June 2021 - 1

Farmers eye long-term
planning, both for farm
and themselves
Coalition sets food
safety standard for
indoor-grown produce
8
14
18
Consumer disruption
puts focus on retailers'
actions
June 2021 | Volume 55 |
Issue 6
Turning a truck farm
J&J builds Florida vegetable operation on former citrus site
Fifth-generation Florida farmer, Clayton Amestoy with his sons, Micah, left, and Graysen, right. Amestoy will oversee a new 750-acre vegetable farm for J&J Family of Farms near
Vero Beach, Florida. Photos: J&J Family of Farms.
By Stephen Kloosterman
Associate Editor
Where the Florida Turnpike and I-59
meet, a thousand sandy-soil acres of
citrus orchards are being turned over for
a large vegetable farm and cool storage
facility.
The land near Vero Beach this fall will
be planted with sweet and hot peppers,
yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers and
eggplant for commercial distribution in
the fourth quarter. Additionally on the
property, there will be a new vegetable
cooling, packing and distribution facility,
a research and development facility for
vegetable research and a small farm shop
for the farming operation.
It's the vision of J&J Family of Farms, a
Florida-based grower, packer and shipper
of vegetables and value-added products
that's a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Benson Hill, a food tech company.
" That'll give us an R&D advantage over
time, " said Jim Gallagher, president of
J&J. " Not necessarily right away, but the
new farmland and new facility are really
going to help fuel growth in our current
business. "
Farm operations
The company will leverage drip
irrigation, location and local expertise to
build a sustainable farming operation.
" Roughly 750 acres of the new
farmland will be under plastic and
drip irrigation, " Gallagher said. " There
will also be direct-to-plant fertilization
and pest control - those are all
environmentally sustainable practices. "
The citrus farm had previously been
flood irrigated, and most of the citrus
production had finished.
" It's got a great location, it's got good
water, it's nice and level, so ripping the
ground, getting the trees out, fumigating,
getting it so you can grow vegetables
has been an enjoyable project and
pretty straightforward, " Gallagher said.
Switching between very different crops
See J&J, page 5
IPM brings higher watermelon yields
By Dean Peterson
VGN Correspondent
A field of watermelons can produce
a more than a 25% higher yield under
an integrated pest management (IPM)
program than a program of a soil-drench
insecticide at planting, followed by a
sequence of foliar insecticides later in the
season. That's the conclusion of a new
three-year study at Purdue University.
Dramatically improved pollination
was the main reason for the higher
yields under IPM, and the striped
cucumber beetle numbers in the fields
managed by IPM were rarely over the
treatment threshold.
The watermelons in the three-year study
were grown in half-acre plots planted in
15-acre fields of corn. The watermelon
plots were moved to a different site in the
corn fields every year, so every plot only
had watermelon in one year of the study.
Setting up a study
The Midwest is corn country with
watermelon crops regularly surrounded
by corn. To simulate that cropping
system, researchers compared the effects
that a neonicotinoid seed treatment will
have on the corn and the watermelon
crop that it surrounds.
See WATERMELON, page 6
Jacob Pecenka, a Purdue University
graduate student involved in the project.
Photos: Dean Peterson

June 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2021