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Central Coast Farm & Ranch, 5156 McGrath Street, Ventura, CA (2026)

06/23/2026

It’s in the Details
VC Farm Bureau Transitions to a New CEO

By Tami Chu /// Photos by Mariah Green

“I’m a fixer and builder at heart,” said Louise Lampara, who succeeded Maureen McGuire as Farm Bureau of Ventura County’s (FBVC) new CEO in June.
I recently sat down with Lampara to get a look beyond the press release and rather impressive resume. What I found was someone whose work and life experience has led her to a complex and balanced view of both humanity and agriculture.
EARLY DAYS
Lampara came to California to attend the University of California, Davis, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology — now known as wildlife, fish and conservation biology. Before graduation, she joined the Regional Water Quality Control Board in Sacramento. It was the early 90s, and the new “threatened species” classification of the delta smelt was becoming the center of growing conflicts among farmers, urban water users, regulators and environmental advocates. “I worked in the lab doing water quality testing,” Lampara said. “I wasn’t involved in the policy side of it.”
Still, as the delta smelt became the focal point of a battle that would forever change the conversation around water, environmental regulation and agriculture in California, it gave Lampara her first look at issues that would define much of her career.
Her next position at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed her even closer to those policy concerns. Her work included endangered species permitting, Clean Water Act Section 404 permitting and toxicity monitoring. She became involved in some of the agency’s more controversial work — including growing tensions between farmers and the federal government following the 1994 “threatened species” listing of the vernal pool fairy shrimp and designation of its critical habitat throughout the Central Valley and the Pacific coastline.
“It was my first up-close exposure to the relationship between government agencies and private landowners,” Lampara said. “Both sides believed they were doing the right thing, but they didn’t talk to each other very well.”
Lampara later transferred to Ventura, where she became involved in natural resource damage assessment, evaluating environmental injuries from oil and chemical releases and helping the government collect monetary damages from private businesses. The work further deepened her understanding of the complicated relationship between regulators, industry and private landowners.
A SHIFT
“I was a government employee for eight years before I realized I wasn’t a fit for the culture,” Lampara said. Then, she added ironically, “Okay, actually, I got a performance review that said I was ‘much too eager to work with landowners,’ so I knew it was time for a different career path.”
So she became a paramedic.
For nearly 12 years, Lampara worked as a first responder on ambulances throughout the region. The experience gave her an unusually intimate view of the community she now calls home.
“Not many people see birth, death and illness in their raw form,” she said. “There is a word for it: sonder. It’s that realization that every person you see has an entire life behind them. For a moment, you get invited to glimpse it.”
But she also knew it would not be a forever career.
Meanwhile, Lampara continued doing occasional environmental consulting work. One day, after a particularly difficult 911 shift, she came home to find a note on her door from consulting client, oil and gas producer Aera Energy. It marked a return to the environmental and regulatory work where she had started, but this time from the landowner’s side of the table.
“I was responsible for Aera Ventura’s environmental compliance — restoration, endangered species, habitat, streambed alteration, permitting — everything except air quality compliance,” she said.
Aera wasn’t where Lampara’s win-win philosophy began, but it certainly found fertile soil there. “I did more beneficial work for the environment there than I ever did working for the government, and I didn’t have to fight for it,” she said. “The company’s view was that taking care of the land wasn’t separate from the business. It was part of the responsibility of owning it.”
“This is also where I learned to ask: What is the win win here?” Finding the center path where everyone gets to benefit seems to be one of her greatest talents. “Not every solution is a win win, but a lot of them are,” she said. “Where do we align? And where we don’t, how do we avoid hurting each other’s cause?” The best resolutions are in the details, she told me.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
Lampara comes to the VC Farm Bureau after seven years leading Ventura County Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business (VC CoLAB), a local nonprofit advocacy organization where she worked on many of Ventura County’s most complex policy issues.
“Policy advocacy is hard,” Lampara said. “You wake up every day knowing you are going to run headfirst into a wall, then get up and do it again. Progress often comes in millimeters. To do that work, you have to believe in what you are fighting for. You have to care enough that the setbacks don’t drain your energy.”
Over time, she realized that she had found her cause. “I loved working with the agricultural community,” she said. “Those were the fights that gave me energy.”
That realization ultimately led her to FBVC.
I asked Louise Lampara about her long-term vision for the Farm Bureau.
“I think it starts with giving farmers a stronger voice in the conversations that increasingly determine how they can stay in business,” she said. “Decision-makers are far removed from the realities of farming.”
For Lampara, the work ultimately comes back to the same question that has followed her throughout her career: Where is the win win?
“Most people want the same things,” she said. “Healthy communities. A healthy environment. A strong economy. The challenge is finding solutions that recognize we need all of those things, not just one.”

