What’s It Like to Run a Strawberry Farm?
In the third installment of our Faces of Farming series, we speak with Greg France, who grows strawberries with his wife in California.
Monica Reinagel, MS, LD/N, CNS
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What’s It Like to Run a Strawberry Farm?
This week I have the third installment of my special Faces of Farming series, a series of podcasts in which I’m talking with some of the people who have made it their life’s work to feed the rest of us.
Perhaps you have a small backyard garden or work alongside neighbors in a community garden. If you do, you know the joys of growing food. Nothing is more satisfying than turning a patch of dirt and some seeds or seedlings into something you can actually serve your family and friends. And nothing tastes better than a green bean or strawberry that you grew yourself.
But of course, as every gardener knows, there’s always the possibility of heartbreak. A rogue storm wipes out a bed of tender seedlings, insects infest a field, or after waiting an entire season to enjoy the fruits of your labors, squirrels or birds plunder your crop before you can harvest it.
Now, magnify those risks and rewards by a few orders of magnitude and maybe you can begin to imagine what it’s like to run a commercial farming operation, and the enormous task and responsibility professional farmers take on. Although I’ve certainly endured my share of personal gardening disasters, losing a crop never meant that there would be no food on the table.
A hundred years ago, 1 in every 4 Americans was employed in agriculture. Today, it’s just 1 in 50. Most of us really have no idea how the food we eat every day gets to us. So this month, I’m taking the opportunity to introduce you to some of these folks, to learn what their lives and jobs are like and what they put into feeding the rest of us.
Today, I’m talking with Greg France. Greg and his wife are strawberry growers in California. Strawberries, of course, are one of the most popular fruit. And one of the most nutritious as well. They are particularly high in vitamin C—a serving of strawberries has more vitamin C than an orange! And like most berries, strawberries are a good source of polyphenols, antioxidants that protect the heart, brain, and cells throughout the body.
Their perfect balance of sweet and tart also make them surprisingly versatile. Frozen strawberries are terrific in smoothies, as a topping for yogurt or frozen yogurt. And strawberries also make a great addition to green salads. But I can tell you from personal experience, they are not necessarily easy to grow. Fortunately, Greg France has dedicated his life to the care and feeding of this sometimes temperamental little fruit.
A Conversation with Strawberry Farmer Greg France
Nutrition Diva: Greg, tell us about your fields. What’s going on in the strawberry fields at this time of year?
GF: Well, we’re actually pretty busy. We’re in California, in Santa Maria, and we can harvest strawberries 52 weeks out of the year. So we really don’t have any down time anymore. We just finished planting what we call our “fall crop” which will be harvested in the springtime and that’s usually our main crop. But we’re also harvesting our summer crop which is planted in the summer and it harvests during the fall.
ND: Your company grows both conventional and organic produce. How has becoming an organic farmer impacted you as a grower? Has it changed anything about how you manage your conventional crops?
GF: It has. I really believe it’s made me a better farmer. Farming organics is very, very difficult and you have to be able to anticipate things. You have to anticipate the nutrient needs of your plants. You have to anticipate pest issues or insect or disease issues. So you really have to be forward-thinking, but at the same time, sometimes organically there’s just nothing you can do about an issue. It makes you resign to the fact that you don’t control everything really on the farm, although you’d like to.
ND: I’m learning that modern farming invests heavily in research and development and technology. Are there new innovations or technology are you excited about?
GF: Oh, yes. Always. Always something new and exciting. I’m involved in this California Strawberry Commission. We had a technology symposium last January. It was exciting to see some of the new ideas that are coming down the line. We’re involved in a strawberry robotic harvester that’s being built and manufactured and developed in Florida. We also worked with the University of California at Davis on new varieties. We’ve been working with them for the last three or four years. There’s some new, exciting, beautiful, delicious strawberry varieties coming down the line.
ND: What particular qualities are they trying to develop in these new varieties? Is it about nutrient content, or flavor, or maybe resilience to various pressures?
GF: Well, they have a list of priorities and I know at the top is disease resistance or tolerance—strawberries are a very delicate plant—but they’re also breeding for flavor and for appearance.
