Lessening Negative Feelings Over Trade War

Walnut Processors Maintain Optimism

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Editor

California Ag Today recently spoke with Paul Wenger, past president of the California Farm Bureau Federation. He farms 700 acres of almonds and walnuts in Stanislaus County. He said that California Farmers and other stakeholders of the industry need to be less negative about the current trade war with China.

Almond and Walnut Grower Paul Wenger

“The more we talk negatively, the more that negative things are going to happen,” he said. “As I talked to walnut processors. They’re optimistic. That’s good news. I’ve talked to some walnut processors and said, ‘Well, what’s going to happen this year?’ We shouldn’t expect much as far as prices.”

“Marketing is always a self-fulfilling prophecy and it’s more psychology than it is anything,” Wenger said. “We are one of the largest producers now. Certainly, China is the largest producer. But China had a terrible crop and so they need walnuts, and so strange things can happen and the Chinese are always one that can bend the rules when they need.”

“We know that’s why President Trump has been going after China supposedly over some of these intellectual properties. Certainly, those aren’t the things that hurt agriculture, but we in agriculture are paying the price as we look at these countervailing tariffs that are coming on,” Wenger said.

Wenger explained that the Chinese know that, throughout the Midwest, it was the farm vote that helped and the rural states that helped bring home a victory for the president, so they’re going to go after President Trump.

A large amount of product was sold last season at a low price.

“We just go through the Affordable Care Act and then the port slowdown on the 2015 crop, which went into the 2016 crop, which was a little better We got a little bit better than 2017 crop was a good year for us,” Wenger said. ‘So you’re looking at a pretty good ’18 and now this happens.”

2018-09-04T13:42:28-07:00September 4th, 2018|

Sharing Secrets to a Successful Bowl of Cherries

Weather and Pruning Make Life a Bowl of Cherries

By Laurie Greene, Founding Editor

Clark Goehring, a third generation Kern County farmer, produces cherries and almonds. He summarized his cherry harvested as “good compared to the other years when we have had rain. Some people in our area still had rain during harvest, but we were able to harvest and bring our cherries to market in good condition.”cherry tree

“Of course, it rained a lot this winter and spring, but you do not want rain when cherries are maturing on the tree; they don’t like rain.”

Goehring explained that when it rains beyond the point when cherries start coloring, they split, making them unmarketable. “But while it may take some rained-on cherries off the market, the price of the marketable fruit goes up,” he said, benefiting those growers who had a quality crop, like him.

Goehring’s farm workers train the cherry trees to keep them low—approximately 8 feet tall. “We have tried to have them bush out instead of being more of a central leader. Actually, it’s called Spanish Bush style or, in modified form, KGB.”

Kym Green Bush designed the KGB training method in Australia to use multiple leaders and have them fruit on the leaders themselves. KGB simplifies pruning so less experienced farm workers can learn the skill more easily. The trees are replenished every five years.

Goehring said the method saves money on the farm, cuts labor and increases workers’ safety because it requires no ladders and the harvest is quicker. Harvesting without ladders also gives Goehring an advantage of attracting farm labor over other orchards that require ladders.

“In California, if farm workers have their choice of picking your cherries without using ladders, which is usually piecework, or someone else’s crop with ladders, they are going to want to come to you,” he explained.

2017-08-02T16:14:04-07:00August 2nd, 2017|

New Estimates on Broccoli and Lettuce Production Costs

Broccoli and Lettuce Production Cost Studies Released by UC ANR

News Release

New studies with sample costs to produce and harvest iceberg lettuce and broccoli for fresh market in the Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties have been released by UC ANR Agricultural Issues Center and UC Cooperative Extension. Vegetable growers may find these useful for estimating their own production costs and potential returns on investment.

“These studies have an expanded section on labor, which includes information on California’s new minimum wage and overtime laws,” said Laura Tourte, UC Cooperative Extension farm management advisor in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties, who co-authored the study.

