Despite disease, farmers say chile crops doing well

Susan Montoya Bryan
Associated Press
El Paso Times
Tuesday, September 4, 2001

CORRALES, N.M. -- It's that time of year again, when hordes of farm workers hit the fields and the smell of roasted green chiles saturates the air.

New Mexico's chile growers have begun harvesting their crops and residents around the state are standing in line to get their share of the steaming hot peppers.

"This is a tradition," Nancy Clark said as she waited in front of Wagner's Farm in Corrales with her friend Nancy Dhooge. She was having a bushel of chile roasted for her son and his family in Salt Lake City.

Clark and Dhooge, who both live down the street from Wagner's, go to the fresh market at least eight times a season to buy half bushels of red and green chile for their enchiladas and oven-baked rellenos.

"You know that it's fall when you can smell the chile," Clark said as the open flame blackened her green peppers.

This growing season has been good for some farmers but bad for others, according to biologists and agricultural officials. Some farmers lost their crops to storm damage, root rot and the invasive curly-top virus.

"The curly top was bad," said Paul Bosland, professor and director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University.

Bosland said he saw entire fields infested with the beet leaf-hopper, a rapid-flying insect that feeds on chile plants and spreads the curly-top virus. Meanwhile, he said, other fields had hardly any sign of the tiny menace.

Dickie Ogaz, who grows red and green chile in the upper Hatch Valley, said he has been lucky this year. His crop is healthy despite some hail damage from a storm in early August.

"We're really doing good this year. The weather has been nice and we've been able to live with that," Ogaz said.

But in Luna County, growers are dealing with curly top, other diseases and poor pollination, extension agent Phil Hibner said.

"All the farmers are affected in Luna County. Some have been affected to a smaller degree than others," he said.

The result for Luna County will be lower crop yields. While the county turned out about 6.5 tons of chile per acre last year, Hibner said this season will likely be closer to 5 tons per acre.

That's about as much as the county garnered in 1999, a year that was nearly a disaster for New Mexico's chile industry. Production and value plummeted more than 40 percent that year because of pests and rough weather.

The 2000 growing season, on the other hand, was one of the best in history, Bosland said. Farmers harvested 19,000 acres and the chile crop was worth nearly $49 million.

Doña Ana County has not been hit as hard by curly top this year, said agricultural agent John White.

"Overall, the crop looks good," he said.

However, the county likely will see at least a 20 percent decrease in yield this year because of pests and diseases in some fields, White said. Doña Ana County yielded an average of 5.6 tons per acre in 2000.

Nick Carson, who has about 200 acres of red chile in northern Doña Ana County, lost a small amount of his crop to curly top.

"It's hard to say right now how the season will turn out," he said. "It seems like some of the plants that got over the hump are looking a lot better."

White said the curly top problem stems from last year's wet winter. The moisture allowed cool season weeds to spring up, giving the leaf-hopper a place to stay until the chile plants started popping up in spring, he said.

White and Hibner agreed farmers don't have many options when it comes to protecting their fields from leaf-hoppers. They said insecticides don't offer much help.

"The leaf-hopper can stick its mouth parts into the plant and die seconds later (because of insecticide), but it still had the chance to inject the virus," White said.

Hibner added there's nothing farmers can do once a plant has the virus.

"They're fighting a losing battle," he said.

The battle seems worth it for thousands of New Mexico families that must have their roasted chile each fall. That includes Albuquerque resident Doug Mitchell and his family.

"You can eat it with anything," he said while waiting for the roaster to spit out his peppers. "In fact, you should eat it with everything."

For more information:
Chile Pepper Institute: http://www.chilepepperinstitute.org
New Mexico Department of Agriculture: http://nmdaweb.nmsu.edu
New Mexico State University College of Agriculture and Home Economics: http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu