Archive for the ‘Farming’ Category

World Ag Expo 2010

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Sorry I haven’t posted recently. As with all of us, life sometimes just gets busy! But I did want to share a photo and some thoughts about the World Ag Expo 2010, which just ended yesterday. For the uninitiated, the World Ag Expo is an enormous three-day agriculture show that takes place in Tulare, California. If you’re curious about tractors, ploughs, high-tech irrigation systems, or dairy management software, this is the place for you. More than 100,000 visitors, many of them from overseas, converge on the expo to see the newest and slickest stuff in ag.

Dad and I at World Ag Expo 2010

I went down with my mother and father to check out “Big Ag” and found myself a little overwhelmed. The scale of the expo, the scale of the tractors, the scale of the farms in the San Joaquin Valley just dwarfs Northern California. As my father said, “Compared to these guys, we’re just gardeners.” But nonetheless, all that scale is pretty impressive.

I signed up for a Citrus Tour, in which a citrus grower took a bus-full of us on a tour of a packing plant, juice facility, and orchard. And I have to say, it was pretty enlightening.  I’ve said before that we live in a food “black box” society. Most Americans have no idea how their food is produced; they just buy it at the store and eat it. So checking out the packing and juice plants to find out how that navel orange in the orchard is converted into the the slick shiny thing you buy or into the premium juice that takes up a huge refrigerated space at Safeway opened up the black box for me a little.

Yes, your navel oranges are washed, dipped in fungicide, and waxed before they head to the grocery store. They may be gassed with ethylene gas, although only if there is green still left in the peel. They are routinely subjected to pesticide while still in the orchard to protect against pests that attack the peel (but not the fruit underneath). All this is done to make the fruit look good, because as one farmer said, “People like pretty fruit.”

While in the orchard, I sampled one of the oranges off the tree, and it was delicious. But it was a dull sort of orange with a tiny bit of green in the peel.  No gas and no wax yet. Definitely not as pretty as those on display in the grocery store.  The farmer assured me it was safe to eat, because the last application of pesticide was a month earlier. I listened to him chat about ”nitrogen” he added to the irrigation water to fertilize the trees.

It wasn’t an organic tour; that’s for sure. But the manipulations were pretty small if you compare it with juice production. It takes millions and millions of dollars to buy all the technology to make orange juice. I’ll save that for a later post, though…

Posted in Farming, Nutrition and Diet | No Comments »

Food and Farming–The Debate Rolls On

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Many thanks to my brother, Chris, for forwarding me Joel Kotkin’s Forbes article, America’s Agricultural Angst. I have to admit I smiled when Kotkin referred to Michael Pollan as an “agri-intellectual.” A new breed has been born! But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Pollan and similarly-opinioned food and farming journalists question the status quo, which is useful in any freethinking, progressive society. What’s also important, however, is dialogue and equal coverage of divergent viewpoints. Kotkin’s defense of the real accomplishments of modern American agriculture is overdue and definitely worth a read.

What do you think?

On an unrelated note, here’s a follow-up photo of the Great Freeze of 2009. As you may recall, we abandoned the Rumsey mandarin crop after the oranges froze on the trees. This photo taken two days ago shows how the frozen mandarins rotted on the branch. A real shame.

Rotten Mandarins

Posted in Farming, Organic Mandarin Oranges | 4 Comments »

The Facts About Food and Farming

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Back in October I attended a dinner to promote Michael Pollan’s documentary, The Botany of Desire. Not surprisingly, conversation drifted away from the film and toward Pollan’s more famous work, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The author graciously answered questions from the group, discussing the hazards of monoculture, the agri-industrial complex, and the ubiquity of cheap processed food. I listened quietly and was struck by a strange thought. Nearly every one at the gathering (a major donors event for KQED) seemed to agree with Pollan and talked about agriculture as though they owned the issue, while not a single farmer, around whom the whole discussion revolved, was present. It was one-sided to say the least. And that to me is at the heart of the often acrimonious food and farming debate. There is no dialogue between the ag-reform-minded, often urban, ”food” crowd and actual farmers. Instead the two poles of the farming debate spend their time “debating” with like-minded people, preaching to the converted, talking right past each other.

