Truck Farming in the Kaw Bottom: a Specialized Industry in Johnson County

Truck farming — raising vegetables for the market — has been an important, but often overlooked, source of economic activity throughout Johnson County’s history. Belgian farmers who immigrated to the county near the turn of the century developed this relatively small, but vital industry. Truck farmers and their families have contributed to the cultural life of Johnson County, providing the inspiration for traditions like Lenexa’s annual Spinach Festival. Many of the county’s commercial gardening and produce businesses were established by descendants of truck farmers who settled around Shawnee and Lenexa during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Family names such as Soetart, Rieke, DeGraeve, Cashier, Verstraete, VanKeirsbilck, Hauser and many others can be traced to the county’s early truck farming industry. Census records, County Agriculture Extension Agent reports, oral histories, photographs, and folklore provide insight into this chapter of local history.

Truck farming in Johnson County can be traced to the 1880s and 1890s when Belgian and other European immigrants who settled in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Wyandotte County, Kansas began relocating to Johnson County. The sandy soil, low-lying valleys, and the opportunity to own property, attracted these skilled vegetable farmers to to the northeast part of Johnson County. Their success attracted other Belgian and European immigrants, who settled in Lenexa and DeSoto after the turn of the century. The fertile soil yielded a variety of vegetables, including spinach, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and asparagus. Truck farmers supplied fresh vegetables to Kansas City area grocers and “hucksters” — door-to-door produce salesmen.

Truck Farmers Gain Recognition and Diversify Their Crops

When Johnson County opened for settlement, potatoes were the only vegetable recorded in agricultural statistics. During the 1850s and 1860s, area farmers produced thousands of bushels of Irish and sweet potatoes. Soil conditions remained favorable for large-scale potato growing through the 1930s, when plant disease and overused soil reduced the production of this once staple crop. The amounts and types of other vegetables raised in Johnson County were not recorded in official agricultural statistics until the 1930s. However, truck farming, or “market gardening,” was recognized as a growing industry by 1920. Johnson County’s Agriculture Extension Agent reported a failed attempt to organize the market gardeners in 1920. However, three years later, the Agent responded to 112 inquired from “truck farmers” on how to apply chemical sprays to control insects and plant disease. The Agriculture Agent's 1923 report also noted that importance of “truck and potato raising in the Kaw Bottom” and the increasing need to control insects and plant disease, and improve soil fertility. Continuous planting since the 1850s and little use of crop rotation and fertilization depleted the county's supply of productive farm land. The County Agent commented on this trend, describing the soil in Johnson County as “pretty bad.” His report concluded with a prediction about the future of truck farming stating that “someday these men are going to be ready to market their crops cooperatively.” However, more than a decade passed before the county's truck farmers organized to cooperatively sell their goods.

County farmers were competing with urban development by the late 1920s. A 1927 Agriculture Report described the county’s population as “commuting type of citizens, [who are] not interested in rural community development. the south and western regions are typical farming regions.”

Popeye and the Lenexa Spinach Boom

During the early 1930s, area farmers battled drought and economic depression. A local spinach boom was sparked in 1934, when W.A. Loree, a traveling produce buyer from the Ernst Applebaum Company, came to Lenexa and offered to buy the entire fall spinach crop for 12.5 cents per bushel. Dissatisfied with the quality of the crop in St. Louis, Loree came to Kansas City looking for a better product. According to local legend, Medard (Boots) VanKeirsbilck directed Loree to Johnson County, where he found a surplus of high-quality spinach. Lenexa was selected as the central shipping point for the crop, and Loree and VanKeirsbilck became local celebrities who were nicknamed Popeye after the 1930s cartoon character who popularized spinach.

Loree’s price was less than farmers could obtain in the Kansas City market; however, his offer to purchase and market the entire crop attracted hundreds of truck farmers to the Lenexa depot. Local newspaper accounts referred to lenexa as the “Spinach Capitol of the World.” Area truck farmers averaged $125 per acre for their spinach crops. This brought relief to many truck farmers whose spring crops had “burned out” in the year’s drought, but had still planned for a fall spinach crop.

Following Loree’s visit, the Kansas City Star reported that Lenexa was a “bee hive of industry.” The railroad stationed railcars at the Lenexa depot, where baskets full of spinach were stored prior to shipment. More than 150 truck gardeners brought their bushels of spinach to the depot. The Chicago-Lenexa network distributed record amounts of spinach throughout the country in 1934. About 600,000 bushels of spinach covered with over 15,000 pounds of ice were shipped from Lenexa to the Applebaum Company in Chicago.