Tami Chu, MA, MSHN, is the editor of Central Coast Farm & Ranch. She also publishes Edible Ojai & Ventura County and Edible San Fernando Valley.

06/23/2026

A Crushing Blow

For wine-grape growers Prohibition triggered decades-long hangover

By Colleen Cason

At 12:01 a.m. Jan 17, 1920, came the witching hour Central Coast vineyardists feared and fought.
Prohibition — the great sobriety experiment — officially began. The speed and scope of the 18th Amendment’s havoc on California’s wine industry would play out in ways that stunted its growth for decades and nearly destroyed it.
“Everything went all right, and then, boom, overnight they were out of business,” the late Catherine Cavaletto told the Santa Barbara Independent of Prohibition’s destruction of her family’s San Jose Winery in Goleta — an operation founded in the Mission Era. San Jose Winery was hardly alone. The law designed to make America dry would shutter 713 California wineries practically overnight, according to California Winery Advisor.
Last call
Before January 1920, most wine-grape farmers and vintners believed their product might be excluded from the federal law banning the manufacture, transport and sale of alcoholic beverages. With temperance taking hold in the early 20th century, wine industry leaders labored to distance their creation from “demon rum.” They framed wine as a wholesome, civilized, convivial alternative to hard liquors and the public drunkenness those spirits spawned. It was, after all, also served in sacramental worship services.
Farming grapes was not banned under the Volstead Act, which dictated enforcement of the 18th Amendment. So growers and a thirsty American public quickly jumped on a loophole in the law. Households legally could produce 200 gallons a year of “non-intoxicating” fruit juice for their private use.
Enter the “grape brick.” This dehydrated block of concentrated stems, pulp and skins ran about the size of a pound of butter and cost around $2. It could be shipped anywhere in the country. The label conveyed a cheeky advisory: “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for 21 days, because then it then would turn to wine.”
Farmers, drowning in debt, believed wine bricks threw them a life preserver. Grape prices shot up from $10 to above $100 a ton. From 1916 to 1926 the grape harvest doubled from 1 million tons to 2.04 million. In that same period, vineyard carloads rose from 10,345 to 76,300.
California had an estimated 300,000 acres of vineyard in 1919 at Prohibition’s start. To fill the demand for the bricks, that acreage almost doubled by 1926.
But happy days weren’t necessarily here again.
In May 1927, the Santa Barbara Daily News warned of the slippery slope growers stood upon: “Thousands of acres of land unsuited to the production of grapes have been planted to vines, and the production of low quality grapes is a factor in depressing prices as well as in glutting the market,” the paper editorialized.
Santa Barbara County has a proud history of producing good wine. In the late 19th century, Frenchman Justinian Caire established a vineyard on Santa Cruz Island that created Cabernets, Pinots, Syrahs and Zinfandels — tended by French and Italian vintners. Prohibition shuttered that operation.
Instead, the Alicante Bouschet dominated the grape-brick industry. That variety found favor for its thick skin which held up to transcontinental rail shipping. It produced deeply colored wine, even when amateurs badly fermented it.
By 1933, California planted 40,000 acres of Alicante Bouschet and many fine varieties of red and white wine-grapes vanished from production in the 1920s, as described in the San Luis Obispo Wine History Project.
Once the industry quenched the national thirst for wine bricks, prices plunged. The boom went bust, and prohibition ended as it started with disheartened farmers uprooting their vines.
‘Noble experiment’ ends
At 4:32 p.m. Dec. 5, 1932, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing Prohibition.
By then, California’s wine industry sat in ruins. Between 1919 and 1933 wine production plunged by over 90%.
America’s palate also was ruined by “accepting any illegal beverage that had a kick,” said Santa Barbara bartender Ira D. Altschul, author of the booklet “Drinks As They Were Made Before Prohibition.” Post-prohibition, Americans abandoned quality dry table wines for sweeter and fortified wines or inexpensive blends.
“The measure intended to kill ‘demon rum’ managed to give it hardly more than a flesh wound,” wrote California wine historian Thomas Pinney in 2005. “Yet the interruption to the normal growth and functioning of wine growing is still being felt and will continue to be felt for as long as one can foresee.”
The wine-production drought in Santa Barbara County spanned nearly 30 years, until 1962, when merchant Pierre Lafond founded Santa Barbara Winery and had to import grapes because none were grown in the county. Uriel Nielson and Bill DeMattei planted vines two years later in the Santa Maria Valley. Nearly 65 years after that, Central Coast growers and vintners — while currently in a time of transition — have built a world-renowned industry from the ground up. Cheers!

