Specialty Marketing Is the Root to Profitable Yield of Oddball Crops

DAVIS —  Growing “an oddball crop” is no longer enough to guarantee success in specialty markets where tastes can shift quickly, says a farmer who has grown several unusual varieties.

“A transition needs to be made in the ‘90s from specialty crops to specialty marketing,” Charlie Hoppin said. “It doesn’t pay to grow an oddball crop if you can’t sell it.”

During the 1980s, when “ specialty crop was a buzzword,” Hoppin said, he grew Fuji apples, Asian pears, kiwis and feijoas on his 1,800 acres near Yuba City.

“The only one of these crops worth anything at all today in Sutter County is the Fuji apple,” Hoppin said recently at the annual Farmer to Consumer Conference at UC Davis.

“Kiwis are being pushed out, but five years ago, people made a lot of money in kiwis,” Hoppin added.

As California’s glamour crop last decade, kiwis were a classic case of overproduction.

“Supply and demand have taken over, and there’s more supply than demand,” Hoppin said. “Hopefully, enough acreage will be taken out so they will be profitable again for growers.”

Hoppin also tried to make money on tiny vegetables that some fancy restaurants like to serve.

“Baby vegetables were a big thing,” he said. “I grew baby squash, but it was really kind of a flash in the pan. There wasn’t really a very big market.”

“There was a panacea in the 1980s that anything different was going to be profitable,” Hoppin said. “That wasn’t true.”

The key to survival, Hoppin said, is “specialty marketing,” which can mean, for example, growing crops favored by particular ethnic groups and then making sure the food is sold where they will buy it.

He also cited these examples: spaghetti squash that included a recipe, red tomatoes considered too small to sell until they were packaged for microwave ovens, spinach triple-rinsed, trimmed and put in an attractive bag to entice someone to make a salad.

“It doesn’t have to be something you can’t pronounce or swallow to be special,” Hoppin said. “It’s got to be presented in a special form.”

Even more direct ways to market specialty crops are farmers’ markets and roadside stands, which, Hoppin said, provide immediate feedback and financial rewards.

“If they like it, they’ll buy it; if they don’t like it, they’ll tell you about it,” he said. “At the end of the day, you will have money in hand.”