A.V.'S ONION FIELDS BEAR SWEETEST RESULTS EVER.Byline: Romy Jacobson Daily News Staff Writer They come in red, white and yellow. To Philip Giba Sr., his onions smell sweeter than roses. Giba is the owner of 4-year-old Giba Farms, which grows about 1 million onions annually from its Lancaster fields and processes an additional 15 million from Bakersfield at its Lancaster packing house A packing house is a facility where fruit is received and processed prior to distribution to market. Bulk fruit (such as apples, oranges, pears, and the like) is delivered to the plant via trucks or wagons, where it is dumped into receiving bins and sorted for quality and . This season Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley has enjoyed its best onion crop ever because most of the El Nino-spawned storms came prior to planting, allowing the water to soak into the ground, Giba said. ``It came at the right time for us, the wrong time for the Northern California Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the state capital, Sacramento; as well as the substantial natural beauty of the redwood forests, the northern farmers,'' Giba said. ``You could've floated a boat down a couple of my fields. If some of these rains would have come when the crop was in the ground we would have lost them.'' Giba got his start in the wholesale produce market in the produce department of Alpha Beta
Alpha Beta was a chain of Californian supermarkets started by Albert and Hugh Gerrard. , for which he worked 13 years. He worked as head produce buyer for 300 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada for eight years. Giba owned a couple of produce markets and then decided to open Giba Farms four years ago. He also has onion crops in Arizona and Chile. ``I've always enjoyed agriculture,'' Giba said, ``the challenge. Nothing is ever the same, because mother nature changes things every day and every year.'' Besides the millions of onions grown on 840 acres in Lancaster, Giba's plant near the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds n. pl. 1. same as fairground. is in the process of packing 150,000 50-pound bags of onions out of Bakersfield. At roughly 100 onions per bag that totals 15 million onions. A cool spring delayed the crop's ripening ripening said of meat. See curing. , but the hot weather over the past few weeks has helped, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Giba. ``Onions like 95 degrees. Lately the weather has just been fabulous,'' Giba said. ``Every farmer in the valley has outstanding crops.'' Giba has 50 year-round employees. During harvest and packing time, Giba Farms employs as many as 550 employees. Giba Farms sells its onions mostly to local supermarkets. Approximately 10 percent to 20 percent are sent to the Orient, 5 percent to Central America, and about 20 percent to the East Coast, according to Giba. CAPTION(S): 5 Photos PHOTO (1--Color) no caption (Onions) (2--Color) Trucks filled with onions line up at the Giba Farms packing plant packing plant a complete meat production unit including facilities for slaughtering animals, processing of meat and offal, boning out, making up of blocks of carcasses, chilling, freezing, storing of the meat, preparation of by-products. in Lancaster. (3--Color) Employees at the Giba Farms packing plant watch onions pour off a truck. The plant is expected to process some 16 million onions. (4) Giba's plant near the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds is in the process of packing 150,000 50-pound bags of onions out of Bakerfield. (5) Plant supervisor Philip Giba Jr. gets onions ready for shipment. Jeff Goldwater/Daily News |
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