Colleen Cason is editor emeritus of Central Coast Farm & Ranch and a Conejo Valley-based freelance writer.

06/23/2026

Farmers feel the crunch

Rising fertilizer prices from Iran war put the squeeze on Central Coast farmers

By Kim Lamb Gregory /// Photos by Karen Quincy Loberg

Along with skyrocketing gas prices, area farmers must contend with the soaring cost of fertilizer, all owing to a war more than 8,000 miles away.
The conflict in Iran has resulted in the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly a third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizers must pass through on cargo ships.
“There is very little we can do in response to rising costs,” said fourth-generation farmer Catherine Pinkerton Keeling, manager of about 130 acres of avocados on Strata Ranches in Santa Paula. “We already have efficient irrigation and fertilizer practices in place. Our labor cannot be reduced, irrigation needs to happen, trees need to be harvested and pruned, w**ds need to be managed, fences have to be fixed.”
Craig Underwood — owner of 200-acre Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark, and several other properties in Ventura and Kern counties — was notified that his fertilizer prices would go up 20%. The farms grow citrus, row crops, berries, flowers and more.
“Consider all that’s required to get a particular food item from the farm to the table,” Underwood said. “A lot is dependent on energy. There’s processing, transportation, cooling, packaging. And tractors burn an awful lot of fuel. It could result in a higher price for our products, but people don’t want to pay more for food.”
An American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) survey of more than 5,700 farmers from every state in the union and Puerto Rico showed that 70% of respondents would be unable to buy all they needed for this year’s crops.
Fertilizing 200 acres of strawberries with liquid nitrogen (UAN) could cost anywhere from $16,400 to $40,000. Fertilizer for avocado orchards is measured in tons.
“Our trees are a generational investment,” said Keeling. “Once planted, they come to full production in eight to 10 years. With great care and stewardship, they will continue to produce fruit for decades. We have trees on the ranch that we planted in the 60s and are thriving.”
Rachael Laenen of Kimball Ranches is a sixth-generation farmer whose ancestor, Eugene Charles Kimball, put down roots in Ventura County in the 1860s. Originally farming in East Ventura County, Kimball Ranches is now a 190-acre avocado ranch, between Santa Paula and Fillmore — of which 10 acres are lemons. Laenen estimates they spend about $900 per acre, or $180,000 to fertilize their orchards. “The reality is, we’re just going to have to continue to buy liquid fertilizer throughout the year, regardless of what it costs,” Laenen said.
Cutting costs in uncertain times
Local agronomists say soil sampling can help to create a precise, surgical approach to fertilizer, and cut costs.
“Soil analysis is crucial,” said University of California (UC) Cooperative Extension Irrigation and Water Resources Manager Andre Biscaro. “Especially for farmers leasing property, a soil analysis showing sufficient phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) levels can significantly reduce or even temporarily eliminate the need for P and K fertilizers.”
Because nitrogen (N) fertilizers are the most affected by price increases Biscaro recommends using the Soil Nitrate Quick Test (SNQT), which can be purchased at a variety of agricultural supply sites. He also recommends sticking to the basics.
“Spoon-feed nitrogen based on crop-specific uptake curve and soil nitrate levels,” Biscaro said. “Adjust P and K applications according to soil analyses, and cut out higher cost products that show little or no evidence that they work under local conditions. This is especially true for the berry industry.”
Technology to the rescue
Using fossil fuels to create fertilizer is something farmers have been doing for 70 plus years, according to Bill Schwoerer, Coastal California sales agronomist for Redox, who believes it’s time to develop at other sources of energy, and consider new technology available to enhance the fertilization process.
“Ultimately, there is no way to get around the cost increase to growers for fuel and fertilizer,” said Schwoerer. “You can mitigate that by incorporating some of the newer technologies such as biostimulants or biofertilizers. It’s a class of technology that’s been around for quite a while and has been adopted by growers.”
Those working for fertilizer companies are just as invested as farmers are in finding solutions because “we need our growers to be successful for all of us to be successful,” he said.
It’s not widely available to farmers yet, but Plasma-Activated Water or (PAW) technology in agriculture is showing a lot of promise.
UC Davis researcher and entomologist Christian Nansen, Ph.D. has been pioneering the use of PAW in agriculture for about five years.
The air we breathe is 78% nitrogen and 12% oxygen, but the plants can’t use the nitrogen all around us because it is strongly linked to the oxygen with something called a covalent bond. The plasma machine can break that bond, he explained.
“A plasma machine creates a high level of energy that when you expose it to the air, it turns the air to plasma,” Nansen said. “Suddenly you have made the nitrogen in the air completely accessible and absorbable by the plants.”
The technology is still navigating the regulatory procedure in the U.S., but there are already some companies that provide these plasma systems to greenhouse growers in the United Kingdom.
As farmers weather this economic storm nationwide, area consumers can consider buying less than perfect produce, and supporting their local farmers. When times get tough, Laenen remembers a saying from her dad, Gordon Kimball.
“He’d say ‘Farming is tough, but farmers are tougher.’”

