Travis Fugitt KernCounty diversified farmer and customharvester
We are gearing up to start cot- ton picking, and we’re looking at a start date of about Oct. 10. We’re estimat- ing about the same yields as
If you hire a farm labor contractor, you can’t “farm out” the responsibility for complying with the Worker Protection Standard. The responsibility is still yours.
last year. I looked at some cotton in the Tipton area that we’ll be harvesting and it’ll be a solid three-bale, if not a four-bale crop, which is excellent. The pima down in Bakersfield that we’re harvesting looks to be average for what they normally do. We already harvested our hemp. Our last day of harvest was last week. It went very well. I believe we harvested 2,000 pounds of flower per acre. This is our third year of growing hemp. We had a research permit, so we start- ed a year before everybody else. We’re learning new things every year. We’re toy- ing with all the latest and greatest genet- ics. What they gave us in the beginning wasn’t really well suited for California’s desert, dry-heat climate. What we’ve been toying with is all the different genet- ics, trying to figure out what’s going to work here or the best quality flower for the end result. We’re after the cannabinoids. Everybody just says hemp CBD. It’s not that at all. It’s actually CBN, CBG. There’s all kinds of different ones, and we began researching ourselves what each strain does and what it’s good for. CBD is good for inflammation. CBN is more for sleep. With CBG, if you’re taking a medication that you needed to get into your body faster, it’s like a supercarrier to get it in quicker. We have our own re- search labs doing that in house. Our challenges this year were germina- tion-related, and we’ve learned that cer- tain genetics like cooler temperatures to germinate. We learned that it needs to be planted earlier in the season and it does not like heat—and we had nothing but heat. Late in the season, thanks to California’s mismanagement of the forest and all the forest fires we have going, smoke/ash was a huge problem with the crop late in the season. Smoke causes the acidity in the plant to skyrocket, so the quality may not even be usable if it was in a region where the smoke was too thick. Hemp is essentially a sponge, and it goes after any of the bad things that are in the soil or its environment; it just soaks them up. Its pro is it cleans the soil and is beneficial. Its con is the finished product also takes it in too, and that’s bad. Our facility up in Lancaster was im- pacted by fire. We have farms in different regions, and different fires affected them
It’s your responsibility – not your farm labor contractor’s – to comply with the agricultural Worker Protection Standard. Take charge and take care of your workers. Your workers benefit and so do you.
To learn more, go to EPA.gov/pesticide-worker-safety
4 Ag Alert October 7, 2020
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