A Serendipitous Stroll Through Agriculture, I

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

The World Ag Expo

Tulare, CA

We all get our food from grocery stores, and we all take that food for granted– even those fresh tomatoes we eat in the middle of winter! It’s time to meet the people who provide us with the food we take for granted, and ask: How do you provide us with all our food?

Welcome to our “Serendipitous Stroll” through the world of agriculture at the World Ag Expo in Tulare, California.

I am Michael Olson, and I will be guiding this stroll with comments and observations that, I hope, will help you better understand how all the food we take for granted is grown.

Those who know me, know me as an advocate for local agriculture, as I did author the book MetroFarm: The Guide to Growing for Profit In or Near the City, and am the Board Chair of Think Local First, County of Santa Cruz.

However, I am also the host of Food Chain Radio Podcast, and am fully aware that local food does not fill up all the shelves with good stories. And so, without prejudice, I travel up and down the food chain looking for good stories about what’s eating what.

When a notice about the World Ag Expo crossed my desk, I thought about all the interesting food chain stories I might be able to find there, and so petitioned the Expo for a media pass. And it was good to have a media pass, because the Expo featured over 1200 exhibitors on 2.6 million square feet of ground and welcomed over 108,000 visitors from 56 countries.

Join me for Part ! of a “Serendipitous Stroll!” through the World Ag Expo and meet these people of agriculture:

· Charley Piitgliano: who started farming with 275 acres in 1975 and who now farms 11,000 acres of the most productive farmland in the world

· Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who is flying the flag in Washington DC for that other California– the one where people earn a living by growing food

· Jennifer Fawkes, who is responsible for selling the world on traveling to Tulare, California to take part in the World Ag Expo

· Paul Mikesell, who built a weed-eating machine that uses artificial intelligence to identify unwanted plants, and then zaps them at the meristem so they will never be unwanted again

· Sharon Zoeller and Sheila Bowen who, as women of California’s agriculture, are unashamed of their roles in holding together the nuclear farm family

· Steve Vasquez, whose farmers turn that super abundant California sunshine into the super delicious Sunmaid raisins in those little red boxes

· Will Van Tassell, who knows how to get the money it takes to turn land into productive farmland

· Mike Crussett, who represents a company brings us those uber nutritious pistachios we simply can’t stop eating

· And Kallen Hazard and Sean Guine from Northern Ireland, who traveled clear across the world to sell California farmers on the efficacy of, among other things, Irish knickers!