CALIFORNIA MEMBER PROFILE
Mark Borba President Borba Farms Inc. Riverdale, CA
Member Since 2006
Water Issues Top the Charts
By Tim Linden
I t was in the early 1900s that Mark Borba’s ancestors started working the land, near Hardwick in the San Joaquin Valley. His grandparents were dairy farmers. After World War II, the Borba family began to rethink the economics of dairy farming and set their sights on row crops. “The first thing they started with was cotton,” said Mark, adding that cotton was grown by the family for more than 70 years. The transition to row crops in the late 1940s was indicative of the farming philosophy that has driven the Borba family for more than seven decades. A discussion with Mark reveals that economics has always played the most important role as crop decisions are made year in and year out. Many of those decisions have been driven by market price, but increasingly it is the
availability of water that informs the discussion. It was in the late ‘40s that Mark’s parents, Ross and Tina, and his uncle, Darril, started their own operation called Borba Brothers Farms. For 35-plus years, they grew a variety of row crops, with cotton always being one of the mainstays. In the meantime, young Mark grew up on the farm and always knew it would be his future. He went to college at the University of California, Davis majoring in agricultural economics and business management with a minor in agronomy. College not only yielded a great foundation for his farming life, but also gave him a partner for the journey. “I got married in 1971 when I was a sophomore at Davis. I told my wife, if she would work and put me through college, we would settle down and raise a family together…just like ‘The Waltons’.” And, Peggy and Mark have been married ever since, celebrating 48 years this past September. Armed with that degree, Mark did come back to the farm in 1974 to work with the rest of his family, which included his older brother, Ross Jr. In 1975, Ross Sr. had a severe heart attack that required a quadruple bypass. The elder Borba recovered but running a high-stress farming operation was no longer in the cards. In 1976, Mark and Ross Jr. teamed up to created Borba Farms Inc. and continue the family tradition. For the next 30-plus years, the second generation of Borba brothers made their living growing row crops. Ross Jr., who graduated from Healds College with a degree in accounting, handled the finance and legal end of the business, while Mark took care of the farming. The brothers continued along the same diversity path that their father and uncle followed. Mark noted that in the 1960s, the family operation moved to the Westside and started diversifying into other row crops, including sugar beets, barley and processing tomatoes. In the late 1960s, Borba Brothers bought a mechanical tomato harvester, when they were still the new thing, and began offering harvesting services to other growers, in addition to harvesting their new tomato acreage. That expansion of the
Brother Ross Jr, Mom Tina, Peggy and Mark
14 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com MARCH | APRIL 2020
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