Kim Lamb Gregory is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. She lives in Port Hueneme.

03/20/2026

Global Recognition, Local Roots
United Nations designation celebrates female roles in agriculture

By Wendy Woods

Brokaw Ranch Co. ships all kinds of avocados across the country, from a South African variety to one that looks like a dinosaur egg.
But the Santa Paula farm, which started from backyard trees grown from coffee cans, wouldn’t have had any customers without its matriarch.
Hank Brokaw cultivated avocado trees known for having healthy roots that resisted rot. He eventually ditched the coffee cans and opened a nursery. Today, it’s a family-run business with orchards that stretch across Ventura and Monterey counties.
And it all really started when Hank’s wife Ellen Brokaw took a healthy avocado tree on a little road trip. “I took my first baby daughter, put her in a basket in the car and drove around avocado farms in Ventura County and Santa Barbara just to show them the tree,” she said. “That’s how we got our first customers.”
Women play myriad and critical roles in farms and ranches around the world. They manage farms, pack fruits, run offices, and in Brokaw’s case, sell products with a baby in tow.
In May 2024, to recognize women’s increasingly vital role in agriculture, the United Nations’ General Assembly introduced and adopted a resolution to declare 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF 2026). The resolution acknowledged “the important contributions of all women working in agrifood systems…to achieving food security, improving nutrition and eradicating poverty” and “noted with concern” that women farmers still function with a gender-gap due to limited access to some resources and training. The goal of the resolution is to raise awareness of issues facing women farmers specifically and support policies that can address them.
HONORING OUR OWN FARMERS
In California, there are more than 45,000 women agricultural producers and together they steward more than 11 million acres of farmland, according to state marketing program California Grown. The number of women farmers in California increased by 13% in the last decade.
Rachael Laenen, director of farming and operations at Kimball Ranches - El Hogar, was recently named board chair of the California Avocado Commission, becoming the first chairwoman in the board’s history. She will lead a group of executives tasked to tackle a number of industry challenges, including stagnant avocado prices, rising costs and pest control.
Laenen comes from a family of avocado growers who knows a thing or two about female leadership. Her grandmother, Dorcas Thille, was the first female director of the Calavo Growers board.
“As women, we bring a different perspective, and we manage the workforce in a different way,” Laenen said. “It can also be challenging when we’re working with men who are used to being managed by men.”
Kay Wilson-Bolton remembers a time when women in agriculture were only viewed as the farmer’s wife. In the mid-1970s, Wilson-Bolton helped form the state’s first chapter of California Women for Agriculture in the Coachella Valley — originally created to advocate on behalf of busy California farmers and educate consumers — and in 1976, helped form the Ventura County chapter, which is now comprised of both growers and consumers.
“We felt more advocacy needed to be done in Sacramento,” Wilson-Bolton said. “We felt the men in Sacramento weren’t loud enough of a voice. So we educated legislators on how to vote on ag issues.”
Today there are nearly 20 chapters, including two in Santa Barbara County.
Clara Cadwell is a sixth-generation farmer at Tutti Frutti Farms, one of the first certified organic farms in Santa Barbara County. Cadwell sees a challenging future for ag, with high labor and land costs and water scarcity.
Women will continue playing a larger role tackling those challenges, she said. “Ag as a whole in the U.S. always feels like teetering on a slippery slope.”
Last year, Cadwell founded Farmette, which designs edible gardens and chicken coops in customers’ backyards. The new business comes after years working in nonprofit garden education and increasing community involvement at Tutti Frutti Farms.
“Women, we look at things a little different,” Cadwell said. “Maybe it’s not the most profitable project but it brings happiness, a sense of community and making sure people are fed good food.”
Just off of Toro Canyon Park in Santa Barbara, a group of 8-year-old girls recently celebrated a birthday among sheep, chickens and olive trees. Wanderment Farms hosts school tours and events to spread the word about organic and regenerative agriculture.
Margo Redfern, who founded the farm five years ago and serves as chief farming officer, also wants to inspire girls and show them their limitless capabilities.
“I told them that I built this fence, I grew these vegetables. Don’t let anyone tell you, ‘You can’t,’” Redfern said, adding that it can be hard for girls to see themselves in male dominated fields.
Redfern said many women farmers didn’t inherit their farm but rather started their own operations. She hopes the Year of the Woman Farmer designation will uplift small scale farming.
“I would love it if more people embraced the idea to get into small farming. A huge percentage of farms are owned by big corporations,” Redfern said. “I feel like we’re losing our options in that battle. If this could encourage other women to get into the industry, that’d be amazing.”

