Day 24 California / Mexico

Brock drove us to San Francisco where toured the Burkely Farmers Market. There was one of Superior Farms clients there selling lamb. After some settled in to the hotel, some went for look down town. We were up at 4.30 am to catch the plane down to Mexico. We had to fly into Mexico City and get a connection to Obregon. We got on that connection okay and we saw all the baggage being sorted and put on the plane.
In hind sight we should of been worried.

5 Lots of Missing Luggage

 We left the airport and with Skipper Dave in charge for the day turned up to Hotel in notes but no they didn't have any reservations. Luckily I found a new hotel to find in our notes from one of Jim's emails and yes we were supposed to be there. Another taxi ride and the day finished withy a good shower and bed.

Day 23 California

Dussen Dairy

57 A-side Dairy

Mark Vander Dussen was our last stop for the day. He runs a 6000 milking cow dairy. As with the other dairies that we had visited in the USA, Mark’s cows were all housed in feedlots. He milks the 6000 cows in a 57 a side dairy.


Mark along with 55 staff run the dairy and all of it various enterprises. Each enterprise is run by a manager with support staff beneath them. The farm is set up 2500 acres. The arable group look after all the paddock work and supply all of the hay, grain and silage for the feedlot. There is a group catering to all of the needs of the cow’s nutrition and the calves once born and removed in the first day. They also do custom calf rearing for other farmers in the area. The breeding program is all done in the feedlot with the breeding manager who works with Mark to set the future of the herd.

The Cows Are Fed a TMR in the Feedlot

The farm works on a 30% replacement in the herd. 30 - 40 calves are born each day. They currently have 3000 calves on the place. They sell the non required heifers to other farmers. All of the bull calves are grown out to 150 kg’s and then sold onto a feedlot.

Calf Pens

The cows were all in very good condition. The feeding and management program was doing an excellent job to keep the cows in good shape and achieve good milk numbers and a calving interval of 12.8 – 13 months.

Currently they are being paid $12 / 100 lbs (44kgs). This is too close to the cost of production as Mark said that they are not as efficient as Aussie or Kiwi farmers. The main problem with his current situation is the better priced product, fresh milk only 15% and 85% for cheese and milk powder which give lower returns. Also the value of wages and inputs are steadily climbing If the return gets to $10 / 100 lbs (44 kg’s) he will shut up shop.

University of California Davis

An interesting visit was to UC Davis. Davis is called a land grant uni. This was put in place by Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War. He knew that the country had exhausted their food supplies and they were going to need more food to feed the expanding nation. He grant national land to set up universities across the county to teach people to become farmers and better educate those who were already farmers.

We had a number of meetings with researchers and scientists. Dr James Oltjen works with a lot of cow and calf units to maximize production efficiencies. He uses computer modelling with different classes of stock for animal growth and nutrition.

• Beef models of energy systems for laying down fat.

• Dairy models for milk production which is partly based on good liver model.

• Grass fed system models to make more money by conserving fodder.

Another researcher, J Stu Pettygrove was utilizing satellite imagery to be able see the changing levels of soils over time. This can help determinate whether the ground water reserves were being fully recharge or not.

Finally we met someone involved with the aquaculture industry. Fred gave us a run down on the state of California’s industry. It is worth $US 100 million per year. They have grown a number of species including Trout, Telapia & Abalone. They cannot compete with the rest of the US for eating product but do well selling into the live market and for sports fishing.

They currently have some trials working with Sturgeon of the caviar fame. It is showing good potential as they now have been able to get the fish to complete its total life cycle in fresh water tanks. The other enterprise which is going well is Aquaponics where the farmers are using the water recycled through glasshouses with lettuces in hydroponic growth mediums.

Superior Farms

Shane Mackenzie gave us look around the abattoir owned by Superior Farms and their employees. Shane did an “apprenticeship” in Australia at Hyden. He runs the abattoir which kills 1,400 lambs per day. The company at a number of sites slaughters 25 million stock per year with 380 employees. They supply both the East and West Coast.