The following year, farmers imported fertilizer from the Kansas City stockyards and area sheep farmers to increase their yields and ensure the quality of their produce. Truck farmers unloaded the fertilizer shovel by shovel from the railcars and returned home with trucks full of manure to spread across their fields. Their efforts paid off, and Lenexa remained an important shipping point for the national vegetable market until 1940.

Truck Growers Unite

Johnson County’s truck farmers capitalized on the success of their cooperative efforts and formed The Shawnee Truck Growers’ Association in the spring of 1935. The association announced plans to utilize both the Kansas City and Chicago markets to “realize the greatest profits since 1929.” A packing shed at Merriam was planned to store surplus produce and a Chicago brokerage firm was contracted to provide market prices. Growers were realizing profits of 75 cents per bushel for spinach sold in Chicago, while Kansas City buyers offered a record high 25 to 30 cents per bushel. That spring, Ernest Rieke hauled a five-ton truckload of mixed produce to Chicago that included spinach, asparagus, onions, mustard, radishes and rhubarb raised by area truck farmers.

In addition to selling their surplus vegetables as a group, The Shawnee Truck Growers’ Association sought new ways to market their produce. In July of 1935, ten members of the association discussed establishing a cannery with a representative of the county's Agriculture Extension Office. Local truck farmers also worked with their Extension Agent on a variety of programs designed to improve their crops through the use of treated seeds, hybrid plants, chemical sprays, and fertilizers. In 1937, the Extension Agent recognized truck farming as “a major industry in the northern part of Johnson County [that] is highly specialized.” He reported, “Potato and melon growing are important along the Kaw River Valley while vegetables such as cabbage, spinach, radishes, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, etc. are grown around Shawnee, Merriam, South Park, and Overland Park.”

Truck farmers attended special programs to improve their crops and working conditions. Newsletters, circular letters, and personal contacts publicized events throughout the year. Educational programs continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s, focusing on crop rotation, irrigation, terracing, and insect and disease control.

Suburban Development and Plant Disease

Suburban development and plant disease significantly reduced vegetable production profits in Johnson County by 1940. Between 1929 and 1939, the number of acres devoted to vegetables increased, but the value of vegetables harvested for sale dropped by $30,000. Johnson County’s truck farmers were beginning to lose their share of the national vegetable market. Large-scale produce growers who could raise large quantities of specialized produce were emerging in the southern and western regions of the country. Modern refrigerated trucks delivered the produce across new interstate highway routes to local buyers and a growing number of corporate-owned, or chain, grocery stores. The average family raising produce on a 20 to 40 acre farm could hardly compete.

The County Agriculture Agent continued to work with local farmers to improve the quality and quantity of their crops. In 1939, potatoes, watermelons, cabbage, and eggplant were targeted for new treatments as were tomatoes, cabbage, and other vegetables. Commercial growers plowed their fields for disease and pest control, and many participated in studies of disease-resistant plants to assist researchers with the development of new plant varieties. Despite their cooperative marketing efforts, Johnson County truck farmers lost their steady Chicago market in the 1940s, as the amount and quality of produce declined.

Truck farmers faced another crisis in the 1940s that threatened their way of life more than the Depression of the preceding decade. World War II increased the demand for area crops, but depleted the labor supply needed to produce sufficient amounts of marketable vegetable crops. A labor shortage particularly affected truck farmers, who relied upon hand labor to plant and harvest their crops. Farm labor continued to decline following World War II, as returning veterans were able to earn higher and more stable wages in newly-developing industrial areas and growing cities. War veterans were also eager to purchase a new home in Johnson County's suburbs.

The Post World War II Industry

Johnson County farmers struggled to maintain their share of the local produce market throughout the 1940s and 1950s by delivering fresh vegetables to local grocers and selling to local wholesalers such as A. Reich & Sons, or regional wholesalers, such as Safeway. They utilized mechanical planting and harvesting equipment that became widely available after World War II to reduce their reliance on expensive hand labor. But the competition from produce raised in well-irrigated areas, improved transportation and refrigeration methods, and the rise of commercial grocery stores increasingly diminished their market and forced many out of the truck farming industry. Rapid suburbanization and the continued loss of fertile soil also contributed to the decline of truck farming in Johnson County. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many truck farmers transferred their gardening skills to other endeavors, such as commercial garden plant and produce stores, greenhouse design and construction, and related industries. These businesses have serviced the county’s healthy development industry for decades. A few families have continued to raise vegetables to market in the Kansas City metropolitan area, or grow specialty crops for seasonal markets, such as fall pumpkins, summer tomatoes, and Christmas trees.