2014 Fresno County Crop Report Sets Record Production

2014 Fresno County Crop Report Sets Record Production — $7 billion+

Les Wright, Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer submitted the following information to Karen Ross, California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary, TODAY accompanied by the 2014 Fresno County Crop Report showing record production.

It is my pleasure to submit the 2014 Fresno County Agricultural Crop and Livestock Report. This report is produced in accordance with Sections 2272 and 2279 of the California Food and Agriculture Code, and summarizes the acreage, production, and value of Fresno County’s agricultural products. The figures contained herein represent gross returns to the producer, and do not reflect actual net profit.

Jacobson, Wright and Matoian

Photo, from left, Ryan Jacobson, Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO, Les Wright, Fresno County Ag Commissioner and Richard Matoian, American Pistachio Growers Executive Director

This report is a testament to the resiliency and determination of the Fresno County agricultural industry. For the first time ever, the gross value of Fresno County agriculture exceeds seven billion dollars. Almonds remain the number one crop at a value of 1.3 billion dollars with grapes a close second at $905 million.

The total gross production value of Fresno County agricultural commodities in 2014 was $ 7,039,861,000, a 9.26 percent increase from the 2013 production value of $6,443,236,500.

Increases were seen in:

  • vegetable crops (0.47% = $5,599,000)
  • fruit and nut crops (13.16%= $422,664,000)
  • nursery products (46.89%= $20,022,000)
  • livestock and poultry (31.48% = $301,144,000)
  • livestock and poultry products (22.09% = $116,299,000
  • apiary (17.39% = $10,738,000)
  • industrial crops (107.05% = $3,795,500).

Decreases in:

  • field crops (-36.20%= -$149,822,000)
  • seed crops (-14.67%= -$5,823,000).

I would like to express my appreciation to the many producers, processors, and agencies, both private and public, who supported our efforts in producing this report. I would also like to thank all my staff, especially Fred Rinder, Scotti Walker, Angel Gibson, Vera Scott-Slater, and Billy Hopper. Without their hard work and valuable input this report would not be possible.

Pistachios, featured on the cover of the 2014 Fresno County Crop Report, were Fresno County’s seventh top crop last year, with a value of nearly $380 million dollars.

The top nut—and crop, for that matter—was almonds, followed by grapes, poultry, milk, cattle and calves, tomatoes, pistachios, garlic, peaches and cotton.

Also included in the report was this quote from President John F. Kennedy:

Our farmers deserve praise, not condemnation; and their efficiency should be cause for gratitude, not something for which they are penalized.

2016-05-31T19:28:06-07:00August 25th, 2015|

Chew on This Tour

Kyle Olguin and Sarah Weber on Chew On This Tour

 

By Charmayne Hefley, Associate Editor

To counter the abounding misconceptions surrounding agriculture, companies are fighting back through education. Kyle Olguin, assistant operations manager for Nutra Blend LLC, a company that specializes in manufacturing nutrients for the feed industry, said that Nutra Blend began a program called “Chew On This Tour” to educate consumers about common farming misconceptions.

For the tour, Olguin said, “we drive trucks around the country, trucks turned into movie theatres, and educate people on where their food comes from, the misconceptions about farming, what we [farmers] do in America, and how we have one of the safest food supplies in the world.”

Olguin said that the perception of agriculture among the masses is that Ag is unnecessary because of the existence of grocery stores.

“We are constantly being attacked by non-ag promoting groups that agriculture is bad,” Olguin said, “and now the perception is out there that agriculture doesn’t really provide anything good or that agriculture doesn’t really need to exist. We have grocery stores, and the general public does not understand the link between agriculture and farmers and those grocery stores.”

“So we decided to start a campaign, and we kicked it off in Oregon driving this truck around the U.S. and showing people one simple video.” Olguin said, “We ask people questions, like: How many eggs does a chicken lay? How many pounds of bacon do you get from one cow?”

Sarah Weber, a sales representative for Nutra Blend, said the next step for the program was to raise money for backpack programs linked with food banks.

“The second movement is ‘Drive to Feed Kids’,” Weber said, “a nonprofit program with our suppliers and vendors to work with our customers, in their own communities, to raise money for student backpack programs that are linked in with the food banks.”

