- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Billikopf provided research-based labor management information for agricultural employers and workers in San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties for 33 years.
He earned his B.S. in agronomy at UC Davis and M.A. in labor management from California State University, Stanislaus.
As a UCCE labor management farm advisor, Billikopf's extension and teaching efforts focused on employee selection, wage structures, interpersonal negotiation skills, conflict resolution and mediation. He received the “best publication” award from the National Association for County Agricultural Agents for his book Labor Management in Agriculture: Cultivating Personnel Productivity, as well as awards from other professional organizations.
His advice reached beyond farms. In a 1994, he published Helping Colleagues Cope With Grief in the Modesto Bee. In a Scientific American article about helping children grieve during the COVID-19 pandemic, a school psychologist cited his empathetic approach “listening first aid,” “to help empty the large reservoirs of emotion, anger, stress, frustration and other negative feelings.”
After he retired in 2014, Billikopf returned to his native Chile to provide community mediation and labor productivity training, but later returned to California where he was active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Read more about his life at https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/28469245/gregory-encina-billikopf.
