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Cultivating an Ongoing Education
Sustainability Matters to Farming Graduates
by Lori Gilbert
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Lessons of sustainability don’t end when students depart Stanislaus State with diplomas.
Trent Voss and Hector Vera are representative of relatively recent graduates making a difference in sustainable agriculture.
Vera, (’17, B.S., biology) works the night shift at Gallo Winery analyzing wine for oxygen, alcohol and chemical levels in its lab. By day, he farms part of his family’s property and dreams of one day being a full-time market farmer.
Voss is a fourth-generation farmer, who two years ago began farming 40 acres of almonds on leased land. By day, the 2013 graduate (B.S., agricultural studies with a biology emphasis), is a regional manager for Blue Diamond Almonds, one of the largest co-ops in the world.
“I relay any information from Blue Diamond to the growers and take information from growers back to Blue Diamond,” Voss said.
Updated information is essential in a changing industry.
Gone are the days of flooding fields with water, massively spreading nutrients to the soil and spraying streams of toxic pesticides. Micro sprinklers or drip systems are becoming the norm, pesticides targeting specific tree-damaging insects have replaced those that eliminate all of them, and nutrients aren’t dumped in huge doses, but rather sprinkled onto the ground in smaller quantities throughout the year.
Voss saw changes begin when he started working as a pesticide control advisor for a pesticide company in his hometown of Hughson in 2010. Those changes continue, he said.
“Blue Diamond is getting comments back from buyers asking if the almonds are being grown sustainably, and if growers are taking care of things,” Voss said. “Blue Diamond can say we have great stewards of the land, but until they can show that, it doesn’t matter.”
Last year, the co-op began the Orchard Stewardship Incentive Program that rewards growers who learn, through online sessions, how to be more sustainable farmers. Offered through the California Almond Board, they allow growers to gradually move to more sustainable practices. Those doing the most work, including becoming bee-friendly certified through a third party, can receive an extra cent per pound of almonds.
“For growers who deliver a million pounds, that’s not a small amount of money,” Voss said.
Voss doesn’t believe money is the only incentive. As he sat in his car one day looking across the road at an almond orchard with nice cover crops on the rows between trees and micro sprinklers in place, he was confident in saying, “I don’t think the majority of them are looking at getting the bonus.
“I think the majority are looking at it and seeing this is the future. If they don’t start adapting, they’ll be left behind, because there will be other vendors with a list of growers that are following sustainable methods, applying sustainable practices. To keep selling, they are going to have to adapt to it.”
Growers of all scales are changing how things are done.
Vera, included.
He started growing some vegetables on a 50-foot by 50-foot plot on his family’s 10 acres in Waterford, a portion of which was once home to a walnut orchard. Now, he’s expanded his operation to five plots on a quarter acre with a dream of someday being a full-time farmer.
YouTube demonstrations may have wildly exaggerated the profits to be made by market farming, but Vera would still like to someday make a career of it. For now, he’s enjoying the process of learning to successfully, and sustainably, grow vegetables.
When he gets home after his 11:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift at Gallo, Vera heads to his garden or to a shed he set up with lights and racks to grow plants from seeds.
He’s progressed from that initial 50-foot by 50-foot lot cleared and planted in 2019. Family helped him clear land to set up four more identical lots for the 2021 growing season, and his mom, laid off from her dental office after 30 years, began helping in the garden.
- Trent Voss
Trent Voss
“It’s joy, relaxation, peaceful,” Susanna Vera said. “I never thought I would enjoy gardening. I never gardened. I always worked long hours. I have a picture of Hector when he was 4 years old planting onions and cilantro on the property with my dad. When he was in high school, Hector would plant tomatoes. It’s his passion. I think it’s genetic, from his grandfather.”
Vera often found ways to get his hands into the soil. At Stan State, as a part of the Hunger Network, he grew produce on a patch of land near Naraghi Hall and donated it to the United Samaritans.
The project ended, he said, because nematodes, microscopic worms, destroyed the plants.
He resumed gardening in 2019, became a certified Master Gardener, and when he read about Julia Sankey, Stan State professor of paleobiology and geology, leading the effort to create the Turlock Community Gardens in 2021, Vera volunteered.
He’s now on the group’s board of directors, is responsible for its composting and has a plot where he’s growing some cactus, lavender and chrysanthemums.
His passion, though, is tending the five plots on the property his family bought before he was born. The college graduate and gainfully employed 28-year-old remains a student, learning what he can from online papers, tutorials and demonstrations.
“I started getting into regenerative agriculture, which is the term I think people use,” Vera said. “It involves using cover crops. Whenever you have an area that you’re not using for a season or that you’re not going to plant until the next season, instead of leaving it bare, you cover it with plants until you want to plant there again.
“What I envision is a no-till system that uses multi-species cover crops. It’s about what’s best for the soil microbes. If you can maintain a good environment for the soil microbes, it will in turn benefit the plants. One way you can help the microbes is by keeping the ground covered by compost or even better, live plants growing there.”
Vera continues to study similar organic gardening ideas.
“I’d like to get a microscope and look at the soil, see how the microbes in soil look over time,” Vera said. “Eventually I'd like to take that knowledge and share it with people to help them with their own gardens and to improve the soil.”
Vera hopes one day to start a community garden in his hometown of Waterford. For now, he’s sharing what he knows at the Turlock Community Gardens and through his Master Gardener membership. He attended a farmer’s market for the group last summer and recently made YouTube videos, including one in Spanish, with growing advice.
Vera’s bounty of tomatoes, beets, radishes, squash, carrots, lettuce, cilantro, beans, onions and peppers mostly was sold last year to local restaurants and to a start-up company selling boxes of fresh, local produce.
Distribution is the next obstacle for the budding organic gardener to tackle.
“At first this was to get some money on the side, a side hustle,” Vera said. “It’s still that. Once I get better at it, I can have a booth in a farmer’s market or sell directly to restaurants. Now, it’s also so I can figure out how to garden so it’s beneficial to people who eat the produce, but also beneficial to the soil. In turn, I’ll create a scenario that can support life. The goal of regenerative agriculture is to leave the land in better condition than it was.”
Hector Vera and Susanna Vera