Weber said, “Our third stage in this movement is the ‘Ivy League Farmer’,” Weber said, “which is a movie that has been produced and will air on network TV pending this fall. It is a reflection on a dairy farm and the positive influence the farm has on the community. It is a way for us to reach out to the public with an emotionally positive connection to educate them.”

 

2016-05-31T19:28:06-07:00August 24th, 2015|

Subsurface Drip in Alfalfa

Subsurface Drip in Alfalfa–A Growing Interest

By Laurie Greene, Editor

Dan Putnam is a faculty member and Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Davis with a statewide responsibility for alfalfa and forage crops. He said there has been an increased interest in subsurface drip irrigation in alfalfa, which is usually flood-irrigated. Alfalfa is a key forage source for the state’s top agricultural product, dairy, to the tune of more than $7 billion per year.

“It does come with some challenges,” but he said, “the growers who have really treated this as an educational experience are continually learning how to manage this system; not only the gophers, but the irrigation management component as well. To establish a crop with drip irrigation, growers need to plant in early fall and use sprinklers to germinate the seeds. A lot of growers fail on agronomic issues, like not planting at the right time of year rather than on drip irrigation issues,” Putnam said.

Putnam noted that growers are more interested in learning about subsurface drip irrigation because of increased yields. “I think over time, we are going to see a greater adaptation of this technology in California,” Putnam explained, “particularly in areas that have very high yield potential. For example, in the San Joaquin Valley and the Imperial low desert areas where the crop is actually capable of 12-16 ton yields, our yields average about 7-8 tons per acre. And so,” he added, “we do have a yield potential that we are unable to achieve, and part of that is in the limitation of surface irrigation.”

Putnam also noted one advantage of drip irrigation is efficient nutrient delivery, which in turn fosters increased uniformity across the system. “Growers can ‘spoon-feed’ the crop rather than inefficiently apply it on the surface,” stated Putnam. “I think a lot of growers have figured this out, although alfalfa does not have a nitrogen issue. Nevertheless, we have to apply significant phosphorous, potassium and several other nutrients in some deficient soils.”

As with most things, there are drawbacks, and Putnam outlined two. “One is an increased cost of the drip line and filtration system,” Putnam said. “Growers who are considering subsurface drip need to wrestle with the cost to be sure they can increase yields enough to justify the cost. In most cases, growers have been able to substantially increase yields in their systems to pay for the $1500-2500 per acre upfront investment in the technology,” he said.

“The other drawback is maintenance,” Putnam continued, “particularly with regard to rodent infestations. We’ve seen gophers, in particular, ground squirrels and meadow voles absolutely devastate drip-irrigation fields. As our vertebrate pest specialist at UC Davis says, ‘It is essentially an ideal habitat for gophers as they have plenty of food, plenty of shelter, plenty of water, and they are able to reproduce pretty readily.’ ”

“You should consider this system only if you are willing to accept a very high level of maintenance and no tolerance for rodent infestation because, if left unchecked, they will chew on the tapes and ruin the system,” he said.

Putnam reported there are strategies to get around gophers and other rodent issues, “You have start clean and do some deep tillage. We also recommend  retaining the capability of flood irrigation in those fields to use once in a while because it reaches the furrows very effectively,” he noted.

For those gophers, Putnam recommends every trick in the book. “There are traps organic farmers are able to use, flood irrigation, and boxes to help control the population,” Putnam said. “There are products available for baiting and other types of control measures that should be used. It is really too expensive a system to allow the gophers to have their way with it, so we need to have a high level of management,” he concluded.

2016-07-30T21:43:15-07:00August 3rd, 2015|

Happy Fourth to All

Our Third President on This Fourth of July

On this Fourth of July, it’s fitting to focus on Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s Agrarian President and signer of the Declaration of Independence 239 years ago.

Yes, our third President was Thomas Jefferson an agronomist, an educated man of the land. So, unique in his time, he believed in proper land stewardship for posterity.

Jefferson understood that humanity affected the environment, so he practiced crop rotation with an extensive seven-year plan, using wheat, turnips, corn, potatoes, peas, rye and clover, buckwheat, and livestock grazing.

He tested to determine the exact number of cattle required to fertilize a given area of land and compared grain yields on manure vs. unfertilized fields.

“Agriculture … is our wisest pursuit, because it will

in the end contribute most to real wealth, good

morals & happiness.”

