REEDLEY – Despite the significant challenges facing agriculture, industry professionals in the Central Valley see a future worthy of optimism — so long as they keep up with innovative practices and foster strong connections with one another.
To kick off the fourth annual Reedley College Agriculture Conference on Oct. 9, speakers spent the first few hours reflecting on the state of the agriculture industry as it is today and as it will grow into the future. Though individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and sectors in the industry participated, they all found themselves coming to the same conclusions: although times are difficult, they keep going.
“Who wouldn’t want to be in ag?” CDFA Secretary Karen Ross said in her opening remarks. “The most meaningful occupation on earth, to be able to grow food and to be able to sustain life and to be able to share that bounty, with care, with consumers here and globally?”
In an interview with the Mid Valley Times, Ross, who heads the California Department of Food and Agriculture, helped set the scene for Valley residents who maybe aren’t quite as connected to the ag industry. She said times right now are challenging, and the industry faces a “long list of headwinds.”
This includes water, which Ross said has always been a challenge and will continue to be in a hotter and drier future; labor, which brings issues related to labor availability, skill gaps and ensuring workers feel safe and secure; and the uncertainty of global markets, which has significantly lowered commodity prices as production costs continue to rise. Businesses face headwinds like these all the time, Ross said.
“They’re especially acute right now in agriculture, but that’s why science, technology and innovation are a pathway forward,” Ross said. “Being able to work together on those issues, that shouldn’t be about what’s competitive, but (about what) will help the industry and our rural communities thrive together is really where it’s at.”
Challenges and opportunities
On a five-person panel moderated by California Table Grape Commission President and CEO Ian LeMay, growers and agriculture advocates shared their thoughts on the state of the ag industry in 2025.
For James Nichols, the biggest challenge he sees right now is the preservation of quality. Nichols is president of Hanford-based ag tech company HotSpot AG and operates his family’s pistachio and almond farm. The product quality that comes out of the Central Valley is what separates the region from other states and countries, Nichols said, and challenges with water, climate variability and the consumer preference for products without chemicals could jeopardize that quality over the next few years.
Nichols explained that for his tree nuts, water plays a vital role in sizing and nut development, which can also prevent disease and insect pressure. Thinking about water use restrictions under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), Nichols said the impact on quality is always at the top of his mind.
For Casey Creamer, president and CEO of California Citrus Mutual, one challenge that is not discussed enough is that agriculture has a perception problem. In particular, those in the industry are frustrated over policies coming out of Sacramento, whether it’s regarding water availability, pesticides or what have you.
When faced with these challenges and pressures, Creamer said it’s easy to think, as a grower, that people are strategically trying to put you out of business. While that may be true for some people, most of the legislators who are “deciding your fate” aren’t trying to put farmers out, they just don’t know.
“It’s easy to say, ‘well, they’re not going to listen,’” Creamer said. “The harder work is actually getting in the room and listening yourself. Don’t necessarily speak so that they try to understand you, but first understand them right, understand what their communities are dealing with, what their perspective is, and then you can adapt your messaging to what they understand.”
Creamer also said he sees uncertainty as the biggest problem facing the ag industry.
“Probably the number one thing I’ve heard over 20 years is what growers want is certainty,” Creamer said. “And probably the biggest problem that we have right now is there’s more uncertainty in the agricultural space than there has ever been.”
Yet, Creamer said that thinking back to when he started in agriculture, everyone talked about the “good old days” of the cotton industry, while at the same time, he would see something published 30 years prior that would talk about how there were tough times in the industry.
“So I guess the big picture is, yes, we have challenges today; we probably have more challenges than we’ve ever had in the agricultural space,” Creamer said. “But if you look back 20 years, and you look at the opportunities that we have in front of us now, nobody can really do what we do here in the Central Valley — our location, the climate, our location to the ports, the infrastructure that we have.”
Hedging a bet
With these opportunities comes the need for growers to balance short-term pressures with long-term investments in innovation and sustainability in a way that’s almost like a “hedge on a bet,” Ben Palone, senior commercialization director with the Western Growers Association, said.
When it comes to trying a little bit of innovation, Palone said it helps to look to bigger farms and leaders in the community like HMC Farms who have taken innovation head on. This way, growers can understand where the innovation is coming from and see how technology might make a difference within their business.
When it comes to maybe pivoting business models, Palone said there’s a lot of factors to consider for how to go about doing that. Palone brought up questions growers may consider, like do they pivot their business model slowly, or does innovation “run as fast as a rabbit?”
“We all know growers run really fast and hard, but sometimes the innovation has to start slow for incredibly risky technologies, for risky parts of the farm,” Palone said. “So it is kind of this hedge on the bet for your business. Do you have some money stored away to work with these technologies? Can you start to work with companies … to see if you can start integrating these into your business?”
Regardless of this uncertainty, growers adapt to the challenges they face, because that’s all they can do.
Harold McClarty, owner of HMC Farms in Kingsburg and Reedley, said when it comes to innovating practices and introducing new technologies, it’s not so much a matter of believing a new way of doing things will work. Instead, it’s a matter of knowing that the other way of doing things doesn’t work, and if they want to stay in business, they have to move forward.
“I’m going to do it as long as I can, that’s the optimistic piece of it,” McClarty said. “Now maybe that’s doing it and expecting different results — maybe that’s not quite the definition of optimism, maybe that might be another definition — but I’m going to do it, because it’s part of my DNA. I believe what Karen Ross said: this is what we do.”
