In the competitive world of green chiles, the little guys are going up against Goliath: Colorado’s Pueblo chiles are taking on the venerable Hatch chiles of New Mexico.

“The Pueblo chile has been overlooked,” said Steve Lunzer, regional produce coordinator at Whole Foods Market, who this week announced that the store is dropping the Hatch brand in favor of Pueblo chiles. It plans to put 125,000 pounds throughout most of the Rocky Mountain region, including Colorado, Kansas, Idaho and Utah.

“Hatch is all over the place,” he said. “It’s such a commodity.”

PHOTOS: Workers pick and bag hundreds of Pueblo chili peppers

Moving to Colorado from the Pacific Northwest last year, he was excited because the “Hatch Valley would be in our backyard,” he said. But when he started driving the state, introducing himself to local farmers, he discovered Pueblo chiles. Not only did he love the quality, but he appreciated that it’s regional.

“Our stores in Utah and Idaho are a bit closer to Pueblo than New Mexico,” he said, “and we wanted to be mindful of trying to support Pueblo farmers as much as we can.”

Whole Foods is making the switch at a time when Colorado’s green chile farmers are organizing around a strategy to better promote Pueblo chiles, which includes getting a trademark along with a branding campaign, a logo and a road map for tourists who want to visit the green chile farms in Pueblo County and buy straight from the farm.

“I’ve always dreamed of this,” said Shane Milberger, who has been growing them on his Pueblo farm since 1986 and is part of the newly formed association of Pueblo chile farmers. “This is my life. I have a son who’s 20 years old and has a passion for chile farming. I need for it to continue, so he can have something to look forward to.”

Chris Markuson, director of economic development for Pueblo County, predicts a healthy economic benefit from the new strategy.

“We’re estimating the annual increased economic impact (of the Pueblo green chile market) will be $1.1 million in 2015, and that growth rate will increase by 9.4 percent every year.”

The high elevations of southeastern Colorado, along with hot summers and cold nights, create a chile that is thicker and meatier than others, which makes them ideal for roasting.

Pueblo chiles range in heat from medium to hot, compared with the typical Hatch chile, which ranges from mild to medium, according to Michael Bartolo, manager of Colorado State University’s Arkansas Valley Research Center in Rocky Ford.

Bartolo, who has lived around Colorado’s chile farmers all his life, knows the pepper’s history well.

“Pueblo chile, historically, has been grown here in southeastern Colorado for many years,” he said. “We’re not sure where it originated, but it probably has its ancestral roots somewhere in Mexico and came to Colorado in the 1900s.”

Bartolo worked on the development of one of the newest varieties of Pueblo chile, known as the Mosco, which is named after his uncle, Harry Mosco, who farmed east of Pueblo in an area called St. Charles Mesa and grew green chiles from the original landrace stock, called the Mirasol chile pepper.

“My father gave me some of the seed my uncle grew for many years, and out of this strain, I began selecting for a chile that eventually was named Mosco,” Bartolo said.

His department continues to develop new varieties, and he’s working with local chile growers and county officials to raise the profile of the Pueblo chile.

Earlier this year, they received a $143,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to trademark the Pueblo chile. They had seen how the Rocky Ford Growers Association had gotten a trademark in 2012 for the Rocky Ford brand and liked the idea.

“The growers formed an organization, defined what it means, where it can be grown and who can use that word,” said Bartolo.

Markuson also thought that trademarking could help solve a problem.

“People were bringing chiles from New Mexico to Colorado and passing them off as Pueblo chiles,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that was not what happens.”

Currently, they’re finalizing the brand and logo as graphic design elements that Pueblo chile growers can use on everything from packaging to farmers market stands.

“The brand itself is something hard for someone to fake,” he said. “It’s a pastoral scene that looks like an old vegetable box, and the logo is a stylized chile element that comes from that drawing.”

The brand and logo — along with road maps for tourists to navigate around the chile farms and farm stands — will be unveiled at the Colorado State Fair, which runs Aug. 28 to Sept. 7.

All these new developments helped persuade Lunzer of Whole Foods to make the switch.

“It’s more than just one grower. It’s about community and many growers coming together,” he said. “They realized they wanted to prove to the world their chile is better than anyone else’s chile, and they formed this association — which allowed me to make this left turn, and go all into supporting them.”

Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp