Where do babies come from? Baby carrots, that is

KLICKITAT COUNTY — Bugs Bunny would have a field day here.

His favorite veggie, the carrot, grows in dense plantings across acres of rolling farmland at Mercer Ranch in Eastern Washington, the tops forming a vast blanket of vibrant green under a sky of perfect blue. A carrot-lover's dream.

The wise-cwacking wabbit would have plenty of company in his munching these days. Americans are eating more carrots than ever, and the reason has a lot to do with the variety growing in this very field: so-called "baby" carrots.

They're the tiny kinds with the rounded ends you find bagged in plastic at the supermarket, ready to become a quick snack, a bit of crunch in a kid's lunch or bright color on an appetizer plate.

The operative word: quick.

Just as consumers scarf down fast-food burgers and frozen dinners, they've taken to prepared produce such as pre-cut lettuce and snack-ready carrots — testimony to our national craving for convenience.

Americans now average 10.6 pounds of fresh carrots apiece yearly. That's still far below some vegetables, such as fresh tomatoes, which total almost 18 pounds per person. But it's 38 percent more carrots than a decade ago — an increase experts credit largely to those handy, though more costly, baby carrots. That and health authorities' constant urgings to eat more veggies.

The tiny carrots, however, may not be exactly what you think. They're not babies.

That's clear when Will Mercer, 33, Mercer Ranch's boyish-looking vice president for marketing, reaches down and pulls a carrot out of the ground to show a visitor.

Long, slender and fully grown, the orange root will be transformed into two or three "baby" carrots once it's washed, peeled, cut into sections, mechanically shaped and bagged in a processing plant right here on the ranch.

Welcome to modern farming and the new-age carrot.

The carrot harvest, begun in June, will continue into December at Mercer Ranch, which lies on bone-dry slopes overlooking the Columbia River where it forms the border with Oregon. Water from the river irrigates these fields.

A huge harvesting machine rolls down the rows, its blade digging under the roots while converging rubber belts grab the tops and pull them up. The hungry machine can harvest 150,000 pounds of carrots an hour, cutting off their tops and dumping the bottoms into a truck that runs alongside.

"We're producing a product that's so widely used it's unbelievable," says Mercer. "People want value-added products and they want convenience. That's what's driving this."

A big player

Set among the Horse Heaven Hills where wild horses once roamed, the 28,000-acre farm (only part of it in carrots) is a major player in the baby-carrot world. You'll see the Mercer Ranch name on many bags labeled "peeled baby carrots" in Seattle-area supermarkets, though they're sometimes sold under other brands.

Mercer Ranch is probably the country's third-largest producer, or possibly tied for third, says Mercer. The biggest are Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms, both in Southern California.

Grimmway has bumped carrot convenience up a notch, producing fresh carrot "coins," "chips" and shredded carrots — all sold in many Seattle-area supermarkets.

Though baby carrots aren't really babies, they are different from conventional carrots. Instead of the conventional root's wide-shouldered cone shape, the baby variety is bred to be more cylindrical so it can be cut into nearly uniform pieces.

The rounding on each end of those pieces? That comes from tumbling the cut carrots in a steel cage with a rough lining to wear down the edges.

The carrots' slender form is encouraged by planting the seeds unusually close together. Mercer Ranch's sandy soils also encourage them to grow straight.

The long, warm days and cool nights of this region's growing season are great for carrots, intensifying their sweetness, said farm manager Russell Rasmussen.

"This (area) is one of God's true gifts to agriculture," he said. "We can grow almost anything." Besides baby carrots, the farm grows conventional carrots, corn, garlic, peas, grapes and grass for seed.

It all started in the 1930s, when Will's grandfather, the late Milt Mercer, bought 10,000 acres and began grazing sheep. Over the years, the farm expanded and gradually shifted to crops instead of livestock. Milt's son Bud is now chairman of the board and Will's older brother Rob is CEO.

More recently, they've added carrot growing and processing operations in California and Mexico, allowing a year-round flow of carrots.

They don't practice organic growing but, said Will, they subject their carrots to rigorous pesticide-residue testing by an outside firm and come in far below allowed levels.

The roots of babies

A sexually aberrant wild carrot found growing in a Massachusetts back yard by a plant scientist nearly 50 years ago became the ancestor of today's popular baby carrot.

Henry Munger, now professor emeritus at Cornell University, noticed that the carrot plant in his mother-in-law's yard had an odd-looking flower with no male reproductive parts (wild carrots usually have both male and female parts).

Recognizing a possibly useful plant-breeding trait, he sent the seeds to breeders, who used them to develop uniform-size carrots with the vigor to withstand close-together planting.

Breeders also gave the carrots added carotenoids for more uniform orange color, increasing their vitamin A content at the same time. Munger believes these carrots were possibly the first crop bred to have higher nutritional content.

Baby carrots did not come onto the market until the late '80s, however, and didn't hit their stride until the '90s.

A visitor to the Mercer Ranch processing plant sees carrots in constant motion, bumping along conveyor belts from one machine to another, including a device that creates plastic bags, fills them with carrots and seals them in one fell swoop.

The bags are part of a growing trend toward plastic-wrapped produce. Some baby carrots even come in single-serving snack packs, which you might regard as either added convenience or excess packaging. At some stores, however, you can find unwrapped, bulk baby carrots.

The involved process that gives birth to baby carrots raises a question:

Wouldn't it be simpler, not to mention cheaper, to sell, or buy, whole carrots? Better-tasting, too, argue those who find more carrot flavor in the conventional variety.

Stores do, of course, sell whole carrots. But those few minutes consumers save by not having to peel or cut the pre-cut kinds apparently are worth the added cost to many. And in a nation constantly chided for falling short on veggie intake, these carrots are helping bring the numbers up.

Judith Blake: jblake@seattletimes.com.