The analysis is based on a hypothetical well-managed farming operation using practices common to the Central Coast Region. The costs, materials and practices shown in this study will not apply to all farms. Growers, UC ANR Cooperative Extension farm advisors and other agricultural associates provided input and reviewed the methods and findings of the study.

Both studies assume a farm operation of 1,500 non-contiguous acres of rented land. The hypothetical iceberg-lettuce farm has 250 acres planted to iceberg lettuce. The lettuce is hand-harvested into 42-pound cartons containing 24 film-wrapped heads. The hypothetical broccoli farm has 500 acres planted to broccoli. The broccoli is hand-harvested into 21-pound bunch cartons.  On each farm, the remaining acreage is assumed to be planted to other cool season vegetable crops. 

The authors describe the assumptions used to identify current costs for production material inputs, cash and non-cash overhead. Ranging analysis tables show net profits over a range of prices and yields. Other tables show the monthly cash costs, the costs and returns per acre, hourly equipment costs, and the whole farm annual equipment, investment and business overhead costs.

Free copies of “Sample Costs to Produce and Harvest Iceberg Lettuce in the Central Coast – 2017” and “Sample Costs to Produce and Harvest Broccoli in the Central Coast – 2017” and other sample cost of production studies for many commodities are available. To download the cost studies, visit the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics website at https://coststudies.ucdavis.edu.

The cost and returns studies program is funded by the UC Agricultural Issues Center and UC Cooperative Extension, both of which are part of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

For additional information or an explanation of the calculations used in the studies, contact Jeremy Murdock of the Agricultural Issues Center University at (530) 752-4651, Richard Smith, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Monterey County, at (831) 759-7357 or Tourte at (831) 763-8005.

2017-06-08T14:59:43-07:00June 8th, 2017|

SB-1 Is Yet Another Tax Grab

SB-1 Gas Tax Will Severely Hurt Ag

By Melissa Moe, Associate Editor

Governor Jerry Brown recently signed SB-1 into law. This bill will affect everyone in the state and increases several taxes and fees to raise the equivalent of roughly $52.4 billion over 10 years in new transportation revenues. We spoke with Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of the Western United Dairymen, about how this bill will affect California agriculture.

Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of Western United Dairymen

“A twenty-percent increase on fuel taxes is something that we can hardly, especially in dairy industry, afford. As you know, we cannot pass on our costs to our consumers, so adding another regulatory cost of production is incredibly hurtful and harmful,” Raudabaugh said.

SB-1 increases the excise tax on gasoline by 12 cents per gallon and the tax on diesel fuel by 20 cents per gallon starting November 1, 2017. SB-1 also creates a new annual transportation improvement fee (or TIF) starting January 1, 2018. This is based on the market value of your vehicle. This fee will range from $25 to $175.

SB-1 isn’t just targeting people who drive gas and diesel vehicles. Electric vehicles will also be targeted and will receive new fees. SB-1 also creates the road improvement fee of $100 per vehicle for zero emission vehicles starting in 2020 for model year 2020 and later.

“Everyone should be outraged over this. What’s more outrageous is that there are no guarantees that it will actually fix our roads. None whatsoever,” Raudabaugh said.

“There is actually a ballot measure that was called a lock box that was negotiated as a result of SB-1 so that several key Silicon Valley Assembly members could vote for the bill that says the public must award this transportation fund to go toward road repairs,” Raudabaugh said.

“It was sold to the Legislature as actually fixing roads and creating repairs where badly needed. To actually suggest that you would need a ballot measure to ensure that the funds do that, at least 20 percent of funds, seems really ironic,” she said.

2017-05-10T22:29:43-07:00May 7th, 2017|

Livestock Economics for Western Producers

Livestock Economics: What Attributes Bring Higher Prices?

 

By Laurie Greene, Editor

 

At the 100th Annual California Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) & California CattleWomen’s (CCW) Convention last week in Sparks, Nevada, Tina Saitone, cooperative extension specialist, UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, described her research on rangeland and livestock economics. “Primarily, my focus has been on cattle — beef cattle to date — but I’ve also started some projects recently with sheep producers and the predator interactions they have specifically with coyotes. I am examining whether or not [producers] can use nonlethal depredation methods to mitigate those losses.”

