High-Tech Farming in High Desert

RENO, Nev. — Far from the lights and glitter of this gambling city, garlic and onions reign supreme.

Empire Farms, tucked amid the desert mountains that serve as gateway to the expansive desolation of Black Rock Desert, is an oasis of high-tech agriculture--where garlic, onions and carrots are cultivated to be sold as seed for crops grown elsewhere.

Headquartered near Gerlach in northern Washoe County, this 6,000-acre farm is Nevada’s largest producer of seed garlic, that wonderfully pungent herb more commonly associated with Central California.

But much of California’s crop takes root here, a two-hour drive from Reno through the dry, desert terrain of northern Nevada.

“We’re hidden away,” acknowledged Empire Farms co-owner Michael Stewart.

Empire Farms has 1,400 acres planted in seed garlic this year in high-desert fields scattered across western Nevada and eastern California.

“Located out here, our biggest advantage is that we have isolated growing areas so we have virus-free garlic seed,” Stewart said.

“High elevation and cold winters make our seed very hardy and vigorous,” he said. “The virus-free garlic seed produces 25% to 30% greater yield for customers in California.”

But there’s more to this operation than plopping bulbs in the ground.

Empire Farms is just one arm of the Empire Group, a conglomeration of companies involved in agricultural research, production and processing.

The group developed its own geothermal plant in 1986, Empire Energy. The plant’s hot water is used to dehydrate garlic and onions for its processing division, called Empire Foods.

At Empire Research, located in Davis, Calif., scientists work toward developing better strains of crops through plant breeding and disease identification and elimination.

Cell tissue from disease-free garlic is cloned in the laboratory and then grown into a plant, Stewart said.

From there, the plant is sent to the company’s nursery in Red Bluff, Calif., until bulbs form.

“When it makes a bulb, those cloves are brought to Nevada and grown as isolated, certified, virus-free garlic seed,” Stewart said. “We even do DNA fingerprinting . . . so we can tell exactly the varieties we’ve developed.”

Harvest time comes at the end of August.

“We ship approximately 250,000 pounds of cleaned, cracked and ready-to-plant garlic seed every day from around the 20th of August through Thanksgiving,” Stewart said.

Empire also contracts with some California growers to plant its seed, then buys the crop back when it is time for processing.

“We’ll ship over 40 million pounds of garlic this season, not including about 18 million pounds of seed garlic,” Stewart said.

Last year, the group’s total sales reached $25 million.