The key note on the running of the shed is cleanliness, low stress animals and employee motivation.

They go above the standards set in USA, and are very close to ours for cleanliness, something he learnt in Australia. There are no dogs allowed in the loading of dogs on farm and none in the abattoir. They use Judas sheep which are trained to show the way for other animals. They are also trained to do things by whistle.

The Superior Farms have an Employee Share Option Program (ESOP). This is where the employee earns shares in the company over the time spent in the company. They can only access the value after they have worked for 5 years. Then value is given to them in instalments such as our superannuation. The amount of shares you get each year is dependent on the length of time with the company and the job level. Shane said the mainly Mexican work force did not like it nor understand it. Until an employee retired after considerable time and then received his payments now they all love it. They are very well motivated as each person on the lines think of the next person who receives the carcass as a customer, even if they are standing next to each other. They have pride in their work and want to see the company go well. They return early from mishaps and are quite happy to stick labels on packs etc. if they cannot do their normal job yet. It was a very happy workplace and was well run.

Interesting Notes. Shane stated that the cream for their enterprise was selling the offal. If he made his money back for the meat then he could still make reasonable profit from the offal. They have meat inspectors on the line and they remove the head before the inspector views the carcass so they use the calcification of the lower shank joint to class wether it is a lamb of hogget. The carcass sizes they look for is 40kg dressed weight. Their size made them look more like pigs than lambs and they have very limited fat deposition.

Day 22 California

Salinas Valley

Aerial Veiw of the Salinas Valley

The Salinas Valley in the north of California is called the fruit bowl of California and made up of lots of “Truck Farmers”. These are smaller acreage farmers who are similar to our market gardeners who specialize in a few crops. We stayed in the town of Monterey which is a fairly swank area with about 250,000 people. The area is semi arid with 14 inch rainfall

Monterey Bay

There are three aquifers beneath the valley and too much water has been taken out without enough recharge (does this sound familiar). These aquifers are stratified and join the sea. The problem with so much extraction is that there now salt water intrusion.

Salt Water Intrusion

MRWPCA

We visited the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency to see their water purification plant. Karen Harris was our guide who was very good. The plant has been setup to return water to Salinas Valley farmers. The project was started in the 1980’s with a 5 year study to investigate the use of reclaimed water to irrigate vegetables. The plant was built in the in the 90’s and starting operating in 1998. The cost was $75 million and was paid for by grants and local councils and some federal loans.

There are three stages to the cleaning process. The primary cleaning separates the solids from the liquids by sedimentation. The secondary cleaning is biological in nature where the good microbes further break down and use up the filtrates. The final tertiary is through a carbon filter and chemically disinfected with bleach. The gas given off goes to a co-generation power plant and the bio-solids go to the local landfill and is used as cover material.

The plant treats 80 million litres per day and this water helps irrigate 12,000 acres. A lot of crops are grown by these truck farmers such as Lettuce, Brassicas, Strawberries and Artichokes and these Artichokes are 61% of the USA’s total production.

Salinas Valley Produce

We talked about the issues facing the farmers and asked why they are not pumping this water down into the aquifer to further clean it as done in Salisbury Sth Aussie. It would stop the sea water intrusion. At the moment the current program is only slowing it by 30-50%. Karen said there is a perception problem.

Bio-EASI
Next stop was to catch up with Brock’s mates Rich, who runs a company called Bio-EASI – Biodiesel Energy Alternative System. They have set up a pilot plant that utilizes “Yellow Grease” which recycled oil and fat waste from restaurants.


The product is put through the unit and liquid settles out first, then the glyceride and the oil on top. They use potassium salt as a catalyst to remove the impurities and end up with methanol and glycerine which can be used in perfumes, and soaps etc. The process takes about 6 hours, but if they built a horizontal centrifuge they could cut down the process down to 45 minute. Currently they need 3kg of grease to produce 4 litres of biodiesel.

