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BUSINESS
TheMesaTribune.com | @EVTNow /EVTNow
Mesa market ‘modernizes’ by staying old-fashioned
BY MARK MORAN Tribune Staff Writer
Now 85, Terry McCuin was retired, living his best life at a lake house in Montana, pretty much minding his own business.
But when his 62-year old son T.J. called him with a business proposition, Terry was back in the fold.
And it really didn’t take much armtwisting.
“We brought dad in and dusted him off and put him back in the chair and put him back to work,” chuckled T.J. McCuin. “This wasn’t his dream. This was mine. His dream wasn’t to go back to work at 78.”
It might not have been Terry McCuin’s dream, but it was his fault. Terry had heard a rumor that the iconic Superstition Ranch Farmers Market in northeast Mesa might be for sale.
He had worked there, managed the place, really, in the 1990’s.
He called T.J. and “suggested that maybe you oughta give Pauline a call,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told him.”
Established by Ray and Pauline Matheson in 1966, Superstition Ranch Market has become synonymous with a little stretch of the gravel shoulder along the south side of Main Street just east of Greenfield Road.
Its bright and artfully done hand painted signs on sheets of plywood and the white clapboard exterior of the place, shout out the daily produce sales, beckoning passersby to stop, park in the dirt lot, and take a gander at the fresh apples, strawberries and grapes on display.
This is part farmers market, part old fashioned grocery store.
“It’s kind of a hodge podge because of how they added on but we kept it kind of unique,” T.J. McCuin said. “When Pauline was ready to sell it she wanted us to keep it the same. That was kind of our selling point. We had the same vision.”
McCuin is intent on continuing Superstition Ranch Market’s success in pretty much
Terry McCuin and his son T.J. McCuin run the Superstition Ranch Market in Mesa. (David
Minton/Tribune Staff Photographer)
seeRANCH page 22
Valley firm invents birth control for roof rats
BY ASHLYN ROBINETTE
Tribune Contributor
The latest tool to solve your rat problem has arrived, but it’s not what you expect.
Instead of eliminating rodents using poison or traps, a Phoenix company has developed a more humane method: “Rat birth control.”
SenesTech, Inc. produces ContraPest, a new fertility control technology for managing animal pest populations, primarily Norway and roof rats. It’s a non-toxic, nonlethal liquid dispensed inside tamper-resistant bait stations that causes infertility when ingested.
And it is the only Environmental Protection Agency-registered contraceptive for both male and female rats.
“It’s so good for the environment and just being a kind human,” said Kim MeaContraPest, a new fertility control technology for managing animal pest populations, fits into a box with a hole for the critters to get into. (Special to the Tribune)
gher, the founder of Wildhorse Ranch Rescue in Gilbert and an early customer of Contra Pest.
“There are a lot of us who don’t want to harm critters, so it’s a really nice way to take care of your rodent population,” she said.
Animal lovers, like Meagher, aren’t interested in killing any. So, when Meagher’s rescue of 27 years developed a roof rat issue, she searched for non-lethal ways to eradicate the infestation. That’s when she found ContraPest.
“It took care of our population in a very humane way very quickly,” she said.
Rats weren’t the only animals Meagher was concerned about.
She had seen a notice posted by Liberty Wildlife, of Phoenix, about how rodenticide poisoning not only kills rats, but also the eagles, hawks, owls, livestock and other wildlife or pets that eat them.
She was thrilled to have found a solution that doesn’t harm any animals and actually works.
“You can poison or kill as many as you want all day long, but they’re still going to have babies,” Meagher said. “You’re not
the same way, and not changing the model that has led to that success: buying what suppliers still need to get rid of after the “big guys” have bought their truckloads.
“When Del Monte has a truckload of bananas come in and they’ve sold to Costco and they’ve got six pallets left and the next bin is coming in, they’ll call us up and say ‘we’ve got six bins of bananas,’” he said.
“We are there to clean up what’s left. That’s kind of our niche.”
T.J. McCuin’s other specialty has been his ability to foster and maintain close contacts with suppliers, growers, truckers and all the people in between over the years.
“I think the thing that keeps it going is the relationships,” he said. “You have the same relationships that we had in the 90’s now, and that’s kind of the fun part. A lot of the buyers we had back then know me now and we have kept all those relationships.
“It’s important with all of the buyers that we have had over the years to maintain that trust and maintain that relation-
RATS from page 21
going to get them all. They’re going to reproduce faster than you can exterminate all of them.”
Conventional methods of reducing rat populations simply can’t overcome their rate of reproduction.
If left unchecked, rodents will do what they do best – reproduce rapidly.
Two sexually active rats can be responsible for the birth of up to 15,000 descendants in just one year, according to SenesTech CEO Ken Siegel. If the breeding isn’t stopped, then you can’t get a handle on the population.
“One side of the equation is the birth rate, but the other is the death rate,” Siegel said. “Rats become mature in a very short period of time and then they can have a litter of pups basically every six weeks.
“The pups become mature and they have pups. You see a geometric explosion in the population. If you’re simply relying on death, you can’t kill them fast enough or sustainably enough to offset how fast they reproduce. That’s why birth control is so important.”