“Right now, I have been concentrating on marketing characteristics of cattle,” she said. “I study those practices employed by producers, such as when they wean their cattle; how many vaccinations they have; whether they market [their cattle] as natural, grass-fed, or organic; and the impact that [these choices] have on their prices.”

Tina Saitone

Tina Saitone, cooperative extension specialist, UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Interestingly, Saitone and her colleagues have mainly been using satellite video auction data. “Western Video Market Auction actually held their auction this month here in Sparks, Nevada because they can do it at different locations all the time. So, we use that data to figure out cattle characteristics and then determine the marginal impact that each of those characteristics has on price,” said Saitone.

Characteristics such breed, frame score, flesh score, and weight, are definitely controls in Saitone’s research model because those are main drivers of price. “But what we want to do is figure out — holding all those things constant —if a producer raises their cattle natural, what kind of premium does that bring them? We’re really looking for that incremental difference.”

One might expect certain factors such as natural or organic, to deserve a higher price, but there always has to be a buyer. “Right now, when prices are low relative to 2014 and early 2015, ranchers do have some opportunities to get some higher prices in what we would call niche markets. Consumers are increasingly demanding a wider range of characteristics. They want grass-fed. They want organic. They want natural, no hormones. All of these are what we would call credence attributes. If you go to the grocery store and you taste a steak, you probably don’t know if it was raised natural.”

Accordingly, the industry has third-party certification to assure consumers that when they pay a higher price for that product they are actually getting those traits. “Farmers actually have the ability to fill some of those niche markets that consumers have created with their demand and possibly get higher prices than just selling into traditional commercial channels.”

The data that Saitone has been looking at from Western Video is focused on Western states, including California. Certainly, location places Western producers at a persistent disadvantage because the majority of the processing capacity is in the central part of the country, with Nebraska being the hub. Saitone said, “When you think about cattle being raised in California having to be transported all the way to Nebraska, some 1600 or 1700 miles, not only do you have the cost associated with that transportation, but you also have shrink; you have mortality.

California Cattlemen’s Association (CCA)

California CattleWomen

UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

2021-05-12T11:17:11-07:00December 6th, 2016|

Almond and Pistachio NOW Sanitation Critical This Winter

Joel Siegel on NOW Sanitation

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

Last year was a bad year for navel orangeworm (NOW) mainly in pistachios, but also in almonds. If left in the trees, infested nuts become a great reservoir for more NOW to inhabit them.

Joel Siegel, NOW research entomologist, USDA Agricultural Research Service

Joel Siegel, research entomologist, USDA Agricultural Research Service

Joel Siegel, a research entomologist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service based in Parlier, stresses the importance of having a good sanitation plan in place to remove those NOW mummy nuts. “When we talk about sanitation, it should be the foundation for everyone’s nut program. That’s something that you control.”

“In almonds, it’s absolutely essential. Where we’ve taken a look at it in the south, every infected mummy per tree is good for 1 percent damage. So going from one mummy to two mummies, your damage on average increases another 1 percent.”

“It’s also important to destroy the mummies on the ground. You figure, for every eight or nine mummies on the ground, that’s good for about a half a percent increase in damage. Get them off the tree and shred the almonds.”

Siegel noted that while pistachio growers can clear mummy nuts off the tree, the industry has not been able to shred the fallen pistachios effectively. The hard, rounded pistachio shells just bounce around in the shredder machine.

almond_mummies

Almond Mummies

“What you can do is shake them off the tree as soon as possible so they’re on the ground where they can start rotting. You get those weeds growing around them. It has been shown that they break down faster in the weeds,” said Siegel.

“Growers disc them in. But if you’re going to disc them in, you have to disc them twice. Again, you’re not destroying the nuts, you are burying them so that NOW cannot lay eggs in the spring,” he said.

The risk of poor sanitation is high. Considerable NOW damage can prevent pistachio and almond growers from earning the premium paid for nuts that are pest-free.