I am not sure if the above info is totally correct as I had to fight hard to stop from nodding off. The speakers were fine but it was one of those days. What really woke me up was, when a little bloody Chihuahua came to the room and pissed on the carpet next to my foot. I used my foot to move him on.

I tried to concentrate from then on. Rich told us that they could produce about 10,000 litres in one day with an 8 hour shift. To move to a bigger plant is just not viable if you want to get your money back. He and his partner are looking at growing algae with tanks in glasshouses. The algae are looking promising and the benefit of these plants is the time between growth and harvest time is only 28 days. The drawback is the algae lose their “oil” if they die before processing. They have got this problem just about nutted out.

On a finishing note, Rich asked us to guess how much fuel California uses in one year?

Answer: 20 Billion litres of fuel (petrol and diesel) each year.

Something either needs to be found or the biofuel’s systems need to be refined even more.

Rich took us out to his favourite spot for lunch. It was up alley and there stood a fairly ordinary looking butcher shop. But inside was a little shop with great products. The meats all looked good and after chatting to the boss she asked if wanted to see the products and stuff out back. It was a real professional outfit. They made a product called Tri Tips which was a cross between corned beef and sashimi. It was excellent and had a god smoked taste and flavour. Everyone had a good selection of their products in huge rolls. This place is now on Brock’s tour list.

Day 21 California

Ryan & Tim Fraser


Tim and his son Ryan run a mixed farm with sheep, cherries and cropping. The sheep are a composite breed of a maternal white faced line and a black faced terminal sire. They are currently running around 6000 ewes and are achieving 135% lambing. The lambs are all finished on stubble of a variety of crop residues around the San Joachim Valley, tomatoes, melons and lucerne after hay cuts. The lambs dress out between 36 – 40 kilograms. They are all very lean. We are going to see Superior Lamb Abattoir where they get their lambs killed. The enterprise is currently running with 6 to 7 full time equivalents. Here again we see that the cheap labour is underpinning the agricultural economy. As good as some subsidies.

Ryan's Rams

Ryan's Chewrries in Blossom with Snow Peaks

California Agriculture

The size and scale of the agriculture here continues to amaze me and our next was no different. At the bottom of the valley is a large lake delta system, or there was. Now runs a series of large canals for irrigation.

Drain Boswell

JG Boswell

JG Boswell Company is a family company started in 1920 who farm 103,000 of this country. The original Boswell has a book written about him, “The King of California”. There was a dry year and Boswell stared farming around the edges and kept doing so and reclaimed large areas during summer with banks and levies.


Now there are four quarters around a central aqueduct. There are four managers who oversee the operations for those. The farm specialises in only a few crops and this year will plant;

• Cotton 53,000 acres

• Tomatoes 30,000 acres

• Lucerne Hay 10,000 acres

• Safflower 10,000 acres

The Tomato Seeder Coming Closer

6 Row Planter

Senorita Planting Tomatoes

Coming Along Behind to Fill Holes

Finished Tomatoes

The lucerne and safflower are grown where they wish to reclaim the land. This is the lowest point of the valley and they get high water tables and this brings salt up with

They have an allocation & storage for 500,000 acre feet of water. This equates to roughly 500,000 meg’s and in a normal year they usually use about 350,000 megs, so they sell the rest for market price of $75. (Do the math)!!They will only sell to other farmers and not the government or the environmentalists. They are extremely worried about the environmental lobby as it is gaining strength. I think they should be proactive and work with them.

They have two paste making plants and produce over ½ million tonnes of paste. The paste is stored in 3’ x3’ bags in large wooden crates and shipped all over USA and exported.

All of the water that is extracted in the process is put through a primary cleaner and then utilised through centre pivots. All of the tomato is planted by contractors and takes 75 days to complete. We were lucky enough to see it in action. The tomatoes are irrigated by underground drip lines. They last close to eight years and maybe pulled up and relayed elsewhere. Most of the other crop are flood irrigated or with pivots.