ContraPest works because of its two active ingredients. The first ingredient reduces the number of eggs female rats produce, while the second impairs sperm development in male rats.
Although ContraPest targets the reproductive capabilities of rats, it is not a sterilant. For the product to be effective, rats must regularly consume it.
Though Siegel hasn’t seen an effect in other animals, he knows that if a non-targeted animal were to consume ContraPest then its effects would be temporary.
With ContraPest not posing a danger to other animals or people, it’s no wonder why it is being used by many zoos, animal sanctuaries, farms, businesses and homes around the country.
SenesTech was founded in 2004 to serve women’s health. It wasn’t until researchers developed a model for inducing menopause in mice, which later became known as “mouseopause,” that they began looking at birth control technology.
Development of ContraPest took several years, but in 2016 SenesTech finally won approval from the EPA to market ContraPest for use against rats.
Now, the company has gone a step further to eliminate roof rats in elevated spaces by designing the Elevate Bait System with ContraPest, which was approved by the EPA in March.
“Elevate is a unique way to deal with a problem that no one has been able to tackle before,” Siegel said. “It enables for the first-time pest control to be easily deployed above ground. Up until this point, there was really no way to deploy poison or ContraPest above ground.
“So now there’s this groundbreaking dispensing system that you can put where the roof rats are most likely to be.”
Roof rats spend about 90% of their life four feet or more off the ground, according to Maricopa County Vector Control.
They can be found on power lines, fences, attics, garages, patios and more. So, SenesTech wanted to develop a better way to deploy ContraPest for roof rats.
The Elevate Bait System uses the same contraceptive but with a different dispensing system that’s specifically designed for roof rats in elevated indoor spaces.
The suspended bait station is easily accessible by roof rats, but out of the way of people, pets, livestock and food storage areas.
It is more than 90% effective in eliminating rat populations, according to SenesTech. This is especially important for Arizonans considering that Phoenix is ranked as one of the worst areas in the U.S. for roof rats.
It’s not just consumers who are pleased with ContraPest, the rats love it too. “They fight over it,” said Meagher, who set up a rat camera to make sure that the rats were actually drinking ContraPest, and sure enough, they were.” If it runs out before I fill it up, they’ll chew the container like, ‘Where is it?’ If one is drinking and taking too long, another one will bump him out of the way like, ‘Hey, it’s my turn.’ They absolutely love it.”
Rats drink about 10% of their body weight in water every day, according to SenesTech. So, ContraPest was formulated to satisfy their thirst.
The sweet, fatty liquid formula has proven successful in reducing rat populations, in turn preventing the serious property damage, dangerous food contamination and disease spread caused by rodents.
To learn more or to order ContraPest or the Elevate Bait System with ContraPest, call 1-866-886-RATS or visit con-
trapeststore.com.
ship so that we can continue to compete with the big guys.”
Those are the people he depends on to do the carefully choreographed dance of getting fresh produce from the fields to the store, keeping it displayed all day, then storing it overnight to keep it ready to sell.
“We probably have about 120,000 square feet of coolers,” McCuin said. “We keep the tomatoes a little warmer. They don’t like to be under 40 degrees.”
Those coolers are inconspicuously out of sight behind the market where the fruit sorting machine is.
Neither grocery stores nor most farmers markets have one of these: a long beltdriven rack that allows McCuin to accept, sort and sell locally grown fruit the same day that it’s picked.
Superstition Ranch Market has a lot of loyal customers who swear by the place and won’t go anywhere else.
“The produce is always good and the prices are always probably better than the grocery stores,” said Michael Kailas, who has been coming here for 35 years.
“It’s old school,” Kailas said. “Nothing terribly fancy. Although they have upgraded it the last couple of years – shelves and different products, things that they never used to have before.”
Weather patterns have shifted and growing seasons have tightened. All of that has a domino effect on the rest of the supply chain.
“Food is getting short,” Terry said. “It’s probably mostly weather. There is a big gap when you can’t get it. The weather is so bad. A crop will be ready now and then three months later the next crop is ready. Climate change is part of it.” Those changes are directly reflected on the store shelves.
T.J. said growers have had to be nimbler with crop management and feel pressure to become more profitable. Less water in California means more growers are going to Mexico, for example.
“A lot of the growers don’t grow near what they used to in the ‘90s,” he said. “You got a ton less strawberries today than you did (then). And there are corporate factors, too.
“The Doles and Del Montes have moved in and taken over the smaller farmers and those accountants come in,” he said, explaining that they tally the amount of product sold the prior year, plant just that amount or less, and drive up prices.
Somehow, though, in its funky, little side-of-the-road hybrid grocery store and farmer’s market, Superstition Ranch Market has managed to continue to do what it does best – keep the aisles full of shoppers, and the produce fresh and attractive.
“For me, success is when somebody walks in and they’ve got a little kid with them and they say ‘when I was a little girl, my mom brought me here and we used to get taffy,’” said T.J. McCuin. ‘Or, I shopped here when I was a little girl and I love it.’
“To me, that’s when you know you’ve been successful when you get that feedback from the next generation to the next generation. That’s the whole goal. To me, that’s success.”
Information: superstitionranchmar-
ket.com. 480-832-3421
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