Wendy Woods is a veteran journalist who covered the Oxnard Plain for the Ventura County Star.

03/20/2026

Produce for the dogs
Cal Lu dog treat entrepreneurs scour farmers’ markets for “unloved” produce
By Kim Lamb Gregory /// Photos by Viktor Budnik

Pushing a stroller carrying their “mini brand ambassador,” California Lutheran University MBA graduates Rosie Baker and Princesa Martinez approached various produce stands at the Thursday Thousand Oaks Farmers’ Market.
The friends and business partners were in search of unmarketable or excess produce they can use to bake healthy dog biscuits for their startup business, UpPup.
Martinez’s infant son, Vincent, performed his brand ambassador duties well, giving a dimpled smile to each of the farmers.
“We are finding local farmers who are willing to give us the produce that normally gets thrown away, or who are willing to let us buy it from them,” said Baker, 28. “Then we’re going to a commercial kitchen where we handmake the treats. We plan to sell them at farmers’ markets or at local retailers.”
The UpPup startup is a new twist on addressing a challenge farmers have been facing for centuries: how to best use misshapen, damaged or excess produce that is edible, but not marketable.
“Farmers have long had experience with those kinds of products,” said Farm Bureau of Ventura County CEO Maureen McGuire. “There are ancient food preservation techniques created for the byproducts of the fresh market produce, with jams, jellies and apple ciders being intrinsic to the process.”
Most farmers applaud entrepreneurs like Baker and Martinez as they want to see the highest and best use of their unmarketable produce.
Farmer Vilma Gutierrez of Gutierrez Farms in San Luis Obispo regularly sees Martinez and Baker at the Thousand Oaks Farmers’ Market and is happy to donate produce.
“I would have leftovers that I would give them for their dog treats,” Gutierrez said. “Rosie gave us a couple of dog treats, and our dog Max loved them. Then she came by almost every week to pick up whatever I had. I talked to one of my neighbors and he started giving her leftover citrus and persimmons.”
Farmers at the markets generally donate leftover or imperfect produce to a food bank, or to people who come around and pick up the produce byproducts for their animals. The rest is taken home and composted.
The idea to use “unloved” produce to make dog treats came to Baker three years ago as a healthy treat for her aging dachshund, Daisy.
“I was in the process of changing Daisy’s diet to be more human grade,” Baker said. “I was giving her peas and broccoli and apples, and it changed her bloodwork. It made her much more healthy, despite her old age.”
Baker suggested turning her project into a business during a graduate class they were taking called The Business Plan when she and Martinez were pursuing their Masters of Business Administration (MBAs).
“Rosie immediately became the CEO,” said Cal Lu Adjunct Professor of Business and entrepreneur Kelly Kimball, who teaches the class. “She took it so seriously and was so passionate. She went out to all the farms and researched the mechanics of the supply chain.”
Baker (and Daisy) came to the U.S. from England in 2015 when her father’s job with Disney relocated the family to Los Angeles. Baker enrolled in Cal Lu in 2017, graduating in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Baker now works as communications coordinator for the School of Management.
The business idea landed Baker two Dorfman Incubator Grants for $10,000 and $15,000 in 2024 and 2025 from the Steven Dorfman Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, part of the Cal Lutheran School of Management.
Martinez is just as enthusiastic about UpPup, having grown up in a multi-generational farmworking family in Oxnard.
“My grampa actually walked with Cesar Chavez,” said Martinez, 31. “My dad started onion picking and [the family] would travel up north, following the crops.”
Martinez developed the recipe for UpPup biscuits, which was a hit with UpPup’s number one taste tester, Livvy, the Martinez family dog.
Though juggling jobs and infant care, the pair have landed on the perfect paw-shaped recipe, and are now navigating the heavily-regulated pet food licensing process, with plans to launch the brand in spring, and hire Cal Lu students to help. Both feel optimistic, and happy that their product is not only healthy, but sustainable.
“At home I love to recycle. I hate throwing anything away,” Baker said. “I try to be environmentally conscious in my little corner of the world.”