They have a complete workshop which does all the servicing of the machinery and rebuilds etc. They also have their own spare parts department. The engineering shop which design new machinery and modifications has 12 people working in it.

Field Service Truck with all Required Lubes and Fuels

I must say that it was a very impressive farming business.

Emerald Energy


We went out to the back blocks and visited Ray Allen who has a Doctorate in Plant Science. He has perfecting a way to graft roots or plants utilizing amino acids as a way of transfer the DNA. He has worked on a number of plant species, but the ones we saw, was a cross between Pawlonia and Black Locust.

Powlonia x Black Locust Trees

Ray commented on why he decided on these two varieties

• Root grafting very simply (once you have right amino acid mix).

• Establish relatively easily

• Get a lot of root growth to graft more plants

Roots From 4 Months Growth

• Black Locusts leaves are quick small and Pawlonias are very large. Resultant leaf midsized.

• Rapid growth.

• Very high bio-fuel matter /acre (100tonnes / hectare)

Ray told us he has orders for 500,000 for a number of countries including South Africa, Kenya and Indonesia. The plant material goes through a gasification process and enters the generator to produce 1.8 Mw/ hour. The current planting is only small size but he is planning to plant a further 110 hectares. The increased sized of the plantings and new generator will be able to generate enough power to 1800 homes for all their needs.

A couple of spinoffs he is looking into is the plants deterrent to both flies and mosquitoes with a neutralising effect of malaria. I am not sure about this but it would be nice.

Beautiful & Sweet Smelling Flower

The whole meeting had an air of just another new enterprise with a slick pusher, I hope I am wrong

Day 20 California

After finishing in Washington and Gettysburg, the GFP “A” team next stop was California. We had gained a new member - Steve Neumann. He is a veggy grower from the Adelaide so his input was great. Our guide for the week was Brock Taylor an agronomist of some renown as he liked to say.

California Map with Mountains (Brown) and Valleys (Blue)

The state of California has two major mountain ranges running roughly north and south. One is along the coastal side and the other along the border with Nevada. The San Joachim Valley with Fresno in the centre has two distinct soil type and water. The east side has granitic soil with large amounts of underground water. The west side has very deep sandy soils with little water and get the water from reservoirs and channels. None of the underground water is regulated with volumetric controls. They are having trouble with the environmental movement. The valley has an average of 175mm (7”) rainfall.

Terranova Range

Manager Don Cameron gave us an insight into the cropping production on the 5000 acre property. Counting both perennial and annual they produce 26 crops. Onions, processing tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and garlic are some of the annuals they grow. Some of these are gown under organic status. The perennial crop grown is lucerne. There is large range of tree crops include pistaccio, raisins, walnuts, grapes and olives.

Their land is worth $4000 / acre which comes with the water entitlement. This varied over properties that we have seen so far. A lot of labour used here is based on the local Mexican population, who are now USA citizens and those who come up from Mexico each year for 6 – 9 months. The value of this labour underpins a lot the lower cost of production. The base wage is $8.50 - $9.00 / hr with no overtime. Don from Terranova had upped his wages this year and increased his retention rate by 50%

Tomato Harvester

The processing tomatoes are now being grown on underground drippers. The other crops are being irrigated by overhead sprinklers in the form of centre pivots, lateral move or semi permanent.

A unique piece of machinery is the Organic Cotton Dessicator. It runs with propane gas and does the same job as Grammoxone or Sprayseed. It was an experimental model for the UC Davis Fresno Campus.

Row Crop Tractor

Cherry Orchard

Red Rock Ranch

John Deinam runs a large family operation, specializing in fruit such as Oranges & Tangellos and vegetables such as lettuces. Also they grow some crops for breaks such as wheat, safflower and lucerne. This soil on the property has a high of salinity and uses the safflower and lucerne to lower the perched water table.

Flood Irrigation

John is trialling some saline water interception techniques. One is put the water through brine tanks and growing brine shrimp. He has a small desalination plant or as they call it a R O unit (reserves osmosis unit). The mineral collected are going to glass making factories and other operations.