So it was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon a recent article by Los Angeles Times food columnist, Russ Parsons. Finally a nuanced look at the food and farming debate! What immediately won me over was his first point: farming is a business. It’s not altruistic. Most farmers don’t make a whole lot of money anyway. To begrudge them technological advances that might increase their income is to expect a degree of self-sacrifice that is not only unrealistic  but also unfair.

This struck home on a personal level this winter when a freeze wiped out part of our mandarin crop. As I’ve said before, there are so many things beyond control in farming: freezes, drought, market conditions. One can understand why a farmer wants to even the odds by using whatever he or she can to boost production, to try to insulate income, as much as possible, from income-killers over which there is no control. In medicine, we call such technological advances progress. In agriculture,  they’re called short-sighted or morally wrong.

Now I’m not saying I advocate the status quo, but ag reform is a tough, complex issue. And if some ground rules for dialogue, like those suggested by Parsons, are established, maybe we’ll move beyond acrimony into something more like progress.

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Aftermath of the Freeze

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

I went to the farm this weekend and walked the mandarin orchard with my father, pulling small oranges off trees and tasting them, trying to see which were still good and which had been ruined by last week’s sub-freezing temperatures. It was heartbreaking. At the Rumsey farm, more than 75% of the fruit has spoiled on the tree. With numbers like that, it doesn’t make sense to harvest the remaining mandarins. The workers would be forced to sort good from bad, and the yields wouldn’t warrant the labor expenses. As a consequence, we’ve decided to abandon Rumsey’s mandarins.

Fortunately, the damage is less severe at the Dunbar orchard. It looks like we’ve lost maybe 25% of the mandarins to the freeze. This may seem awful, but that means at least three-quarters of the fruit are still marketable. The only problem is that there isn’t a big market right now. It’s been a bumper crop for organic satsuma mandarins this year, and even a freeze hasn’t been able to correct an oversupply of marketable mandarins.

Which points out the always changing fortunes of the farmer. If it isn’t Mother Nature–wind, freezing temperatures or drought–it’s market conditions. I’ve always thought a farmer needed a stomach of steel to weather such uncertainties; there is so much beyond his or her control. By contrast, my job as a physician, with all the certainties afforded by modern medical technology, seems like a relative walk in the park.

Posted in Farming, Organic Mandarin Oranges | 3 Comments »

Saving the Mandarins from the Cold

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Frozen Mandarins
Frozen Mandarins
If you’re a grower, this is a picture you never want to see. The temperature dropped down to 20 degrees last night, and in a bid to save the fruit on the trees, we turned on the sprinklers, raining water down that froze into eerie arctic-looking icicles.
 
The latest cold snap has been a brutal one. The last four nights have seen sub-freezing temperatures, the last two nights descending into the low twenties and teens. Ripe mandarin oranges can withstand temperatures in the low-twenties, provided it’s for a short period of time. But the last two nights have seen ten hours or more of freezing temperatures each night, and with 80% of our crop still on trees, could turn a bumper crop into a bust.
 
You might wonder with all our fears of cold weather why we’re purposely turning our trees into ice cubes. Spraying citrus trees with water is an old technique, designed to insulate the fruit from sub-freezing temperatures by covering them with a layer of 32 degree ice. We’ve run the sprinklers from sundown to sun up the last two nights, but with the prolonged periods of sub-freezing weather, it’s too early to tell if we’ve made a difference.
 
We’ll start picking again in a few days,  when the full extent of the damage will be evident.

Posted in Farming, Organic Mandarin Oranges | 1 Comment »

The Mandarins are Coming!

Friday, November 13th, 2009
The Mandarins are Almost Ripe

The Mandarins are Almost Ripe

The kids and I spent a lovely Fall day at the farm yesterday, soaking up the beautiful autumnal colors and the cooler weather. Walnut harvest is finally finished, and now we can turn in earnest to our next seasonal crop: organic satsuma mandarins.

