From the Fields ®
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Kevin Merrill Santa Barbara County winegrape grower
Ray Yeung Yolo County farmer
It’s been an interesting year weather-wise. We started out with a very cool summer, and we’ve caught up with some days in the upper 90s and 100s. Fog attributed to a lot of mildew pressure in the winegrapes, so we are trying to deal with the mildew infestations throughout the Central Coast. Plus, we are pulling leaves in the vineyards and shoot thinning to a degree. We’re waiting for verai- son to kick in, which is just starting. Winegrape harvest will probably start in late August to early September, which is the norm. We’re looking forward to some good weather to get us to the finish line. Labor is always challenging, but we have gotten by OK this year. We are using more H-2A labor, but that’s also an issue because it is very expensive and always going up. In our part of the state, we had a 40,000-acre wildfire near the Santa Ynez Valley. We did have some smoke, but for the most part, I don’t think it caused any smoke taint issues in the winegrapes. We hope the market will start to turn around as a lot of grapes have been re- moved in areas of California. The Central Coast has done its share of taking out older vineyards, and we’re hoping we get production back in balance. The over- supply of winegrapes is a state problem. People are not drinking as much wine anymore, and we’re battling production from around the world. Larger wineries are bringing in juice from other countries and selling it mixed with a little of our “California”-labeled wine, and that is not helping. We are concerned with the direction the state Department of Pesticide Regulation is headed with new restrictions. The department’s notification regu- lation is unnecessary. They should let agricultural commissioners do their jobs. Plus, PCA licensing costs are going way up, and the way we report our continu- ing education classes are changing and will be more burdensome.
This year was interesting because it was a really wet spring, and now it’s this record heat, so we’re having to deal with that. We’re heavily irrigating the pro- cessing tomatoes because we’re afraid all the flowers are going to fall off. We’re also trying to keep the pistachios irrigated. Everything looks good, but looking good and what we get at harvest are two different things. We grow fresh-market heirloom tomatoes, and because the spring was really cool, we were worried they weren’t going to be ripe on time. But everything has caught up because of this latest heat wave. We finished harvesting our triticale, which is for feed. Prices are really bad this year. We also grow a lot of alfalfa. It’s tough because prices are not good for a lot of these commodities. With alfalfa, we can hardly sell it because the prices are so bad and no one wants it. We sell it to a broker, but we’ll sell it to anybody with animals that wants it. I don’t understand what’s going on. I’ve been on the farm for almost 40 years, and I’ve never seen a year like this where it was so good one year and then so bad the next. People have said they’ve never seen anything like this. I think because the price of hay was so high the last few years, livestock people have thought of alternative ways to feed their animals other than depending on hay. Maybe that has something to do with it. Everything is down. For us, it all started when we lost the (contract on) sun- flowers. The processing tomato price is down, but it’s not as bad as the other ones. Grain prices are down to what they were in the ‘70s. We grow fresh-market tomatoes for the restaurants, and they have challenges too because they have to pay more wages, and the economy is bad, so it’s a tough deal this year.
Chris Jergenson Merced and Stanislaus counties farmer
Everything I farm is organic. My peaches look a week or two later than last year. We were thinking this heat would make them ripen a lot quicker, but it actually slows stuff down. The crop looks very good, with minimal insect damage. For sweet potatoes, the heat is nice because they’re under- ground, and they want that warm dirt. Because I’m organic, we don’t mow or spray any herbicides, so we have a lot of native grasses and beneficial pests like praying mantis and ladybugs that take care of all the other pests. For peach twig borer and oriental fruit moth, we put organic mating disruptors out in the springtime. Our pest numbers are very small on peaches and almonds. I’m one of Dole’s only organic growers in California for peaches, and the plant manager can’t believe how clean my fruit is. I started planting sweet potatoes in May and finished June 1. The plants are completely vined out. All I’m doing now is flood irrigating and hand pulling weeds. Our main weed is pigweed. I like to flood because it helps leach out a lot of the salt, and I don’t have to have an employee setting gopher traps. I furrow irrigate with siphon pipe. I don’t use a diesel pump or electric pump. I use water out of the canal. With flood irrigation, it takes me six hours to irrigate my 20-acre blocks, and I don’t have to go back for 21 days. It’s not too expensive. It also helps the sweet potatoes grow on both sides very well. As far as cultivating and getting rid of the weeds, it’s a lot easier for me be- cause I don’t have to move hoses. I can get in there with the tractor, put my sweets in and cultivate. I’ll probably be harvesting my sweet potatoes in late September. I start harvesting peaches in about three weeks, and I harvest for about two weeks. Then I harvest my almonds.
4 Ag Alert July 24, 2024
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