2021-05-12T11:05:44-07:00November 22nd, 2016|

California Pistachios Are Set For Record Year

California Pistachios Make Comeback in 2016

 

By Brian German, Associate Broadcaster

California produces close to 99 percent of the nation’s pistachios. With harvest season just about wrapped up, growers are pleased with this year’s crop. 

Last year was a slow one for pistachios, with only 275 million pounds produced.  Because pistachios are alternate-bearing [tendency for an entire tree to produce a greater than average crop one year and a lower than average crop the following year], last year’s disappointing crop allowed the trees to rest before producing this year’s estimated record crop. 

Richard Matoian, executive director, American Pistachio Growers, estimated this year’s crop to be between 830 and 850 million pounds. The last record-setting crop was in 2012 when growers produced 555 million pounds of pistachios.  This year, some California growers have reported broken branches due to the heaviness of the crop, a phenominon Matoian has never seen before.  

Just as last year’s lower harvest enabled the pistachio trees to bounce back this year, increased rainfall last winter helped improve irrigation supplies for the nut trees this year. 

In addition, more chilling hours last winter also helped boost production.  Pistachio trees require cold nights, with at least 800 hours of temperatures below 19 degrees Fahrenheit.  This winter, trees experienced more than 1,000 hours of those conditions. 

Reports indicate that the pistachio crop from Iran, one of our biggest global competitors, is a bit down this year, which could help California growers get a better price for their pistachios.  “We all hope and try to keep the market as strong as it can be,” said Matoian, “but there are market forces at work. You can’t hold on to a crop forever. You have to be conscious of what the world supply is, and so a number of factors go into setting a price.”

Growers are pleased with the overall size of the harvest compared to last year, but they’re also a bit concerned about the prices. “The initial price the growers got last year was somewhere between $2 and about $2.20 per pound. Now we are at a $1.60 to about $1.80 per pound,” Matoian said.

2016-12-12T18:48:36-08:00November 10th, 2016|

California Rice Grower Demystifies Rice Industry

California Rice Grower Feeds Minds Also

 

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

 

By now, growers have harvested much of northern California’s rice. Most of it is already in the rice mill. While prices were low this year, production has been very good, according to Matthew Sligar, a third-generation rice grower in Gridley, up in Butte County.

California Rice Grower

Matthew Sligar, “How Rice is Harvested.”

“Yes, we just got done with rice harvest. We are chopping the rice straw that is left in the fields. We’re disking it in to aid in decomposition,” Sligar said.

“Then we flood the fields with about 4 to 6 inches of water, creating a natural habitat for migratory birds. We just let the field sit over the winter so the straw decomposes. We work it back up in the spring.”

Northern California rice growers dedicate the winter months, and even the early season months when fields are first flooded, to help migratory birds whose original habitat has been taken over by cities and expanding neighborhoods.

Birds by the millions – including ducks, geese and shorebirds – rest, feed and rear their young in rice fields during their annual migrations. “Our fields turn white like snow from the down floating feathers left behind by birds,” Sligar said.

Matthew Sligar, California Rice Grower and Blogger

Matthew Sligar, California Rice Grower and Blogger

And yet, due to global oversupply, rice prices are trending lower this season. “We had to put our rice into a marketing pool because we wanted to guarantee a home for it,” Sligar said. “We did not want to gamble on the cash market. We haven’t seen the returns yet; however, I got a great yield, and I hear most of Northern California got extremely good yields.”

“Hopefully, that will make up for some of the low price, and we might make some money. When you get a good year, you’ve got to save that money for bad years like this year, just make it through to next year,” Sligar said.

Besides farming rice, Sligar is a cyclist and a social media blogger. He produces great videos on all segments of the rice industry.

“That’s one reason why I started Rice Farming TV because whenever I’d be at a restaurant or some spot socializing, someone will say, ‘What do you do?’ I tell them that I farm rice. ‘Rice? Where do you live?’ I say, ‘I live in California.’ They don’t know that rice is grown in California, but it’s the best,” Sligar said.

 

Click below to view Sligar’s video, “How Rice is Harvested!”


