I’m Jeff Boldt. My wife Brenda and I farm land as a corporation because it makes the best business sense for our small operation. We care about our family, our employees, and we care about the environment because it’s the right thing to do.
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Hear Jeff Boldt in his radio ad, “Meet Corporate Agriculture”
Jeff Boldt talks about irrigation and crop production on his “corporate” farm
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More About the Jeff Boldt Family Farm
Our family has been producing delicious fruit, including peaches, plums and nectarines, in the San Joaquin Valley for more than 100 years. Back then, most people had a connection to agriculture and understood where their food originated. Today much of that has changed. If you’re not growing the food your family consumes then people like us are growing it for you.
We care about what goes into the products we grow and we want you to enjoy them as much as we do. Small family-run operations like ours make up the majority of farms in California and our goal is to produce food that is safe, healthy and delicious.
California is perfect for farming. With good weather and rich soils we can grow almost anything. “Corporations” like ours also need a dependable water supply. We need it to grow the food Californians depend on. We need it for jobs. And we need it for our communities.
While some refer to this as “corporate agriculture,” to us it’s our family farm.
Brenda’s grandfather Abram Buhler (left) is seen here with Abram Buhler Senior (middle) and her great uncle Hank Buhler near a new groundwater pump in 1907. Abram Buhler Senior was a minister that emigrated with his family from Canada to Reedley shortly after the turn of the 20th Century.
Today Brenda and I run the operation, farming about 260 acres in Alta Irrigation District, the first district of its kind in California to begin delivering water to farmers after passage of the Wright Act in 1887. Fruit production is a year-round activity but the majority of our work occurs between April and September when our 52 different varieties of peaches, plums and nectarines ripen for the market. The fruit is packed right on our farm and distributed through Mountain View Fruit Sales, a local company that serves the marketing needs of a few dozen farmers in the area and supplier to many of the largest grocery chains in the U.S. and abroad.
While our farm is a “corporation”, it is similar in nature to the vast number of farms in California and is a direct opposite to media characterizations of what a so-called “corporate” farm is. Brenda does the bookkeeping and both of our kids, Taylor and Tami, grew up on the farm and earned money in the fields and the packing shed to help put themselves through college.
I see a number of challenges ahead for farmers throughout California. Water supplies are limited and farmers pay for the water they receive. Increasing pressure from population growth and environmental restrictions have the potential to increase the cost of that water. Despite our ongoing efforts to conserve water on the farm, rising prices still make it tough for farmers like us and our neighbors to turn a profit at the end of the year.
