New Crops for Farms, and, Perhaps, Profits

THE seedlings packed in trays in the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station greenhouses here look unremarkable. Little green sprouts poking through soil, reaching for the April sun in the glass-induced warmth on an otherwise chilly midday.

They could be anything — but most are not. There are containers with yacon, also known as Bolivian sunroot, a sweet tuber. There are a few pac chois — an Asian cabbage — and several heirloom tomato varieties.

Curious though they may be, there is nothing frivolous about growing these foods. For farmers in the region looking for an edge in the commodity-driven world of American agriculture, they could represent the future.

“The bottom line is to find new crops and keep farmers in business,” said Abigail Maynard, an associate agricultural scientist who runs the new crops program at the experiment station. Her mission is to figure out what crops and what techniques for growing them will work best here. Operations like Ms. Maynard’s, replicated in New York and New Jersey, are lifelines for the region’s farmers, who tend to be small with high overhead and labor costs.

“I want to basically do the mistakes for the farmer,” she said. “If I have a crop failure, I still eat, I still get paid. But — a farmer has a crop failure, it’s a big deal.”

Take artichokes. They are normally grown in California; Ms. Maynard figured the way to grow them locally was to warm the soil. “Well, it was completely the opposite,” she said. “What you want to do is keep the soil cool.” Several local growers use her technique now.

She also determined that sweet potatoes, normally not grown here, could just be thrown in the ground with very little fuss. And she is experimenting with beach plums, personal-size seedless watermelons and different types of garlic.

But much of her focus, like that of her regional counterparts, is with ethnic crops — an increasingly popular niche for farmers as immigrant populations soar.

Her work was critical for John Holbrook of Holbrook Farm in Bethel, Conn., after a deli owner from the large Brazilian community in nearby Danbury took him seeds for a popular vegetable called jilo, a type of eggplant. “We planted them and we got next to no jilo,” Mr. Holbrook said. “It likes Brazil; it doesn’t like Connecticut.”

The experiment station figured out that jilo needs to be planted in early January in a very warm greenhouse. Mr. Holbrook, who hangs out a Brazilian flag when he has crops his Brazilian customers prefer, said ethnic crops — like maxixe, a spiny cucumber; quiabo, okra; and couve, collard greens — have boosted his profitability. “We have got to fit into the culture in a way that gives us enough income,” he said, “but also meets the needs of some of the local people.”

Ethnic crops also helped Joe Morgiewicz of Warwick, N.Y., give up his mono-crop onion business, which had grown ever more difficult as he had to compete with huge western growers. “It was a do or die,” he said. “We had to change or go out of business.” Mr. Morgiewicz discovered cilantro, a favorite of several ethnic groups. During cilantro season he now wholesales 500 to 600 25-pound boxes a night.

Charlie Hallock in New Egypt saw an opportunity about 10 years ago when Jamaican and African immigrants who lived nearby asked if they could have the leaves from his sweet potatoes. Now he is also growing jute leaves, collards, butter beans and any number of other vegetables eaten by Jamaicans and Africans. On most summer weekends, he said, his fields are packed with scores of cars, some sporting license plates from as far away as North Carolina and Canada.

“Not many guys grow this stuff,” said Mr. Hallock, who estimates ethnic crops now account for a quarter of his income. “We have a little niche.”

Research by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension in New Jersey has quantified what Mr. Hallock and others learned anecdotally: that there are many ethnic groups in the state, that they are willing to pay handsomely for native products and that they will travel to get them. The researchers now provide ethnic crop information on a Web site called worldcrops.org. But the ethnic market is still tricky.

“These ethnic farms are not going to save all farms; you don’t go out and produce five acres of any one of these things,” said Rick VanVranken, Atlantic County agricultural agent and a professor of agriculture at Rutgers. To that end, Rutgers is researching a crop assortment — from basil that won’t turn black in the refrigerator to culantro, a West Indian cilantrolike herb; from perilla, an Asian herb in the mint family, to Malabar spinach, a heat-resistant Indian green.

For many region farmers, though, tomatoes still rule. Heirlooms have been the rage for several years, but while they command high prices, typically they are poor producers, are susceptible to many diseases and are too fragile to ship.

“The majority of the demand in reality is for a round red tomato,” said Wesley Kline, a Cumberland Country agricultural agent with Rutgers Cooperative Extension. So these days Rutgers is focused on hybrids and is particularly happy with BHN 589 (BHN is the name of the seed company), which is a round red hybrid they say tastes good and can be shipped.

In East Hampton, Peter Garnham, chairman of the community-based Eeco Farm, has taken the heirloom conundrum into his own hands, grafting heirloom tomatoes onto hybrid rootstock. Mr. Garnham, of Amagansett, has a federal grant for a three-farm project this summer. “The one thing I haven’t been able to gauge is disease resistance,” he said. “But the productivity certainly shoots up.”

Elsewhere in New York researchers are experimenting with greens like callaloo, also called vegetable amaranth, and are creating varieties of potatoes that will grow better in the Northeast.

“Commoditization of our food system has caused Americans to see all food commodities to be the same, when they’re not,” said Maire Ullrich, a Cornell Cooperative Extension resource educator in Orange County, who said she had helped reintroduce celery, which used to be a major crop in the area.

“We grow beautiful celery,” she said. “I’m 5-foot-7 and it comes past my knees in the field.”

Research on fruit includes grapes that will do best in Long Island’s maritime climate and the Hudson Valley’s cold one. Steven McKay, a Cornell Cooperative Extension educator with the Hudson Valley commercial fruit program, has been focusing on small fruit and berries like strawberries with a longer growing season. But with an eye on health-conscious customers he is mainly reintroducing old berries and fruits like elderberries, aronia (chokeberries), gooseberries and currants, all of which are extremely high in antioxidants.

Ray Tousey in Clermont, N.Y., didn’t need much convincing that some of these fruits were the way to go. “It’s not about producing it and they will buy it,” he said. “First find the market and then produce for it.”

Mr. Tousey ripped out most of his family’s 50 acres of apples and now produces honey and grows currants, gooseberries, raspberries, medlar, quince and grapes. He’s making wine and cassis.

“It’s working out and it’s fun,” he said. “It makes a whole world of difference when you’re making something they really want. This whole business of agriculture is such a joy when the phone keeps ringing.”