Where Does Your Produce Actually Come From?
Most of us grab lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberries off the shelf without a second thought. But if you stopped and asked yourself where that salad came from — like, really came from — the answer might surprise you. The scale of American vegetable production is staggering, the logistics behind it are borderline insane, and the controversies around it are the kind of thing nobody talks about at the dinner table.
On a recent episode of the Prairie Farm Podcast, Nicolas and Kent sat down with Seth Oren — a Wisconsin farmer with deep experience in the produce industry — and walked through what it actually looks like to feed a country year-round. Spoiler: it's way more complicated than you think.
The Desert Feeds the Nation
Here's a stat that catches most people off guard: California produces nearly half of the country's vegetables and over three-quarters of its fruits and nuts. That's one state doing the heavy lifting for 330 million people. Add in Arizona and Florida, and you're looking at the overwhelming majority of fresh produce consumed in the U.S.
And it gets more specific than that. Yuma, Arizona produces roughly 90% of all leafy greens consumed in the United States from November through March. During peak season, each of Yuma's salad processing plants handles over two million pounds of lettuce per day. The crops harvested in the morning can be in Phoenix by afternoon and on the East Coast within three to four days.
As Seth put it on the podcast, Yuma gets roughly two inches of annual precipitation — compare that to the 36 inches central Wisconsin gets. That lack of rain sounds like a disadvantage, but it's actually the secret weapon. With virtually no weather variability, growers in Arizona can plan planting and harvest schedules down to the exact day, months in advance. Everything is irrigated. Everything is controlled. It's farming on a precision level that most Midwest corn-and-bean guys have never seen.
We Didn't Always Eat Like This
Something Seth brought up that stuck with me: back in the 1940s and 50s, people didn't eat salads in the wintertime. That wasn't a thing. Your diet changed with the seasons. You ate what was stored — root vegetables, preserved goods, whatever you put up in the cellar. The idea that you could grab strawberries from Chile in January or fresh romaine from Arizona in February? That's a very recent luxury.
The shift started with refrigerated trucking and rail cars. Before reefer trucks, you simply couldn't move perishable produce from Arizona to Wisconsin in time. Now, between 1,500 and 2,000 refrigerated semi-truckloads of leafy greens leave Yuma daily during winter production season, heading to grocery stores across America and Canada. We've essentially engineered away seasonality. Whether that's entirely a good thing is where it starts to get interesting.
The Controversies Nobody Talks About
Food Waste Is Absurd
The USDA estimates that between 30–40% of the American food supply goes to waste at the retail and consumer levels. Fruits and vegetables make up more than a third of total food waste, and a lot of it comes down to us — the shoppers.
Seth had a great example on the podcast. He talked about watching someone pick up an orange at the grocery store, turn it in their hand, and set it back down. Then do it again. And again. How many of us do that? And what happens to the fruit nobody picks? It goes in the trash. Apples with a small brown spot — probably just a wind lesion from a leaf brushing against it while it grew outside, a completely natural blemish — get passed over constantly. We've become so accustomed to cosmetically perfect produce that anything less gets wasted.
The Hydroponics Debate
Hydroponic growing is often pitched as the future of farming. Grow lettuce indoors, use less water, no pesticides, year-round production. Sounds great on paper.
But Seth raised a couple of real concerns. First, most hydroponic facilities are not organic — and that's where they've lost a lot of health-conscious consumers who assumed indoor growing meant cleaner food. Second, the pathogen risk is real. If a contaminant like salmonella gets into a hydroponic water system, it doesn't just affect one plant. It contaminates the entire closed-loop system, and the cost of shutting down and decontaminating a facility is enormous.
There's also the flavor issue. A lot of hydroponic produce — especially tomatoes — ends up going to fast food chains. Why? Because chains don't actually want flavor variation. Seth referenced what sociologists call the "McDonaldization" of food: when you order a Big Mac in Des Moines and a Big Mac in Madison, you expect the exact same experience. That means the produce going into those meals needs to be as uniform as possible. Bland, consistent, and cosmetically perfect. The fast food chains add flavor through sauces and processing. The produce itself is almost an afterthought.
Nutritional Decline
Kent raised an important question on the podcast: are strawberries today as nutritious as they were 60 years ago? There's growing concern that modern commercial growing practices — pushing crops to grow as fast as possible with maximum inputs — create produce that's bigger and prettier but less nutrient-dense. When you buy a local strawberry from a you-pick farm, it's smaller, darker, and packed with flavor. The commercial version from a major grower? Often bigger, more watery, and frankly, kind of bland. It grew fast, absorbed a lot of water, and didn't have time to develop the same nutrient density. Seth agreed — there's a real difference between something that grew naturally at its own pace and something that was pushed to maximize yield.
Regulation: The West Coast vs. The Midwest
One of the most eye-opening parts of the conversation was how differently produce farming is regulated compared to grain farming. On the West Coast, produce operations deal with intense oversight — food safety audits, documentation requirements, field-by-field tracking of every input. An agronomist literally walks each field and prescribes exactly what needs to happen, and the grower signs off on it.
In the Midwest? Grain farmers don't face anything close to that level of regulation. And as Seth pointed out, whenever anyone even suggests more oversight for row crop agriculture, the pushback is immediate. It's a tension between food safety and the Midwest ethos of "let me do what I want on my land." Both sides have valid points, but it's a conversation worth having honestly.
The Small Farm Renaissance
Despite all the challenges, Seth sees something hopeful on the horizon: a resurgence of smaller, regional produce operations. The barriers are real — food safety certifications, logistics, cold chain requirements — but he's seeing growers figure it out. He told the story of a farmer in Idaho who grew produce on about 80 acres, sold it through a single farm store in his town, and built a solid business by cutting out every middleman. Grew it, cooled it, sold it, kept the margin.
That model won't replace the industrial system. We need Yuma and Salinas and Florida to keep doing what they're doing to feed the country. But there's room for both. And honestly, the more we understand about where our food comes from, the more we might start choosing the local option when it's available.
So What Can You Do?
Start by paying attention. When you're at the grocery store this winter, know that your salad almost certainly traveled from Yuma, Arizona. The tomatoes might have been picked green and ripened with ethylene gas along the way. That apple with the small mark on it? It's perfectly fine — probably better than the waxed, cosmetically perfect one next to it.
Buy local when you can. Hit the farmers markets in season. And if you're thinking about what to do with a patch of land, maybe consider what can grow right where you are. It doesn't have to be complicated.
If you're looking to do something meaningful with your ground — whether that's restoring native habitat, improving soil health, or starting a pollinator garden that supports the ecosystem your local food depends on — check out the seed mixes at Hoksey Native Seeds. Healthy land grows healthy food. It all starts with the soil.
Listen to the full conversation with Seth Oren on the Prairie Farm Podcast for the complete deep dive into produce farming, food distribution, and what it really takes to feed America.
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