We Are Not the Breadbasket of the World...

We’re Not the Breadbasket of the World…

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright 2013

               We’re not the Breadbasket of the World, we’re the Salad Bowl and Fruit Basket of the World. OK, that’s kind of a free throw when talking about California.

            We leave wheat, soybeans and corn to the American Midwest and the Ukraine. We can grow wheat and corn here. Really good wheat and corn. But, they can’t grow cherries or strawberries and peaches , almonds or lettuce like we do. We are amazing in our diversity. We’ve talked about this before. You can drive through four states in the Midwest and all you will see is corn, wheat and soybeans or wheat, soybeans and corn. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, here you can drive for thirty minutes and see dozens of different crops. We grow over three hundred different crops here in the Valley. Our climate, people and infrastructure allow us to grow an amazing diversity of crops.

            So, we are not the Breadbasket of the World. We are the salad bowl, for all the veggies we grow and the fruit basket, -not for all the crazy people in the Bay Area, but because we an amazing diversity of world-class fruits here in the Valley.

   It has been another warm summer week on the farm. The cotton is doing fine. We are starting another round of water and fertilizer. We are keeping an eye on the bugs. The lygus, a very bad plant bug is showing up again. We are not going to spray quite yet. Like I said, we are going to keep an eye on it. I'll sweep the fields again after the weekend. 

   The warm weather has gotten to some of the trees. The Non-pariels are fine, but the Carmels are looking a little ragged. It looks like the mites are trying to come back.

   We also started working up the wheat ground. We'll disk it and rip it then let it sit fallow for a few weeks. There's always something to do on the farm.

I hope Y'all have a fabulous week.