 

Jefferson developed scientific plowing of “least resistance,” which lifted and turned the sod to a depth of about six inches, enabling farmers to contour-ridge erodible fields, plow out shallow ditches, and ridge poorly drained flat lands.

He terraced his vegetable garden, orchard, and vineyard sites, and planted native ground cover to stop erosion.

He conserved timber by not cutting trees for any purpose as long as cut wood was available.

As U.S. envoy to France, he sent seeds of various grasses, fruits and vegetables, acorns, olive plants to agricultural societies, farmers, and botanists back home.

He brought Italian rice to South Carolina, pecan trees to the eastern United States and was first to introduce Brussels sprouts, eggplant, cauliflower, and broccoli.

He encouraged agricultural societies, agricultural education and university-level research.

Jefferson kept extensive farm journals for nearly six decades on the 170 varieties of fruits and 330 different kinds of vegetables he cultivated, and on his experiments with viticulture and beer brewing.

Another July 4th notation

Presidents John Adams (who lived to 90 years old) and Thomas Jefferson (who lived to 82) both died on the same day July 4 1826, 50 years to the day of the signing of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

 

Quote from © 2015 Thomas Jefferson Foundation

2016-05-31T19:28:12-07:00July 4th, 2015|

AFT Research Shows Farmland Conservation can Reduce Greenhouse Gases

A new study from American Farmland Trust’s California Office, titled A New Comparison of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from California Agricultural and Urban Land Use [PDF], shows that urban land uses generate an average of 58 times more greenhouse gases per acre than the production of California’s leading crops.

This means that conserving farmland by preventing its development is an effective strategy for alleviating climate change. The AFT research, spearheaded by Steve Shaffer, AFT’s principal environmental consultant in California, found that emissions from seven crops grown on four million acres of the state’s farmland – including rice, tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, winegrapes, corn and alfalfa – averaged 0.89 tons of CO2 equivalent per acre, while those from residential, commercial and industrial land uses in 13 California cities averaged 51 tons per acre.

“If California farmland conversion could be reduced by half (from 39,500 to 19,750 acres per year), within a decade we would avoid the emission of 55 million metric tons of greenhouse gases,” said Shaffer, “That’s equivalent to taking almost 200,000 cars off the road or driving around the Earth’s equator 5 million times,” he added, noting, “Of course, AFT would like to do even better than that.”

2016-05-31T19:30:29-07:00February 25th, 2015|

Tulare County Ag Value Just Behind Fresno!

Tulare County 2012 Crop Report Production Value Up 10 Percent

Tulare County’s total gross production value for 2012 is $6.22 billion. The report, released today, showed an increase of  $581 million, or 10 percent above the 2011 value of $5.6 billion.
Dairy products continue to be the leading agricultural commodity in the County, with a total gross value of $1.8 billion, a decrease of 12 percent.
“Milk represents 29 percent of the total crop and livestock value for 2012,” said Marilyn Kinoshita, Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner. “Total milk production in Tulare County remained relatively stable,” she said. 

Possibly, if milk prices were a little higher during the year, Tulare County would have beat Fresno County for the first time!
“Livestock and Poultry’s gross value of $661 million represents an increase of 5.8 percent above 2011, mostly due to an increase in value for turkeys, cattle and calves,” noted Kinoshita.
Fruit and nut commodities were valued at $2.8 billion representing an increase of 29 percent. “The majority of this gain was the result of an excellent year for our grape category,” Kinoshita noted.
The total value of all field crops was $776 million, an increase of 24 percent from 2011. “Local demand for dairy feed continues to keep high values for our field crops. Nursery products were valued at $67 million, representing an increase of 2.5 percent over last year. “This minor increase is a reflection of the continued uncertainties in both the housing and agricultural markets,” Kinoshita explained.
Vegetable crops were valued at $20 million in 2012, representing a less than one percent increase.
“The 2012 report covers more than 120 different commodities, 43 of which have a gross value in excess of $1 million. Although individual commodities may experience difficulties from year to year, Tulare County continues to produce high-quality crops that provide food and fiber to more than 84 countries throughout the world,” said Kinoshita.
Kinoshita expressed appreciation to her staff, particularly Lea Pereira, Jacqui Balderas, and Dennis Haines for their contributions to the report.
2016-08-31T13:28:59-07:00July 23rd, 2013|
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