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.
Photo/Courtesy Rob Miller
Photo/Cody Wirz
Rob Miller Del Norte County flower grower
Pat Wirz San Benito County cattle rancher and winegrape and walnut grower The cattle are doing pretty good. We’re still feeding a bit of hay. The grass in our area is coming along well for this time of year. I’m guessing in another three weeks we’ll be able to turn out and we won’t be supplement feeding anymore for the season. We raise our own supplement hay, and we had a really good hay crop this year. That cut down on some of the expenses over the past year because we didn’t have to buy hay. The year before, we had to buy quite a bit of extra hay. With the good year we had last year—and this year we’re running right at nor- mal rainfall—we are doing fine. We had a storm last week, and we’re still getting showers. We have tarps over all our hay piles. The market is holding pretty good. I generally sell in May or June when the cattle start coming out of the hills. I don’t sell much this time of the year, so I hav- en’t marketed anything for a while. We’re getting ready to start calving at the end of this month and in March. In our vineyards, we are pruning. We’ve got about another month and a half to go. In a couple of weeks, we’ll start spraying the weeds around the vines. Everything is looking good. Our harvest was about normal. The price wasn’t too bad, and we were able to market all our grapes. We had a decent year. In the walnut orchard, we’ve got a cover crop planted, and we’re waiting until things start happening in the spring. I bought the orchard last year from a neighbor who wanted to retire. The orchard bordered us, so we expanded. I’ve always had a few walnut trees, but not as many as I have now. They’re organic, so we planted the cover crop for nitrogen and the extra organic ma- terial it brings.
We have Easter lilies, Oriental lilies, hydrangeas and other flowering crops in the greenhouse. They’re in the middle of growing. The plants in the greenhouse are sold for Easter specifically. Easter dates vary greatly, and we control the flowering time with the temperature in the greenhouse. We also grow bulbs in the field and ship them across the United States and Canada. They supply other greenhouses in North America with Easter lilies. Those were all shipped in October. They go into cold storage at 40 degrees for six weeks and then come out and get planted in greenhouses, including mine, sometime in December. Insurance access is a challenge. A couple years ago, my insurer decided they no longer wanted to insure me because of the potential for catastrophic loss because of a forest fire. They based it on my brush score, which is a fire-related risk assessment the insurance company makes using an aerial photograph and looking at areas with the potential for wildfires. Then they draw a circle or line around the area. My building is between 1 and 2 miles from the closest tree, with irrigated pasture all around. They canceled me, and another insurance compa- ny decided they would insure me for six times more money for coverage worth about 50% of the previous one. Most of what we do is labor-intensive. California’s overtime law for agricultural workers has made it hard to pay irrigators and crop protection workers to work the necessary hours to keep the crops alive. Sometimes you can’t get that work done in an eight-hour day, and we cannot find extra labor to hire. We haven’t been able to keep margins up because we can’t raise our prices com- mensurate with the increased expenses. We’ve scaled way back. Our greenhouse facility used to be full year-round, growing various crops. We employed 100 people at one point. Now, we’ve shrunk back to just flowering crops mainly for Easter.
Greg France Santa Barbara County strawberry grower Everything is planted. We’re doing some weeding and pest control. Otherwise, we’re watching the strawberries grow and letting the rain fall on them. There’s an October or November planting, and the summer planting is usually in May or June. Then we harvest from mid-March and go all the way into December. We harvest strawberries twice a week for six or seven months. The crop we recently harvested had a short- er growing season because the planting was delayed by cold weather last year. Yields were down. Pricing was OK. We have seen an in- crease in costs across the board. Our margins have been tremendously squeezed, if there’s any margin at all. We’ve identified two main drivers of our cost increases. One is labor—not only the increase in
California’s minimum wage but also the Adverse Effect Wage Rate for the H-2A program. About 18% of our workers are from the H-2A program. We have used the program for several years. This past year was probably our best year being able to recruit workers domestically. There were more workers available than in other years. The other major driver of our increased costs was any product made from petroleum. We use drip tape, plastic that goes over our strawberries and fuel for our hauling trucks and tractors. Another challenge has been pest control. They keep reducing the number of materials we’re allowed to use. We can’t use methyl bro- mide anymore and that hurts. The fumigants we do have are not as effective. There are more pests and soil-borne diseases now. Every year, we lose probably 15% to 20% of our crop. As a farmer, we’re always hopeful. We’re hope- ful we can get a fair and honest price for our products and receive a decent margin this year.
Photo/Len Wood
4 Ag Alert February 7, 2024
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