From the Fields ®
Ray Yeung Yolo County farmer
Joe Zanger San Benito County farmer It’s been an interesting year. I do not know if everyone recognized last spring an across-the-board, two-week-plus early harvest, but I certainly didn’t. Wondering if it’s global warming, climate change or simply cycles over time. My guess is the latter. In San Benito County, cherries, apricots, winegrapes and walnuts are the earliest I have experienced in over 50 years. Yields and quality have not necessarily been affected negatively. Of our three red grape varietals, only the cabernet is very light. Usually, even with the proper winter pruning, we need to drop some clusters in early summer and then sometimes again at veraison, when the grapes start to turn purple. But we had to do zero fruit drop work this year for the cabernet. For the other two, we had to drop fruit. The growing season for the transplant vegetables hasn’t been affected like the de- ciduous fruits and nuts. For example, fresh market tomatoes on our ranch have had about 90 days of growing season from June planting until September harvesting. Regarding markets, winegrape demand is dismal here, just like the rest of the state. Significant acreage is going unharvested. In the past, this phenomenon was cyclical, resulting from overplanting, creating oversupply. This time, though, it’s different. As grape growers have been experiencing for almost 24 months, consumption of wine has fallen 10% to 25%, which sends market equilibrium spiraling. This doesn’t appear to be cyclical in nature. Reasons why have been widely reported, and it’s not because we are not making great wines that people are drinking less wine. It hits home for us growers and winemakers when grapes go unharvested because tanks and barrels are full with prior year productions, and warehouses are full with bottled product. There is already an attrition of grape acreage and wineries in the state. Time will tell how far that will go.
We’re harvesting corn used to make tacos and tortillas. Yields are average to above average. We’re getting ready to harvest tomatoes. We grow fresh toma- toes, which we sell to lots of restaurants. We also do processing tomatoes, and the price is a bit down from last year, but it’s still profitable if you have a decent yield. Our yields are average to above average. We have safflower, and the price is a little better. Our yields were average to above average. The crops goes to Boswell, an oil maker. We also have alfalfa, and we’re on our sixth or seventh cutting. We’ve had favorable weather, so the crop is pretty good. The price is up a little from last year. We grew a little bit of zucchini squash, and there’s some kind of mosaic virus that affected them. It made the fruit unmarketable. With pistachios, we had hot weather at the wrong time of year. Yields are down on most of our fields, although we had one field where the yield was really good. Maybe it bloomed at the right time and avoided the heat. With the light crop, the pistachio price is really high right now. We also grew some watermelons for seed. We harvested that in July. With seed, you don’t know the percentage of germination and quality until you weigh it, dry it and the processor gives you your final numbers. They need to make sure there’s no disease and that the crop didn’t cross with another wild variety. We think we did OK, but we don’t know until we get the check, and sometimes we don’t get paid until the end of the year. We’re using a lot of diesel right now, and it’s pretty tough. We try to cut back on the number of people we use, cut down on the amount of overtime, which is a killer. They make all these laws to help the workers, but they hurt the workers because they can’t work as many hours.
Blake Wilbur Tulare County farmer Most of our harvest has wrapped up—between pistachios, almonds and corn silage. We’re going to be picking cotton in the next two weeks. We’re doing our fall tillage to prep the ground for next year. I almost wanted to delay it because it’s a heavy fuel consumer, but at a certain point in the season you have to just take the hit because soon the weather is not going to cooperate and you won’t have enough time in the day. The high diesel prices are hurting. Pistachio harvest was a big failure due to warm spring temperatures during pollination, which woke up the male trees while the female trees were still dormant. Pollen went out without females that were receptive. That’s the understanding of what happened. We’re seeing a massive loss in our older pistachio trees. We didn’t shake probably half our acres, and what we did shake produced only around 10% of the expected yield. That was a big disappointment. Our almond crop was average. The price was substantially better than last year. That’s a bright spot. We normally see a little bit of a dip in milk production in September and October, and we’re seeing that this year. Our cows have endured a long summer. Milk right now is barely making you break even. If it wasn’t for the high beef prices, we would probably be losing money. We’ll see what happens with the super El Niño. Farmers are preparing to take any water we might get from flood-control releases for groundwater recharge. That’s par for the course now. Some people are starting to construct recharge basins on their farms, and a lot of guys are just going to keep their ground open so they’re able to take water for recharge if the water does come down the canals when it’s too early to irrigate. I try not to let any water go by me without putting it somewhere.
4 Ag Alert October 7, 2026
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