- Author: Ricardo Vela
300 Latino farmers listened carefully to five of their peers, three men and two women, as they shared problems they encounter in the field, such as climate change, labor, and the cost of water, among other topics.
For the women, the biggest challenge is to get ahead and be taken seriously in a male-dominated field. "It is a huge challenge as a Latina in a male-dominated environment like agriculture," said María Inés Catalán, a farmer in San Benito County.
There are 14,000 Latino farmers in California, and according to Carlos Suarez, state director of Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS), the number could be higher. NRCS is a federal agency that provides technical and farmer assistance and is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
35 organizations were involved in the Conference this year, including government agencies that offered all kinds of information, community agencies, and several University of California Cooperative Extension specialists. Irwin Donis, Assistant Postharvest Engineering Specialist in Cooperative Extension, was one of them; He gave a workshop on the use of technology in agriculture. Donis stated that 70 percent of his working time he speaks Spanish.
The Conference was an intense learning experience for one day, with a wide variety of topics such as irrigation, evaporation, compost, marketing, access to credit, pesticides, and new regulations for groundwater sustainability, risk management, and harassment.
Another UCCE specialist Teresa Andrews of UC Davis Center for Health and the Environment who spoke about harassment, topic that captured the attention of all the attendees.
Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, agricultural advisor for Fresno County UC Cooperative Extension, explained a new water management law that will take effect next year. It is a law that arises as a result of drought, depletion of aquifers, and the crucial need to care for water.
For these Latino farmers, one thing was very clear by the end of the Conference: the biggest problems they face are financing and lack of marketing support.
"Marketing is the hardest thing for the producer because the price does not depend on the farmer. It is the market that controls it," said María Inés Catalán. "The economy is changing, there are more and smaller producers, and we need to know how to prepare to sell because the whole business depends on it."
The statewide sustainable agriculture conference for Spanish-speaking farmers was sponsored by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and NRCS. The annual conference brings together the Latino farming community with the agricultural industry, advocates for sustainability and agribusiness for a day of workshops, networking and learning from fellow farmers.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The story focused on a tour last week organized by UC Cooperative Extension and the UC Agricultural Sustainability Institute intended to help small growers find new avenues to sell their products.
"Everyone wants to do business with them," said David Visher, a project analyst who helped organize the workshop. "We're not advocating that they choose processors over farmers' markets. We're just trying to show them their options and introduce them to the right people so they can make their own choices."
One of the growers on the tour, Emma Torbert, told the reporter she returned to her farm near Davis with a head full of possibilities.
Read more about the tour in the UC Food Blog post Cultivating connections between farmers and food buyers.
- Author: Diane Nelson
It’s not easy to find markets for your produce when you’re an immigrant farmer or someone new to farming. You can sell your crops at fruit stands or farmers markets, but you may not have the contacts or even the language skills and cultural customs to connect with large-scale produce distributors.
Meanwhile, in restaurants, grocery stores, schools, hospitals and corporate lunchrooms across the state, buyers are clamoring for locally grown food.
“The demand for local, sustainable food is large and increasing,” said Gail Feenstra, food systems coordinator for the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program and the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of California, Davis. “Distributors can’t find enough locally grown produce to meet the need.”
But that’s changing, thanks to a new Small and Ethnic Farmer Market Tour Project which introduces small farmers to conventional distributors interested in offering a line of locally grown food. The project is run by the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute and funded by CoBank, a national cooperative bank serving rural America, and three farm credit associations: Farm Credit West, American AgCredit and Farm Credit Services of Colusa-Glenn.
“With this round of funding, UC Davis will work with growers from the Monterey/Salinas area and from the Sacramento Valley,” Feenstra said. “We conducted three tours last year — in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco — and they were wonderfully successful,” Feenstra said.
“We have translators on board, too, if needed,” Feenstra said. “We drive to terminal markets, produce houses or processing facilities where growers meet face-to-face with distributors who explain their produce needs.”
The program also helps farmers create an action plan for selling their crops and prepare a farm profile — a flyer that explains who they are and what they grow.
“Workshops and field days are great education tools, but nothing makes markets happen as well as simply introducing a willing seller to a willing buyer and then stepping out of the way,” Visher said. “We help growers tell their stories and make good-value propositions to buyers, but it’s really up to these business people to make their own deals.”
Often, small farmers need to joins forces in order to efficiently sell to wholesale buyers. The program helps them do that, too.
“We hear a lot of great conversations on the bus between growers about how best to aggregate their product,” Visher said.
The farmers and distributors make lasting connections, according to those who participated in last year’s tours.
“We’ve been getting good responses from the promotional flyer David (Visher) helped us prepare for our avocado ranch,” said Los Angeles area farmer Steve Bailey. “Thanks to the contacts and advice, we’ve started selling to local restaurants.”
“We’re always on the lookout for new sources of organic produce and local farms,” said David Weinstein, sales manager at Heath & Lejeune, Inc., a certified organic wholesaler in Commerce, Calif. “Our firm knows firsthand that some of these small farmers will become important suppliers in the future and it is in our interest to help them know how to do business at our level.”
CoBank and its Farm Credit partners say they are happy to help.
“Local food initiatives prove that the food we eat can do more than nourish our bodies,” said Leili Ghazi, Western Region president of CoBank. “They can strengthen and support our communities and create tremendous economic opportunities. The challenge has always been connecting the right people and businesses at the right time. CoBank and our Farm Credit partners are so pleased to support UC Davis in its efforts to help introduce the region’s small, ethnic farmers to those who can truly help them grow their business.”
To learn more about project and how you can participate, contact Visher at (530) 758-2429, dlvisher@ucdavis.edu.
Media contacts:
- Diane Nelson, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, (530) 752-1969, denelson@ucdavis.edu
- David Visher, UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute, (530) 758-2429, dlvisher@ucdavis.edu
- Gail Feenstra, UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute, (530) 752-8408, gmfeenstra@ucdavis.edu