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As they toiled on an 8-acre plot, the sun beat down, and mirages lingered on the horizon. To make matters worse, the crop they were harvesting blistered them with its own heat.
The workers -- employees of the McIlhenny Company, local farmers, an LSU Agricultural Center professor, and an inventor from Michigan -- were partners in growing and mechanically harvesting an experimental crop of jalape‹os.
The pungent aroma of peppers set off spasms of coughing. The workers discarded their gloves because the pepper's chemical mingled with their sweat and burned. But there was little complaining: Jalape‹os pack a lot of profit for being such a small fruit. Twenty years ago, a grower averaged $2,400 per acre; that figure has risen to about $4,000 to $6,000 per acre.
Swallowing four rows of plants as it crept along, a harvester stripped away peppers with its revolving helix and whisked them up a conveyor belt, where workers sorted the green fruit from the red. Pausing next to several large crates, the harvester belched a load of green jalape‹os from its chute.
"Kinda reminds you of when you were little, doesn't it?" mused one of the workers, recalling a childhood when cayenne and tabasco pepper plots were grown all over Iberia Parish.
Thousands of acres of cayenne peppers once flourished in Louisiana, according to LSU horticulture researcher Carl Motsenbocker. Combine that with the famed McIlhenny tabasco fields and factory at Avery Island, the large number of area hot sauce processors, and the state's spicy cuisine, and what you get is a way of life with hot peppers.
But it's a rapidly dying culture. Production of hot peppers -- collectively called "chile peppers" -- in Louisiana has declined to near zero. From 1992-97, the acres of harvested chile peppers shrank from 240 to 74, according to U.S. Census figures.
The industry moved south of the border long ago. Most chile peppers grown in the United States still must be hand-picked, leaving domestic growers unable to compete with labor costs in Mexico and Central America.
But Motsenbocker is leading a regional effort to resurrect chile pepper production. Partnering with the McIlhenny, he is starting the Louisiana Hot Pepper Growers Association to support growers. Its success, however, hinges on someone developing an efficient harvester.
That's when Greg Boese, a sugar beet farmer-turned-inventor from Michigan, came into the picture. Boese's harvester has made inroads into the chile pepper industry in two leading producer states -- New Mexico and Texas.
"It's inevitable that hand labor is going to end. Nobody in this industry thinks they're going to be hand-harvesting even 10 years from now," Boese said.
Growers in the industry acknowledge the only difference in production costs between Mexico and the U.S. is labor costs.
"In 2002, using a mechanical harvester, a grower here can compete with Guatemala and Mexico," Boese said. "The challenge is to get the art of growing peppers discovered again," he said.
With an ideal climate and processors such as McIlhenny's, Trappey's, Bruce Foods, Cajun Chef and others, Louisiana has what it needs to revive the art.
Boese said the economics of using a harvester look promising. The cost of hand-harvesting a jalape‹o crop usually consumes 65 to 75 percent of the crop's value. With a mechanical harvester -- excluding the cost of the machine -- only 15 percent of the crop's value goes toward labor.
"A grower may struggle with yields his first year using a harvester. But he'll actually get higher yields after that first year than he'd get from hand-picking," Boese said. "It could be a viable commercial thing in a year if the local processors will step forward and provide growers with the contracts they need."
Louisiana has another advantage -- a warm climate that allows a single crop to be harvested multiple times.
New Mexico, the leading U.S. producer of chile peppers, has embarked on a high-stakes race to save its industry. Last year the state of New Mexico allocated $1 million to the Chile Institute for research and development.
Those funds have supported machinery experiments, including Boese's harvester.
Until now, New Mexico's $200 million crop has been hand-picked, resulting in a loss of 70 percent of its jalape‹o production to Mexico, says New Mexico State University researchers.
In New Mexico, growers can depend on contracting 90 percent of their production to local processors. That stability, coupled with a high price for chile, has given that state an incentive to save its industry.
Growing chile peppers also diversifies the state's agriculture base and provides a reliable alternative crop, New Mexico experts say.
In Louisiana, production has plummeted while a few industry stalwarts experiment with machine harvesting. Motsenbocker has been a prime mover behind many of the experiments -- recruiting Boese, conducting jalape‹o variety trials, modifying harvesters and working with others in the LSU Agricultural program to harvest a jalape‹o crop with a bean picker 10 years ago.
"Why not try to grow some of it here?" he pleaded. "They're (Mexico) shipping to our processors," he pleaded. "I just hate to see Louisiana always losing out. To prevent the processing arm of this industry from leaving the state, the logical solution would be to increase production of the raw product."
From 1994-98 in Louisiana, the production of cayenne peppers declined 71 percent, and production of fresh jalape‹o declined 93 percent, according to the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
For Harold Osborn, director of Marketing and Agricultural Operations for McIlhenny, mechanical harvesting has a history of its own -- predating flurries of development in other parts of the country. "We were one of the first people to work with harvesters," Osborn said.
In 1974, the McIlhennys hired New Iberia engineer Herman Schellstede to design a tabasco pepper harvester. The tabasco pepper is much harder to harvest than the jalape‹o because all of its fruit doesn't redden simultaneously on the bush. Jalape‹o peppers are harvested and sold green.
Schellstede's Mark I and Mark II harvesters used a water mist system to vibrate the tabasco plant at a certain frequency, knocking loose only the red peppers.
Today, Schellstede's tabasco harvester sits idle on display at Avery Island.
He's trying to get the harvester admitted into the National Smithsonian Museum collection.
The Mark I and II harvesters never picked enough ripe red tabasco peppers, Osborn said. It was too difficult to find the exact water pressure needed for detaching only red peppers.
Schellstede is still optimistic about mechanically harvesting tabasco peppers. Because of improvements in technology, "the (tabasco) pepper harvester with a sound-generating system will possibly be the most efficient harvester," he said.
Boese conceded that his jalape‹o harvester can't do everything, either -- it can't "de-stem" jalape‹o peppers. Currently, a large percentage of jalape‹os used by the processing industry must be de-stemmed. Border Foods, one of the largest packers in the U.S., uses about 50 percent of jalape‹os with stems.
Cajun Chef, a St. Martinville-based hot sauce producer, uses about 30 percent of jalape‹os with stems, Boese said.
The McIlhennys donated their acreage at Jefferson Island as well as the seedlings needed for this summer's experiment growing jalape‹os. Local farmers Ronnie Gonsoulin and Ronald Hebert Jr. managed the crop for the McIlhennys. The peppers were sold to Trappey's Fine Foods of New Iberia.
"We'd like to see pepper production back in Louisiana," Osborn said. "This experiment is helping to develop the market. Hopefully, Louisiana growers will be able to provide high-quality peppers without the transportation costs being borne by the industry."
As founders of the Louisiana Hot Pepper Growers Association, Motsenbocker and Osborn are hoping prospective growers, the processors, and other interested parties work together to revitalize the industry. A major expense in this is the cost of the pepper harvester.
A typical Boese four-row jalape‹o harvester costs at least $300,000.
"There's not a problem here in Louisiana that can't be solved," Boese said. "But are growers and processors going to step forward to make it work?"