03/20/2026

Farm Day Brings the Consumer to the Field

By Tami Chu

For those who have been farming for decades — or even those involved with agriculture peripherally — it is sometimes a bit of a shock to realize how little the average consumer actually knows about what happens day-to-day in the fields.
“For many, the realities of farming are largely out of sight, even though we drive past it every day,” says Caitlin Paulus Case, executive director of Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG). Since 2008, SEEAG’s mission has been to educate the community on where their food originates and how farming impacts their lives. Creating the first Ventura County Farm Day in 2013 (followed by Santa Barbara County in 2019) was a natural extension of that goal.
Mike Roberts, co-founder and COO of Farmivore Food Hub, began farming at McGrath Family Farm under the mentorship of Phil McGrath over 15 years ago. “At that time, although our area is heavily agricultural. There was really no way to access and visit the local farms,” he says.
Now offered in both Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, Farm Day is a free self-guided multi-location event that invites consumers to spend a day visiting working farms. “When community members participate in Farm Day, they get the opportunity to step into the world of local agriculture, building a deeper appreciation for the hands and the lands that feed us,” says Paulus Case, “They see firsthand the incredible amount of time, resources and skill it takes to safely grow, harvest, transport and store food so fresh produce can make it to our homes and families.”
With 20 locations participating at last count, visitors can explore the diverse agricultural spectrum of Ventura County, including SEEAG’s Farm Day Hub at Petty Ranch, Duda Farms’ Olivas Ranch, nurseries like Otto & Sons in Fillmore and Growing Works in Camarillo, Rio Regenerative Farm, a wildflower and w**d show in Santa Paula and so much more.
To learn the direct economic impact that events like Farm Day are having on the participating farms and broader community, SEEAG is partnering with the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (UC SAREP) on a research project. “The results can be used to guide decisions on future investments and partnerships and provide a more comprehensive picture of the impact of these events, both qualitative and quantitative,” says Rachael Callahan, UC SAREP’s statewide agritourism coordinator. “The economic impact study is timely, as Ventura County is in the process of developing an agritourism strategy to support agricultural viability in the county.”
While Farm Day has traditionally been held towards the end of the year, this year SEEAG has moved the date to April 11. Fifth-generation farmer Chris Sayer of Petty Ranch weighs in on the change. “This is one of the busiest times of year for local farmers,” he says. “But I’m looking forward to letting people see more of what goes into keeping Ventura one of the top crop-producing counties in the nation.”

Tami Chu, MA, MSHN, is the editor of Central Coast Farm & Ranch. She also publishes Edible Ojai & Ventura County and Edible San Fernando Valley.

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