Delegation visits county to glean production tips
More than a dozen of China’s most highly placed agricultural
officials paid a visit to San Benito County Tuesday, the only
farming region they planned to visit on their way to a three-day
visit to Washington, D.C.
The group of 14, plus a driver and translator, arrived under
soggy skies at the San Benito County Agriculture Commissioner’s
office, a modest building off Southside Road.
Delegation visits county to glean production tips
More than a dozen of China’s most highly placed agricultural officials paid a visit to San Benito County Tuesday, the only farming region they planned to visit on their way to a three-day visit to Washington, D.C.
The group of 14, plus a driver and translator, arrived under soggy skies at the San Benito County Agriculture Commissioner’s office, a modest building off Southside Road.
They clustered in a cramped conference room with Paul Matulich, county agriculture commissioner, and Gregg Swett, a Paicines walnut grower and the president of the county Farm Bureau.
The delegation included governmental representatives from across the Asian nation that’s almost as large as the United States, but home to more than four times its population. More than 1.3 billion people call themselves Chinese, scattered among diverse ethnic and religious groups.
The delegation’s mission, according to the leader of the group, Li Feng Shu, the division chief of the Hainan Provincial Office for Supporting and Developing Poor Areas, was to explore ways to meld American agricultural technology into the Chinese system. Hainan is the southernmost area of China, with a population of 7.34 million.
Speaking through an interpreter, Shu said that more than 800 million Chinese citizens remain in rural villages, toiling in an agricultural system that still struggles with poverty. Members of the group are seeking to lift rural growers and producers into greater productivity, increasing the quality of life and giving China greater wherewithal to feed its population domestically.
The whirlwind visit included a two-hour question-and-answer session at the county agriculture office, lunch at a local Chinese restaurant, and planned visits to Earthbound Farms and Guerra Nut Shelling. The visit to Earthbound – the world’s largest producer of organic packaged salad greens – was cancelled at the last minute because Earthbound staff said they had booked the wrong date on their company calendar.
But the group was clearly entranced with their visit to Guerra’s, a family-owned business on Hillcrest Road in Hollister.
The company buys walnuts from growers in San Benito County and the Central Valley, using the latest innovations in the industry to process and package the nuts.
Members of the group explained that walnuts are particularly cherished in China because they resemble the human brain, an auspicious coincidence.
As Guerra led people through his family’s plant – which this year will process nearly 10,000 tons of California walnuts – cameras clicked and the pace of discussion quickened.
Ironically, the company had just shipped 12 large containers of nuts in the shell to Hong Kong, where they were destined to be cracked by hand.
The immaculate processing facility bears a heavy perfume of walnuts, but the machinery whirring inside looks nothing like life down on the farm. Automated sorters, laser-guided machinery and packaging lines staffed by people looking more like lab workers than agricultural workers moved at a brisk pace.
And the cameras continued to whirl.
During the morning q-and-a, members of the group explained that much of China’s recent prosperity concentrated itself in the southeast portions of the country. As governmental functionaries connected to agriculture development, their job is to bring that prosperity to the food production arena, particularly in the nation’s more impoverished western areas.
The group’s questions were pointed and revealed much about their goals.
How many people in the county are doing jobs related to agriculture?
Swett and Matulich agreed: about 8,000, but it varies markedly by season.
How much are field workers paid?
About $10 to $12 per hour.
How many receive government benefits?
Matulich answered: “About 10 to 12 percent right now, but that’s largely because of the economic situation we find ourselves in.”
What percentage of those working in agriculture are technical personnel?
The answer is complicated by the definition of “technical.” Swett explained that about 2 percent of the local population is involved in plant genetics and seed development. Another 5 percent would be involved in management, with about the same number in supervision roles.
How does government support agriculture?
A first reaction was that governmental influences may conspire to constrain agricultural productivity, but discussion quickly moved on to the San Felipe Project, a federally funded distribution system that brings high quality water from the Northernmost California Cascades Range to San Benito and Santa Clara counties.
But what attracted the most discussion was California’s commitment to agricultural education.
Swett explained that the state’s original system of land grant colleges has grown into a leader in agricultural technology. Through the University of California and segments of the California State University system, new technologies are being introduced through world-leading research.
“Let’s use processing tomatoes as an example,” Swett said. “In the 1950s and ’60s, processing tomatoes yielded 10 tons per acre, hand picked. Today, we get 50 tons per acre and no human hand touches that tomato. The University of California developed that tomato and also helped develop the harvesters. With walnuts, it takes 30 years to develop a new variety. Today, we’re on our second generation” from the university.
Swett also talked about youth development programs, like Future Farmers of America and Four-H. But one of the most effective educators, he said, “is Mom and Dad.”
The group learned that as much as 80 percent of San Benito County’s $290 million in ag production leaves California for other markets, as much as 15 to 20 percent of it going overseas.
Forty percent of California’s walnuts leave the country, Swett said, in spite of the fact that China is the world’s largest producer. Local apricots, renowned for their high quality, ship 70 percent to foreign markets.
The scope of local agriculture clearly impressed the group. San Benito County has 4,400 acres devoted to wine grapes, for example.
But Matulich pointed out that San Benito County is a small player in California agriculture.
The top 10 producing counties statewide all report gross agriculture revenues of $1 to $3 billion annually. Statewide, California agriculture is worth $39 billion. The second largest producer is Texas, with just $26 billion, Matulich said.
Mechanization was the thread weaving through the day’s visit. Swett explained that a crew of three can harvest 450 acres of walnuts today, a job that would have occupied 15 30 years ago.
Heads nodded and conversation quickened when it was mentioned that less than 2 percent of Americans are devoted to agricultural production today, but the United States is a food exporter.
By the end of the 1990s, China’s per capita availability of calories was within 10 percent of that in the developed West. Today, the availability of calories per person is 2,100, according to delegation leader Shu.
Members of the delegation explained, through their interpreter, that government takes a much more active role in agriculture than in the U.S. Support is given for infrastructure, purchase and maintenance of agricultural machinery, and subsidies are commonplace. But decisions about production also include governmental intervention.
“Remember, there is no central command on agriculture here,” Swett said. “It’s all market-driven.”
Later, Swett told an anecdote about a photo he has of his father as a schoolboy. “He was dressed very poorly,” Swett recalled. Two generations later, he said that the American farmer is no longer marginalized. Swett said the essential ingredients are access to education and rural electrification. “In China today, cell phones are allowing farmers to better themselves” with access to new markets, he said. Even newer technologies open new markets, Swett said.
Describing a “cooling pipeline” that moves perishable leafy greens from field to rapid chilling to refrigerated shipping, Swett said “a head of lettuce in a field in San Benito County has no value in Beijing.”