ND: Even with all the technology, so much of farming comes down to people with their hands in the dirt. I’ve heard from other farmers that shrinking labor pools are one of the biggest challenges they are facing. Tell us about the people that work for you and what goes into developing and nurturing that workforce.
GF: They are very good, hard-working people and we have nothing but admiration, appreciation, and thankfulness that they do work for us. Growing and harvesting strawberries is backbreaking work and our people are paid well. We treat our people with the respect that they deserve, for certain, but at the same time, our labor time has shrunk quite a bit.
ND: Are there opportunities for people to start out in some of the more manual aspects of agriculture—manual labor aspects—and move up into management positions, or are there higher levels of responsibility?
GF: Most of our employees started out at the very bottom as just field laborers. We have several employees and it is our company’s motto, we like to develop our talent internally as best as we can. So there are a lot of opportunities. One of our supervisors started with us 15 years ago just as a day laborer, became an assistant foreman, and then became an assistant supervisor, and now is a supervisor and we spent a lot of time with him, training him and going through seminars, working with him one-on-one, and very proud that his employee number with us was “11.” So he started with us from almost the beginning and it’s great to see he and his family be successful.
ND: Has your family always been in farming?
GF: I grew up in a farming community, but my family was not in farming. But I had a lot of farmer friends, kids that I grew up with, and there was one in particular, actually three brothers that I was really good friends with, and their father was a farmer and I just really looked up to him and had a tremendous amount of admiration for him and what he was doing and that’s when I said to myself, I’d like to be a farmer.
I farmed off on the side a little bit as I was working for other people, but it was just in 2004 that we started farming on our own and when I say that, that’s my wife and I. And it’s, for us, really not a vocation. It’s more like a lifestyle. This is what we do, this is what we love, and we enjoy it quite a bit. It requires an awful lot of time, an awful lot of effort. We work together, we vacation together, we sleep together, and we’re still married. But we really enjoy what we do.
ND: I work in digital media. The people that I work every day with are literally spread out around the world, as are the people that listen to this podcast. And I could do what I do from anywhere. But as a farmer, you are tied to a specific place on the planet in a way that many of us today are not. What does that mean to you? How does has that shaped your life?
GF: Well, when you’re having a tough season, you sure would like to move somewhere else. But we are tied to the soil and now that we’re tied to the state that we operate in, my wife and I are very active and involved in our communities. We work quite a bit with the boys and girls club, which really helps our employees. Always a consideration is childcare and child activities and growing your community big and strong. My wife and I are dedicated to that.
ND: What are your hopes and fears for the future of farming?
GF: Wow. That’s a pretty all encompassing question. I don’t see it being any easier. I see it being actually more and more difficult. As you opened your show, less than 1% or 2% of the people in the United States are farmers now. And I don’t think there’s an understanding of all it takes to do what we do and to support the people we do support. And I’d really like to improve that appreciation and understanding. And I think if we did that, it would make our jobs just a little bit easier. It’s not easy; it requires a lot of work. But it’s a passion of ours, it’s what we love to do, and if you’ll just help us do it, I think that would be really great for all involved.
ND: Greg thank you so much for spending some time with me today and giving us a chance to learn about the lives and the people behind our harvests.
I will be back next week with the last in our Faces of Farming conversations and I’ll be talking with almond farmer Brian Wahlbrink to hear how almond growers are working on conserving water and making their crops more sustainable. And you can hear entire Faces of Farming series on the Nutrition Diva podcast.
Wishing everyone a healthy and happy thanksgiving celebration, and sending out a special thanks to all the farmers who made it possible.
Image of strawberries © Shutterstock
About the Author
Monica Reinagel is a board-certified licensed nutritionist, author, and the creator of one of iTunes’ most highly ranked health and fitness podcasts. Her advice is regularly featured on the TODAY show, Dr. Oz, NPR, and in the nation’s leading newspapers, magazines, and websites. Do you have a nutrition question? Call the Nutrition Diva listener line at 443-961-6206. Your question could be featured on the show.