Posted on behalf of Bradley Evans

The field trip to Fifer Orchards was another really great experience. It was cool to see such a huge farm produce such a multitude of crops for profit. They really have a great system in place for crop rotation and experimentation. It is a family run enterprise which manages to use each others strengths to lead different departments of the business. The farm had been handed down through multiple generations with each trying to advance the production and technology. It was good to see their implementation of technology to make things easier for them in the harvesting and shipping areas. They kept track of what was selling and adjusted there planting schemes to maximize their earning potential on a yearly basis. They had an attitude of always evolving which was prevalent in their onsite country store and the development of festivals to draw their customer base into the farm. This is how you run a successful farm. They did have some concerns for the future and unfortunately they are the same concerns that most people we met on our field trips had. The concerns where in government regulation and standards that are always evolving and resulting in extra expenses to the business. There other concern was in the cost of energy. Something that I learned which was interesting was how heavily they relied on migrant workers to harvest their crops. They said Americans didn’t want to do the job.