California farmers plow spinach fields under

“The overall effect is not that great because spinach is a relatively small part of growing there,” he said. “Many workers have been able to find work in lettuce and broccoli.”

Depending on how long the spinach warning lasts, related businesses such as seed companies and pesticide sprayers could also take a hit, Gonzales said.

Cool ocean air and morning fog give the Salinas Valley a mild climate that makes it ideal for growing salad vegetables. From the city of Salinas a shaggy carpet of lettuce and other leafy greens stretches for miles inland, broken occasionally by fields of strawberries, cauliflower, celery, spinach, artichokes and wine grapes.

The growing popularity of pre-washed salad mixes and spinach over the past two decades has been a boon for the area, which rose to prominence as an agricultural region in the 1920s, when growers started shipping iceberg lettuce in boxcars packed with ice.

The arrival of cheap labor during the Great Depression — chronicled in the work of former Salinas resident John Steinbeck — cemented the region’s reputation for produce as workers fled the Dust Bowl for the Salad Bowl.

Lettuce, especially Romaine, is still king, bringing local growers more than $600 million last year. But spinach has become increasingly important. In 2000, it was the 10th-most valuable crop in Monterey County. By last year, it had risen to No. 7 with a gross value of $188 million.

The current E. coli outbreak is at least the eighth food-poisoning episode traced to the Salinas Valley since 1995. Local growers were already working with the Food and Drug Administration to improve produce-handling procedures before the multistate outbreak occurred, Bogart said.

Each day the FDA keeps in place its nationwide consumer warning on fresh spinach costs the valley about $1 million in lost sales.

The FDA’s Brackett said California growers need to do more to eliminate contamination.

“What we would like them to do is take ownership of the problem,” Brackett said. “The fact that this keeps coming up suggests that whatever has been done is not good enough.”

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