, he said.
Leskovar said the regions that produce jalapeño and other hot pepper varieties are West Texas, Southwest Texas, regions near the Mexican border, and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. “We’d be happy to see some potential growth in that area ... it could be historical,” Leskovar said.
While Texas has a climate conducive to growing peppers, the state is also subject to Texas-sized variabilities in weather, Underwood said, including hurricanes, hail and droughts.
“We have problems here, but they may not be quite the magnitude they can be there,” said Underwood.
Tran said if the demand for his hot sauce continues, he will outgrow his 650,000 square-foot, $40 million Irwindale plant by 2017. Irwindale sued his company, Huy Fong Foods, in Los Angeles County Superior Court last fall because some residents said harsh odours wafting from the Sriracha factory burned their eyes, caused them to choke and forced them to stay indoors. Other California municipalities have also been courting Tran.
Source: pasadenastarnews.com
