The Alliance for Food and Farming Appoints WG’s Cory Lunde as Communications Chair In January, the Management Board of the Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF) appointed Western Growers AVP, Public Affairs Cory Lunde as its Communications Chair and to serve on the organization’s Executive Committee. Lunde has been with Western Growers for more than 15 years and is responsible for overseeing all public affairs activities which includes internal and external communications, member communications, media relations, social media and strategic initiatives. Ian LeMay, incoming President of the California Table Grape Commission, was named the organization’s new Chair. —Ann Donahue and the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released the 2022 Census of Agriculture. The census—which has been taken and released every five years since 1997—is a complete count of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them. For the 2022 edition, the response rate was reported as 61 percent. The data is now available on the NASS website at www.nass.usda.gov. Here are a few highlights: Overall • The production value of fruits, tree nuts and berries was reported to be $34.2 billion. • The production value of vegetables was reported to be $28.2 billion. • California accounted for 68 percent of the value of fruits, tree nuts and berries and 41 percent of the value of vegetables. • 61 percent of vegetables were harvested for the fresh market and 39 percent were harvested for processing.
WG’s Voices of the Valley Podcast Relaunches with a Broader Emphasis on Agriculture Upcoming episodes of the Voices of the Valley podcast will expand beyond agtech to include topics like fighting misinformation about agriculture; women changing the industry; fieldworkers’ stories and scientific developments. In the first episode of the new season of Voices of the Valley, Western Growers’ Dennis Donohue, Center for Innovation & Technology Director, and Jeana Cadby, Environment and Climate Director, discuss how agriculture is addressing its biggest challenges this year in both innovation and science. Dennis and Jeana discuss how the organization and its team are actively addressing issues like automation solution, climate challenges, food safety developments, biological input innovation and more. In the second episode of Voices of the Valley this season, we broke through misconceptions in agriculture with Coachella Valley farmer Celeste Alonzo. Alongside her family, Celeste grows bell peppers and corn at Junior Enterprises. She joins Julia Nellis, Social Media Manager at Western Growers, to answer questions WG received on social media about farming. Join us to gain a deeper understanding about the day-to-day intricacies of operating a farm, farmworker safety standards and protection, automation, organic and conventional produce and more. The new season of Voices of the Valley is available on all major podcast hosting platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. —Kara Timmins
Takeaway Facts from the 2022 Census of Agriculture On Feb. 13, 2024, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• The total area harvested for vegetables decreased by 1.3 percent since 2017. Commodity specific Spinach • Acres harvested from spinach in 2022 increased by 13.5 percent since 2017. • California and Arizona lead spinach production: California 69.4 percent, Arizona 13.6 percent, Washington 4.6 percent and Texas 3.6 percent Cantaloupes • Area harvested decreased by 27 percent from 2017 to 2022. • California 53 percent, Arizona 27.6 percent and Texas 4.6 percent lead cantaloupe production. Lettuce • In 2022, 367,432 acres of lettuce were harvested. This is a 7.1 percent increase compared to 2017 when 342,965 acres of lettuce were harvested. • In 2022, 74.6 percent of the lettuce area harvested was in California and 17.7 percent of the lettuce area
harvested was in Arizona, totaling 92.3 percent of lettuce area harvested in the U.S. • In 2022, the lettuce area harvested was 24.9 percent leaf, 38.8 percent head and 36.3 percent romaine. According to the USDA, the purpose of the census is to enumerate all objects with a defined characteristic. For the census of agriculture, that goal is to account for “any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the census year.” To do this, NASS creates a Census Mail List (CML) of agricultural operations that potentially meet the farm definition, collects agricultural information from those operations, reviews the data, corrects or completes the requested information, and combines the data to provide information on the characteristics of farm operations and farm producers at the national, state and county levels. — Gustavo Reyes
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MARCH | APRIL 2024
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