Jack Vessey
Family Farmer
Vessey Farm, Holtville, CA
November 12th, 2025
Wearing a black polo and khakis, Jack Vessey excitedly talks to us about farming in the Imperial Valley. With his son, Blaze, and the farm’s food manager, Cory, beside him, Jack explains the process of getting the millions of cabbages we see in front of us to market. We are standing on an access road between an Imperial Irrigation District water canal and a part of his 8000-acre farm which produces a variety of leafy green vegetables, and behind us we can see workers cutting and throwing cabbage onto a machine to be packed and shipped in Yuma, AZ. During harvesting season, these workers will help send 75-100 trucks a day of leafy green vegetables from the farm to regional distributors, and ultimately to tables across the nation. Many of these workers are Mexican nationals with temporary visas allowing them to work on his farm, and about 50% of them commute from Mexico everyday.
In the leafy green agriculture industry, the distributor has a far greater influence on supply as opposed to the farmer. As Jack explained, “we have a contract with [a distributor] that says, ‘each week I need X amount of pounds of cabbage delivered to our processing plant… and when you call them and say, sorry, we’re out this week, it doesn’t go over real well.” This system can at times cause large parts of Jack’s crop to be left out in the field to rot, as he has fulfilled his contracts and cannot find anyone else to sell it to. Distributors will also reject his crop if it has certain defects, such as splitting or discoloration, even if it is still totally edible. Because of this distributor-controlled market and the razor-thin margins of the leafy green industry, Jack emphasizes the importance of taking risks and trying new strategies, saying, “if we always did the same thing, we'd be broke by now.” We are very grateful to Jack, Blaze, and Cory for giving us the opportunity to visit Vessey Farms, especially during the rather hectic harvesting season, and for giving us a couple of cabbages which were incorporated into many of the week's meals.
by Everett Calhoun