Many of the little oranges have already started to turn color with just the smallest hint of green left. Next week we’ll ship out our first batches to River Dog Farm, which distributes our organic mandarins to various community supported agriculture operations in the Bay Area. Although not as sweet as they’ll be in December, the mandarins are already delicious. The kids and the dogs couldn’t stop eating them.

Baby Olive Trees Waiting to be Planted

Baby Olive Trees Waiting to be Planted

The mandarins aren’t the only action at the farm these days. The men are planting two acres of olive trees. We’re expanding beyond the traditional Tuscan varieties to several Spanish varieties that I learned about from Paul Vossen, Cooperative Extension’s resident olive expert. The trees won’t come into production for three years or so, but I can’t help feel excited. California olive oil is on the upswing, and as you know, we’re already producing gold medal-winning extra virgin olive oil. With new varieties to experiment with, we should be able to make some fantastic blends.

Posted in California Olive Oil, Farming, Organic Mandarin Oranges | 2 Comments »

Food for Thought– An Evening with Michael Pollan

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

I had the good fortune to preview the new documentary, The Botany of Desire, last night. The film is based on the book by the same name by Michael Pollan, who was on hand to discuss the making of the film and the politics of food– all over a fine meal of cage-free chicken and organic vegetables.

Michael Pollan, as you may know, is the author of several bestsellers about the food we eat: The Omnivore’s Dilemna and In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto. Since I just happened to be reading the latter book, I was particularly delighted  to be invited to hear the author speak.

And speak he did. Pollan is articulate and forceful, making a strong argument for reform of what he calls “industrial agriculture.” Throwing out statistics designed to make your eyes pop, Pollan proceeded to illuminate why our country’s agricultural practice of focusing on commondity foods, such as corn, soybean, and wheat, has threatened our ecosystem: “monoculture” requires the widespread use of petrochemical-derived fertilizers, which burns through fossil fuels; clearing fields, using massive farming equipment, and transporting and processing commodity food pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; the quantity and quality of these relatively “cheap calories” threatens our national health.

The crowd was suitably awed and appreciative, although one man asked Pollan about what seemed like a dust-up in San Luis Obispo some time ago in which an academic in the beef field took Pollan to task. Pollan skated over the details of the confrontation, but did acknowledge that elevated food prices are the main argument against his proposed reforms. We grow a lot of food cheaply now, he says, so that the equivalent of one hour’s work at minimum wage can “buy you thousands of calories at a fast food restaurant.” But what, he asks, is the quality and true cost of those cheap calories?

Regardless of where your opinions fall on the food policy spectrum–and people certainly seem to have passionate, wide-ranging views–The Omnivore’s Dilemna should be required reading for all. If nothing else, Pollan will make you think about where your food comes from and the seeming ubiquity of processed food that has become of staple of the Western Diet.

Meanwhile, The Botany of Desire, a visually beautiful film about the adaptive strategies of plants, premiers on October 28 at 8 pm on KQED. Check your local public television listings to see when it’s showing near you.

Posted in Books You Gotta Read, Farming, Health, Nutrition and Diet | No Comments »

Saving the Trees from the Wind

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

The sun is finally peeking out from behind the clouds as I write this, and I can’t help but heave a sigh of relief. It rained nearly four inches in the last 24 hours, a storm that the San Francisco Chronicle is calling the worst since 1962. Make no doubt about it, we need the rain, but the timing couldn’t be worse. We’re right in the middle of walnut harvest, and sodden soils mean the heavy harvesting equipment can’t go out into the fields. We’ll have to wait until the ground dries.

Topped Walnut Trees

Topped Walnut Trees

The storm also forced us into a defensive move: “topping” our 2-year old walnut trees. As you can see in the photo above, we cut a lot of the foliage off the new trees just before the storm struck. Two-year old trees, or what we call second leaf walnuts, have more foliage than their slender young trunks can support in a windstorm. The trees topple over. Guided by the weather forecast, we made the decision to “top” the trees to try to save them from the winds.

Happily the trees are still standing. However, the storm’s wind wasn’t as strong as predicted, and now we wonder if we needed to cut all those branches. Ah, the vicissitudes of farming…

Posted in Farming | No Comments »