From The Fields ®
From the Fields is a firsthand report featuring insights from farmers and ranchers across the Golden State, including members of the California Farm Bureau. If you would like to be a contributor to From the Fields, submit your name, county of membership and contact information to agalert@cfbf.com.
Mitchell Yerxa Colusa County farmer Photo/Courtesy of Mitchell Yerxa
Photo/Aubrey Aquino
Tom Ikeda San Luis Obispo County vegetable grower
We just finished harvesting our rice and walnuts. We had a good rice-growing year. We felt the yields were as they should be. We had good head quality. We had enough water to make it through, which was very exciting. Walnuts, we felt the nut quality was down, and our yield was down a little bit. I just don’t think you could have as much heat as we had that close to harvest and not have some problems. That late heat, the 110-112-degree days were a little tough on the trees when they were at a full nut set. Across the valley a lot of grow- ers are saying they thought their quality wasn’t as good this year as it was last year. We felt like the meat was a darker color, so a lower-quality nut. We are planting wheat. We always plant wheat in front of tomatoes, which is our way of drying out the soil ahead of planting tomatoes next year. Usually, we wait for a storm to pass through. Once the ground has soaked up the moisture, then we’ll work the ground, plant the wheat, and then hopefully get a nice fall rain. We are starting pecans next week. Unlike walnuts or almonds, if pecans don’t want to come out of their hulls, you can’t bring them onto the ground before they’re ready. Ours are not quite ready yet. They usually say that pecans are ready to come down after your first good freeze. Our trees are still young; we planted them seven years ago. They take about seven years of maturity, so we’re at the point where we’re starting to get yields. They’re fairly similar to a walnut. If yields were decent in walnuts, then I would imagine the yields would be decent in pecans. There’s only 4,000 bearing acres of pecans in California, so there’s not very many of us to try and figure out how all this works out. We’re still learning.
We planted our normal crops. We have bok choy and baby bok choy, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, celery, parsley. Those are the main ones. We’ve been able to har- vest most things. Further up in the valley we have a ranch where it’s a little bit warm- er. We have struggled with diamondback moths. That’s really hurting our brassica production. They’ve also reduced the amount of water we have available, so we’ve had to fallow more ground. If we don’t get a wet winter, we may be down 30% of our overall acreage to fallowing. The markets were somewhat depressed, but about mid-summer the market turned around. Prices on certain things are very good. Lettuce is at maybe historic highs due in part to problems in the Salinas Valley. The celery is the only thing struggling price- wise. But because we have lettuce, it can leverage the celery, so we think we’re going to come out in the black. We’ll wait to see what the next two months bring. They’re thinking the lettuce market should hold through December. If what they’re saying holds true, we should come out OK. Revenues have been high, but costs are also high. Fertilizer prices doubled since last year. Like everyone, we are dealing with high fuel prices. So, even though reve- nue has been really good, we’re struggling to maintain the margin. Considering the inflationary pressures at the beginning of the year, we’ve been blessed to have the markets we have and to even have the potential for a profitable year. I don’t want to say it’s because of our hard work. There’s a certain amount of luck involved. Unfortunately, the problems in the Salinas Valley create the lettuce market that we benefit from. Somebody has to get hurt for somebody else to benefit. It’s not what you want, but these days it seems like that is the case.
Chris Jergenson Merced and Stanislaus counties organic farmer
We are in the middle of harvesting sweet potatoes. We hope to be done by the first week of November. I just start- ed into my Japanese variety, and the yield looks good. I wouldn’t say it’s a huge bumper crop, but I can’t complain. I also planted a newer variety—an orange skin, orange flesh potato. It’s called 1381. The yield on that was not great. The quality is exceptional. It’s not like a Covington, which is a great yielder. That’s the one I usually plant, but I wanted to try out this new variety. It has a double skin, so it doesn’t get as scratched coming up the har- vester. It’s a really pretty potato—perfect shape, perfect size. But I don’t think I’m going to grow it anymore. With almonds, we finished harvest at the end of August. Since then, we’ve been taking care of weeds. I use a flame thrower-style burner to burn the weeds. Irrigation season just finished last week. We are spreading compost. Then we’ll hit them with an organic copper spray once the trees lose a little more leaves and are about to go dormant. With peaches, my last irrigation was about two weeks ago. We’re spreading organic chicken compost. We don’t have to worry about weeds and floor sanitation as much, so we’ve been mowing and disking the rows. We topped the trees after harvest to give a little more vigor to the lower branches and help with the pruning pro- cess. We’ll also do a copper spray, and then we’ll start pruning. With this cold weather that we have coming in the next couple weeks, that’ll start putting the trees to sleep. As soon as I’m done harvesting sweet potatoes, I’ll bring in a pruning crew for the peaches. All the prunings are then stacked into the middle, shredded, then disked to incorporate it into the soil. That’ll eventually break down and provide nitrogen.
Photo/Courtesy of Chris Jergenson
4 Ag Alert November 2, 2022
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