Also, in Sligar’s repertoire is the best way to surprise someone you love in the middle of a busy rice season, in The Mile High Surprise!

 View more videos at ricefarmingtv.com.

2016-10-28T13:35:34-07:00October 28th, 2016|

Successful Temecula Winegrape Harvest Wrap-Up

Temecula Winegrape Harvest to Become More Mechanized

 

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

 

Winegrape harvest is going well in the Temecula area of Riverside County, east of San Diego. Ben Drake, president of Drake Enterprises, Inc., a vineyard and avocado grove management company there, summarized this year’s winegrape harvest. “We’re doing real well,” said Drake, who is also a grower board member of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).

“We had some real hot weather in middle of June, which reduced some of our yields. We got through that warm weather. Vines recovered and some of the fruit recovered. We’re seeing a slight reduction in yield—somewhere between 10 and 20 percent overall—because of that hot spell.”

Ben Drake, Temecula Winegrapes

Ben Drake, president of Drake Enterprises, Inc. and grower board member of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).

 

Harvest began toward the end of July and is now complete, Drake’s winegrape harvest is all hand done, not yet by machine. Drake said only one winery in the Temecula area has a machine.

Hand labor will change soon, according to Drake, because the new overtime bill mandates that farmworkers will receive overtime pay after working a threshold of 8 hours instead of 10. Drake is looking at machines that will dramatically decrease the hours of his workers—a consequence the state’s agriculture industry warned the Assembly about before they passed AB-1066.

“Overall,” Drake said, “it has been a long season. I grow about 35 to 36 different winegrape varieties, which allows me to pick some earlier and some later. That’s just the way they mature. It allows us to have plenty of time to get everything harvested.”


Drake Enterprises, Inc. the premier vineyard and avocado grove Management Company located in Temecula, California. Drake Enterprises, Inc. provides a full range of vineyard and avocado related activities to its clients. These include site selection, soils and water evaluation, variety, rootstock and scion selection, vineyard and avocado grove layout and development, vineyard and avocado grove management, harvest, consulting, avocado marketing strategy and grape brokerage.

2016-10-26T20:41:03-07:00October 20th, 2016|

Despite Great Harvest, California Apple Growers Face Challenges

California Apple Growers Face Regulatory Disadvantage

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm News Director

 

Many California apple growers are in the midst of harvest season right now. Alex Ott, executive director of the Clovis-based California Apple Commission expects a 3% increase in production across the country. Ott foresees a 1% increase in California this season, where apples stand out because of their freshness.

“California is the fifth largest producer of apples in the United States,” Ott explained. “We are about the third largest exporter of apples in the United States. We like to pick, pack and ship. Unlike other states that like to store fruit and have that fruit around longer, California apple growers like to get in and get out,” Ott said.california-apple-commission-logo California Apple

“We have a small marketing window and we pride ourselves on fresh crops,” Ott elaborated. “So we try to get out of the market no later than December. Sometimes we go as late as January, but the idea is to [quickly] fill that niche window between the Chilean and the Washington state fruit.”

Alex Ott, executive director of the Clovis-based California Apple Commission

Alex Ott, executive director of the Clovis-based California Apple Commission

Yet, the California apple industry faces challenges going forward. Ott stated, “Over the last five years, California apple crop production has decreased by nearly 39%. A lot of that has to do with the changing of the crops. Any time you start to see an uptick in another crop, especially when it is not hand labor-intensive like apples, you will see a migration to those types of crops.”

Transitioning toward less labor-intensive crops may accelerate since Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1066. This bill will enable California farm employees to accrue overtime pay after working an 8-hour day, instead of a 10-hour day.

“It’s definitely going to be a challenge for California apple growers,” Ott said, especially given the labor shortage. “So apple production in the state will decrease.”

Ott lamented many countries already produce a lot of these other less labor-intensive crops. AB 1066 definitely puts us at a competitive disadvantage in keeping up with demand. The challenge is how can California apple growers compete with farmers in other state and countries who can do it faster and cheaper?

2016-10-14T18:26:24-07:00October 14th, 2016|
Go to Top