A Serendipitous Stroll into Agriculture II

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

Various Participants

World Ag Expo, Tulare, California

How do they provide us with all our food?

We all get our food from grocery stores, and we all take that food for granted – even the “fresh” tomatoes we eat in the middle of winter! It’s time we take a serendipitous stroll through agriculture, via the World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, to meet the people who provide us with the food we take for granted.

Why take a “serendipitous” stroll?

Imagine you’ve been invited to a banquet in which you will be offered 1200 delicious foods to eat. And yes, they did send you a menu so that you can plan your way through the eating. After all, you can’t eat everything, so you want to eat the best foods in the least amount of time.

And so you stared at the menu until your vision blurred and your stomach turned. Then you knew you would just have to trust to serendipity in order to get the most from this great eating adventure.

And that’s what we will find in our serendipitous stroll through the World Ag Expo: Over 1200 exhibitors on 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space, with over 108,233 visitors from 56 countries.

So we studied the menu of exhibitors for those we thought would be good representatives of the world of agriculture. We mapped them out so as to be certain to find them. Then we determined to stroll and meet whoever we thought might have something to teach us.

On this, our second stroll, we will meet:

Vermiculturalist George Hahn, whose California ranch holds more earthworms then can be counted. (Go ahead and try!)

Realtor Bill Shore, who knows how to help farmers own some of the most productive, and expensive, farmland in the world.

Israel Verado, USDA Risk Management, who provides farmers with the insurance that helps mitigate their very risky businesses.

Irene Podasas, UCNR Nutrition, who helps the farmworker community find real nutrition in their heart of agriculture food deserts.

Kent Levin, Farm X Technologies, who brings Silicon Valley’s digital technologies to the farmers of precision agriculture.

David Kee, Antles Pollen, who the bees get their job done by providing them with supercharged pollen to carry around.

Greg Christensen, John Deere Tractors, which brougbt the real green movement to America’s countryside well over a hundred years ago.

Darci Turley, Ag Co Tractors, which sells tractors from the U.S. and Germany to farmers who like the colors of red and blue.

Barry Cotano, Peterbuilt Trucks, which now makes big rigs without smoke stacks.

Tony Allen, Agritech Analytics, which provides farmers with the genetic information they need to build the performance of herds.