Brine Shrimp Production

The climate in California is good for growing vegetables as the season work against the pests, as they have trouble living through the year. John said the winters have low temperatures but with high humidity and the summer are hot and with low humidity don’t give the right conditions for a sustained pest problem.

Fancy Lettuce Production

John and his business have a large percentage of the crop in lettuces with two crops per year. The Fresno area have 10,000 lettuces coming in each day. John Deinam has 35% of this market.

Harris and Wolf Almonds.


This is a collaborative model where two prominent families who grew almonds worked together to build a processing plant. The almonds are knocked off the trees and allowed to dry out on the ground and then bought in to the factory. The almonds are firstly de husked and then either deshelled or sent straight to the cleaning section. This is done as they have a market in Spain and India for almonds still in the shell. The deshelled are put though a number of cleaning machines. The clean almonds are then graded again into cleans, scuffed and broken.

Almond Plant

Dave in Disguise

The company processes 20 million kilograms of their own almonds. This equates to 3.4% of the total Californian almond industry. All of the Californian harvest represents 100% of USA production and 80% of the world’s almonds.

Finished Clean Almonds

They are now starting to process other grower’s almonds and are paying in a pool system. They are paid 50% on the processed almonds and the second 50% in a pool when all the almonds are sold for that season.

Tepanyaki
For dinner we tried something new. It was something else to tick off the list.

Starting the Prawn Entre

Whats a Good Tepanyaki Without Fire

Day 19 Chicago

After leaving Washington we a day stop over in Chicago to see the Chicago Board of Trade. Chicago was a bloody cold and windy place. There was a frantic pace with everthing and everyone moving quickly. We got to CBOT in time for the start of business and it was flat out yelling at each other and lots of gesticulating.
The pace went flat for about 10 mins. It slowed down was a lot of manual trades had been done and it had established a price for the commidity. We were watching wheat and the price wasn't good for thge future.
We toured all the different commidity sections. When the pace settled there was a lot of action on the computers where traders from around the world were conducting electronic trading.

Last day in Wales

After our billetting we joined back with all the 'A'team in Welshpool. We met and parted ways with all the Welsh people who were great hosts. Our destination was Heathrow. On the way we had a couple of stops to make. There was a purpose built sheep and cattle sale yards. They were all under cover. The animals are sold in the facility and the commissions go to the company that owns them. They do not have stock agents.
Good or Not!

Pop
All of the animals are weigh. The sheep in pen loads and the cattle individually.

The cattle are lead through this selling yard.

After leaving the yards and the Welsh sheep and cows, we were on our way to a machinery yard to kick some tyres and smell the diesel. maybe a chance to see some no-till equipment or even better a zero-till disc machine.

But to no avail. I think the best way to describe this seeder was a "dirt confuser".

There was one small disc seeder

A Visit to Innovis

Today we had a visit to Dewi Jones' farm. He is a Nuffield Scholar and runs a breeding project & service. He breeds Mule ewes and terminal rams with high fecundity. He sells the ewes and leases out the rams to his customers. All of the progeny are sold as prime lambs so over time he has good repeat business for the purchase of ewes. The lamb breeders sell all of the stock in to the EU and dressed in the way of french rump which shows an exstra muscled rump.

The lambs look good with the skin on and off.

Day 8 Meet the Locals

John Yoemen is the Welsh President of Nuffield. He had organised the week for us here in Wales. As a final fling in Wales he organised a dinner for a number of farmers mainly Nuffields to meet us. The dinner was held at Gregynog. We had a tour of John's farm. John and his family run a sheep and beef cattle operation. His cattle were Limousin and were very good cow and calf units. The cattleman amongst us were very impressed. His sheep were of equal quality.


We wer billeted out to a number farmers. Marty and I were billeted with Nigel and Karen Elgar. We went with Nigel. He and Karen farm high in the uplands. The counrty was very picturesque at this time of the year, but we could seen what it would be like in winter