Farm to Fork

By Victor Martino

Machines to the rescue

I’ve written a considerable amount in my column about the farm labor crunch in California, suggesting it’s not going to improve much and that one of the few solutions farmers have is to increase mechanization.

A new survey by the California Farm Bureau concurs with my analysis.

Farmers in the Golden State are increasingly moving to various forms of mechanization as a way to deal with the shortage of labor on the farm, according to the survey of 1,071 farmers, which was conducted earlier this year and released in May.

More than 40% of the state’s farmers in the past 5 years have been unable to find and hire all the workers they need to bring in their crops, according to the survey. A whopping 70% of farmers said they’ve experienced more trouble hiring farm workers in 2017 and 2018 than in the previous years. The labor crunch is getting worse.

About 56% of the farmers surveyed by the California Farm Bureau have started using mechanization in the past five years, and of the total, more than half said it was because of labor shortages.

The most frequently used labor-saving technology was some sort of mechanical harvester.

Increasingly, farmers also are turning to specialized tractor attachments and mechanical planters and weeders as substitutes for human labor, according to the survey.

The survey didn’t address “smart” and robotic technology on the farm specifically but as I’ve been suggesting here for over a year it is the next iteration on the farm as one of the multiple solutions to the labor crisis, which isn’t going to go away. The field of AgTech or precision agriculture is booming, with startups in California and throughout the world getting heavily-funded by venture capital firms and other investors who believe the next revolution in farming is high-tech and digital.

The farm labor issue is important not only to California farmers and the state’s economy but to the nation as well. The Golden State produces nearly half the country’s fresh fruits and vegetables in addition to over 90% of tree nuts.

Offering higher wages isn’t working either, according to the survey: 86% of farmers surveyed said they’ve increased wages as part of their efforts to attract and hire farm workers.

I see no end in site to the farm labor crunch. As such, farmers will increasingly turn to mechanization where they can in order to deal with the shortage of workers on the farm.

Fruit, nut and veggie farmers want bailout money too

California lawmakers are asking USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue to make more specialty crops, such as grapes and walnuts, eligible for President Trump’s trade relief program that gives some farmers direct payments to offset a loss of their income.

The administration’s trade relief program is designed to help farmers cope primarily with retaliatory tariffs China has declared on certain U.S. products over the past two years, in response to President Trump’s trade war. China just announced another round of those retaliatory tariffs this week in response to new tariffs the president imposed on additional Chinese products exported to the U.S.

The payouts have been mostly focused on farmers growing commodities like soybeans and corn. But California farmers who grow vegetables, fruits and nuts say getting a piece of the aid money will help them navigate the economic uncertainty caused by the tariffs.

Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock is sponsoring the legislation and has sent Secretary Perdue a bipartisan letter signed by 16 members of Congress that requests that all specialty crops, such as fruits, vegetables and nuts, be included in the products that receive direct payments from the federal government.

Perdue announced in late May that the Trump administration will soon offer a new trade aid package with between $15 million and $20 million farmers.

An estimated 287,000 people in California work in industries that are exposed to being affected by Chinese tariffs on a range of U.S. exports to China — by far the largest amount of employees at risk in the nation, according to a report from the Brookings Institution. A significant percentage of those jobs, particularly in California’s agriculture-dominated Central Valley, are in farming and the related agribusiness industry, including food processing.

There’s appears to be no end in site for the trade war with China. Many players in California agriculture who a year ago were only moderately concerned about its potential to seriously damage California farming agribusiness are becoming very concerned as it drags on. Bailouts might help a little — but what’s needed is a resolution. I don’t see one coming soon tough. Hold on to your John Deere caps folks. More trade war woes are coming

One step forward, one step back on hemp

The good news for farmers wanting to cultivate industrial hemp is that the California Department of Food and Agriculture has finally given the go-ahead for growers to register with counties for permission to grow hemp, which unlike its cousin marijuana doesn’t make people high.

But the bad news is agricultural commissioners for California’s 58 counties are in charge of processing the hemp cultivation permit registration — and this is creating a patchwork of restrictive and contradictory policies for hemp cultivation in the Golden State.

As of late May only 22 counties in California were accepting hemp registration forms from farmers who want to crow the crop, which has a wide-range of applications, ranging from construction material and clothing to nutritional foods and CBD, which is a non-psychoactive compound derived from hemp and used in a wide range of topical and consumable products for pain and anxiety relief, as well as for other therapeutic purposes. The CBD market is booming, with some projections having it going from its current $1 billion annually to $22 billion in less than 10 years.

The other 35 counties say they’re either waiting on more information from the state or have passed moratoriums on hemp farming. Hemp farming is legal under both state and federal law but in California some counties say they’re considering using their police powers and zoning laws to ban hemp cultivation altogether. If that happens expect some serious legal battles from the hemp industry nationally.

Meanwhile, other states like Kentucky and Colorado are going forward in major ways with hemp farming, along with building a hemp industry.

The hemp products market is booming too. A few developments: Clothing giant Levi Strauss recently announced it will make a line of clothing from hemp; drug chain giants Walgreens, CVS and Rite-Aid are set to begin selling topical creams, lotions, oils and other products containing CBD this month; and in Kentucky a group is building a $52-million plant where they’ll produce construction materials like plywood out of industrial hemp.

California and its farmers are getting left behind when it comes to hemp farming in America.

California grown — coffee?

We grow about 450 different crops in California, a true agricultural phenomenon.

One of the Golden State’s newest crops, believe it or not, is coffee.

The burgeoning state industry now boasts 30 farms growing more than 30,000 coffee trees, according to the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. More new coffee tree acreage is being added too.

Coffee farms are scattered throughout California, but the biggest concentrations are in Santa Barbara and San Diego counties in Southern California. Most of the farms are fewer than five years old and their beans are just starting to mature, which means in the not too distant you’ll be able to choose a cup of California-grown java instead of Columbian, Ethiopian or Costa Rican.

Specialty coffee beans sell for $60 to $600 per pound — avocados sell for about 40 cents a pound by comparison — so even though coffee will be a small specialty crop in California for years to come, it has the potential to be a lucrative one for those farmers who choose to plant the trees and harvest the coffee beans. And it’s safe to say our appetite for coffee isn’t about to slow anytime soon. America is fueled by coffee, after all.