With hints of gray in his brown hair, and wearing glasses, a green company jacket and polo shirt with blue jeans, Steve Jordan looks harmless enough when quiescent.

But the word “artichoke” triggers a kind of seismic tripwire. His arms flail and sentences burst like lava bombs from a volcanic eruption. His passion about artichokes is awesome to behold, like Mauna Loa at night.

No wonder Jordan labels himself Lompoc’s “Artichoke Evangelist.”

He is also an artichoke innovator.

Jordan can hold forth on Cynar, an artichoke-based liqueur, on

the nutritional value of artichokes — low calorie, low sodium, fat

and cholesterol free — best recipes — barbecue with olive oil or

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“plain Jane” steamed only — or

on artichoke humor — cut-rate

hit man “Artie” chokes three for

a dollar.

But he also presents penetrating questions, about anything — European soccer, the newspaper industry, the Internet.

“Of all the artichoke producers in the state, he is among the most energetic and curious,” attests Pat Hopper, manager of the California Artichoke Board. “He asks questions.”

Then she adds, “And he seems to enjoy the idea of competition with Ocean Mist.”

Jordan’s Baroda Farms, capitalizing on innovations born of Jordan’s restless curiosity, is now the second biggest artichoke producer in the nation, behind only Ocean Mist of Monterey County. Twenty-six other producers trail.

Baroda Farms posted a company production record in April with 40,000 boxes shipped in one week. Jordan has deals with Dole, General Mills, Albertsons and Costco. He employs 100 people year-round.

“I don’t know what the limit is,” he says of his company’s boom. “We’ll run until we hit the wall.”

Jordan moved to Lompoc in 1974 from the Imperial Valley after studying viticulture at Davis. “I was looking for wine grapes. I got distracted by the vegetables,” he jokes.

He started with established crops — sugar beets, sweet peas and cabbage, but after 12 years the artichoke appealed to his creativity.

He spotted an opening.

“The investment even then was tremendous, but I saw the most headroom in artichokes. There was room for creativity. When you’re creative you can set your own market. You can be insulated from the ups and downs.”

He broke into the clubby artichoke industry with a startling innovation. He planted his artichokes as annuals, not perennials.

“I decided to grow them in the summer when perennials were not in heavy production,” he says offhandedly as if it were a casual decision on which socks to wear.

“People said, ‘You can’t eat artichokes in the summertime.’ Well how about hamburgers, how about corn?”

Annuals are grown from seed whenever the grower chooses. Historically in California artichokes were a perennial plant that kept growing from year to year and were harvested in April and October. “I didn’t have access to perennials, but I had seed,” Jordan reasoned. “If I did perennials I would be just like the guys in Castroville.”

In an industry handed down from father to son since the Gold Rush, Jordan is both an outsider and an agent of change.

“In the produce industry as a whole he’s seen as an innovator,” says Hopper. “Inside the artichoke industry he may be seen as a maverick. He has definitely put some energy into the industry.”

Jordan was the first California grower to travel to Italy and Spain to the International Artichoke Congress to look for new ideas.

Unique in America, he opened his own breeding laboratory. There, armed with European research, he started tinkering with new varieties. His staff is now working on a whopping 29 varieties.

Five are in commercial production — the Fiesole, the Anzio, the Campania, the Big Heart and the Lyon. They differ in size, shape, taste and color. The Fiesole for example appears almost purple.

But it’s the light green Lyon (Lee-OWN) which exploded on the market after Jordan purchased U.S. rights from a French breeder.

Jordan’s excitement bubbles again as he recounts the attributes of the Lyon, which is very round and larger than the Globe, the industry standard, and sweeter and meatier. From one acre of Lyon planted five years ago he now plants 500 acres of the Lyon, nearly half his total acreage.

“I knew it was a good product,” Jordan declares. “The taste is very nice. The consistency is better. It’s 20 percent heavier, so the consumer is getting more.”

Speaking of stems, Jordan made another innovation when he began harvesting vegetables with extra long stems, 8 to 16 inches, shipping them in larger boxes used for cauliflower.

Jordan does not take time to theorize about innovation. He just does it. “There’s no future in copying,” he says. “You want to be the sun, not the moon.”

Freelance writer John McReynolds can be reached at 736-6352 or johnny544@verizon.net

July 20, 2008