110 degrees magazine - Index

110 degrees magazine - wlinks_may08 - Index

PEEKS I PERSONA
30 to 40 years many of the smaller farms have
been smothered by the encroachments of malls
and sub-divisions.
We’ve seen some farm families such as the
Maggiores, Del Charos, Bacchinis, and Tidricks sell
some or all of their property to developers following
decades of planting and harvesting. Besides
losing the land itself, Brentwood has lost its entire
agricultural infrastructure. Long gone are the elevators,
packing plants, and farm supply stores that in
the past formed a major part of our local economy.
If current trends continue unchecked, Brentwood
is clearly destined to lose its farms forever and the
area will finally end up as a patchwork of subdivisions,
plazas, strip-malls, and fast-food restaurants.
FIGHTING FOR OUR PLACE
A number of people, like Sean, are banning
together in a determination NOT to let development
drive into extinction the agrarian way of
life. Brentwood agriculture is too precious a
resource to be squandered. Since they are not
going to stop changes from taking place, local
farmers must adapt to the changes.
“We will learn new patterns of conducting the
business of farming,” Sean says. “We will specialize.
In particular, we will stop running our farms as
purely commercial enterprises and will orient our
business to a more local retail model. We will do
direct sales rather than depending upon giant
wholesalers to pay us for our products.”
The opportunity is actually huge because the fact
is that only in single-digit numbers are area residents
buying products from local farms. Local
consumers are an untapped market profile that local
farmers have only begun to work on. The majority
of the product they are selling ends up on breakfast
and dinner tables located far away from Brentwood
fields and groves.
In developing buy-local habits, residents will
become an economic force powerful enough to
support current farms, plus lead to the creation of
additional micro-farms and boutique type ag
programs that are required to meet the rising
demands of our local consumers. Farmers will garner
more profits while residents reap the benefits of
having access to superior and fresh local produce.
Sean is the Vice President of Harvest Time in
Brentwood, which is an association of 47 East County
U-Picks. For a years Harvest Time has been operating
with the mission of providing Farm-Fresh and
Delicious Direct to You! “Our U-Pick activities are
cutting out the middleman,” Sean said, “by permitting
us to sell products directly to consumers.”
26 www.110mag.com May/June 2008
The Harvest Time Board is planning to create a nonprofit
agency and develop a suitable daily and yearround
outlet where consumers buy directly from
farmers. This would have the effect of supplementing
and strengthening the direct-to-consumers
distribution methods used by the members of our
U-Pick organization in their roadside operations.
The four-year-old Brentwood Farmers Market is
another direct-to-consumers marketing channel for
local-grown products. There is an air of bustling
excitement and enthusiasm on market days. During
the opening years, however, as much as 70 percent
of the products being sold in the Brentwood Farmers
market was from farms that were outside our
county. Some growers from places 70 or 100 miles
away immediately caught the vision, began hauling
in their product, and selling crops from their distant
fields and orchards to Brentwood residents.
On the other hand, some Harvest Time members
from places like Marsh Creek Road, Walnut
Boulevard, and Sellers Avenue were hanging back
because they were skeptical of the idea that a local
farmers market might actually help them get their
crops into the hands of local consumers.
Things are changing, however, and more of the
local farmers are finally getting the vision for the
opportunity that some farmers in places like the
Central Valley and Sonora seized upon right away.
“We’re planning to move the Brentwood
Farmers Market into a year-round activity,” Sean
said, “thus providing a focused direct-toconsumers
marketing channel that would be
available on a continual basis.
The Harvest Time Board is also working on
creating a marketing and distribution channel
for selling local products in other California locations.
They expect to secure grant funding from
the city and perhaps even from the county to
find more buyers for products that are shipped
out of Brentwood.
“We farmers are the only people who are going
to save our county farms,” Sean said. “We will
prevail, however. We will save our farms through
a strategy that combines training, grant money,
support from the city, and especially participation
by local residents. We’ll see the trend
reverse; small farms will begin to spring up
rather than die off.”
LEADING THE WAY
Sean is diligently working to set a standard for
how people should live and especially to illustrate
a strategy that farmers can follow in
preserving our agricultural heritage. Eight years
ago he took the extraordinary step of planting
several groves of olive trees on his property.
Three years later he began to harvest crops of
olives, selling them to producers, and creating
his own label of extra virgin olive oil, called
Mount of Olives and listing on the label his
McCauley Olive Groves property as the source.
Local consumers are a largely untapped
market for olive oil because only twenty percent
of olive oil consumed in the US is grown domestically.
“We’re educating people,” Sean said. In
Europe 80 percent of all cooking oils is olive oil
based. In America the percentage is just reversed,
80 percent of the cooking they do is done with
vegetable oil.
Sean is working to change that.
Some of Sean’s neighbors are planning to join
in his success and have begun planting olive
groves of their own. Together they have created
an olive co-op that has six members working 47
acres. They’re planning to add 35 more acres by
the end of 2008.
“We’re putting the financial power associated
with economy of scale to good use and are
adopting strategies and processes that will
greatly expand our revenue streams,” Sean said.
“We plan on becoming the premier Northern
California resource for premium olives and olive
oil. We’re investing resources of time, money,
and energy in making this happen.”
For one thing, the co-op is building an olive
press for local crops and will provide pressing
service for other area olive growers. A majority of
area restaurants are using local olive oil, which
represents real progress because only a couple of
years ago almost none of them were.
Sean believes that if he can make his farm go,
others can as well. His own aggressive attitude
and his passion for farming have become like a
positive infection. People are beginning to get
the bug. They are starting to believe that this is
really going to happen!
The local farmers must join together shoulderto-shoulder
in making the the change.
“If we apply the intensity, commitment, and
preparation of an Iron Man competitor to our
agricultural challenges,” Sean said, “then we’ll
have no problem succeeding.”
Small farmers can survive and even thrive in
Brentwood.
And they will!
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