Suey was born in 1938 to Stan and Becky Houseworth in Seville, Ohio. In 1948 Papa Stan loaded up the family, including her brother Terry’s imaginary friend, Dickie Ronnie, and moved to California. Kinda like the Beverly Hillbillies. She graduated eighth grade from Rio Dell Elementary and attended Fortuna High. That is until dad came in to her Aunt Bessie’s café and swept his little “blue-eyed darlin” (dad’s sarcastic nick-name for her) off her feet and married her. March 26 marked 70 years of marriage for mom and dad.

Mom was kind of like Cher or Madonna. No matter where you went with her you would hear the cries of “Suey.” Some random person would come up and give her a huge hug. Mostly former co-workers from St. Luke Manor, where she was kind of like the “mother superior.” They remembered her because she listened, encouraged, laughed and loved them and it stuck with them years later. Three weeks ago a nurse asked me “aren’t you Sue Carson’s daughter, I used to work at St. Luke’s” Yep, Madonna, Cher and Suey.

Mom never met a person she didn’t love. Well……..maybe a couple, but they would never have known it. She told me once, “You don’t have to love everyone, but you have to treat them like you do.” That is how she lived her life. Her church and relationship with Jesus were the second most important thing in her life, which I think breaks the First Commandment, but we’ll get to that later. Mom loved her church and especially her church family. Working with Dolores Gardner after she retired was one of her favorite times of life. She formed a fast friendship with Dolores that lasted long after they both retired from the church. She knew she was serving Jesus by serving others. She loved the years she taught in the Kindergarten Sabbath School class and being the lesson study supply clerk. But what she loved most was bringing her children, grand-children and great grand-children to church.

Mom loved her family more than anything in this world. It is impossible to put it in to words and do that love justice. Her family was everything. Three generations, soon to be a fourth, received the benefits of that love. Basically, her family was her only hobby. Her time was spent taking the kids on trips to the beach, Safari World, Brookings, Redding and especially Disneyland! She would do twelve days of Christmas for all the kids until there just became too many and she couldn’t remember what day she was on and what she had already given to which kid. Plus, dad would cut off her Christmas shopping money! She would plan “picnic on the floor” nights when blankets went on the floor, snacks abounded and a movie was played. Dad’s favorite quote (and gripe) was “when I die I wanna come back as one of your grandchildren.” We’re waiting, Dad!

Mom had the greatest sense of humor! The goal was always to tease and harass her until she was laughing so hard she had to run to the bathroom, her belly was hurting or sometimes she even had to pull the car over to finish laughing. It was just so easy to do. Humor came easily to her. Many people (and some family) did not understand our family’s sense of humor which some would say bordered on verbal abuse. But that is just how we roll here. Mom always said, “if my girls aren’t teasing, harassing and calling me names I know they’re mad at me.” And that was a two-way street my friends. Mom gave as good as she got. Sometimes she accidentally made us laugh by some of the crazy things she didn’t even realize she was saying. Like when “someone” accidentally shot a doe not a buck during hunting season and frantic conversations with words like game-warden, and fines were being thrown around. After listening to all this worry mom simply said, “just cut its head off and the game-warden won’t know if it’s male or female.” Think about it. You’ll get it! We call these kind of statements “Sueyisms”.

There are just so many people to thank. Kathy McWhorter. She loved working with you at St. Luke Manor. You too, teased and harassed her making you part of the family. When she came home from Napa, you came down to be with her. You held her hand, shared memories with us, laughed and cried. We know she sensed you and felt your love. Thank you for that.

Paulette Houseworth and Sharon Eglin. You guys came almost every day that mom was home. It didn’t matter to you that she didn’t know you were there. You sat in the quiet with her and just held her hand. You supported all of us as much as mom during that time. Those last days were made easier for us because you guys were there and helped bring some sense of normalcy and distraction during in a challenging time. Paulette I remember when Uncle Jim passed and we were sitting there and mom was saying it wasn’t fair that he went first. She was saying why couldn’t he stay and I be the one to go. You looked at her and said, “because God knew we would need you” and you were so right.

John Denny. When Aunt Bobby passed you and mom became so close. You two understood the same pain of losing a mother and a sister. You were bound together in your grief. You, Gracie, Natalie and Sarah meant so much to her. She swept you all up under her wings and tried to fill a void in your hearts . Thank you. We love you.

Now, the Two Tims. Whitchurch and Elwell. You guys were her sons. Tim Whitchurch you grew up with Connie and just naturally wrangled your way in to the family. You always teased her and made her laugh, and always made sure she had your home-made bread. You checked in on her faithfully and would do anything for her. The crazy things you got your self in to and all the things you always lost kept her quite entertained. We love you for it. Tim Elwell. You too were raised as part of our family. For 60 years you have been her son. You always teased her, made her laugh and checked in on her. At church you always made sure she drank plenty of water and saved her a place. Our pew will never be the same. Thank you and we love you.

Evon Bowling. You guys were babies raising babies when Dad and Amos introduced you. You two didn’t even like each other. But that changed and you spent the next seven decades helping each other collectively raise six kids that to this day consider one another brothers and sisters. Ron and Pam are mom’s children of the heart and our siblings. To Connie and I, you are our other mother. You were her sister, not just her best friend. Thank you for calling everyday when mom was home to check on not just her, but Connie and I as well. When I put the phone up to her ear that day and she heard your voice, she opened her eyes and tried to talk. She knew whose voice that was and wanted you to know it. We can not love you more for sticking with Suey through good and bad times and loving her forever.

We have to say thank you so much to Hospice of Humboldt. Your tender care, compassion and encouragement helped us give mom the best care we could. Thank your for patiently answering our questions and showing us the best way to keep mom comfortable. What you do is not easy, but we saw the heart you have for this kind of work in everyone who came.

Mom did not need to pound people over the head with a Bible to teach them about Jesus. She just lived the love of Christ. Like she said, “you don’t have to like everybody but you have to treat them like you love them.” She knew where her hope and strength came from and never stopped praying that all her friends and family would come to know the grace of Jesus.

In recent years one of mom and dad’s favorite past-times was to compare whose aches and pains, hearing and vision were the worst. It was a feverish competition of some sort. Not sure who was winning. If mom was falling behind, she never hesitated to play the Parkinson’s card. Were sure that they’re up there somewhere comparing whose recent ambulance rides, airplane ride and hospital stays were the worst. There is a Spanish saying that translates to “distance is just a measure of love’s reach.” The distance is unbearable, Mom, but we feel your love. Keep laughing and we’ll see you on the other side.

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Elizabeth “Betty” McGuire passed away peacefully on April 25, 2023 in Eureka. Betty was born on October 12, 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland. Unfortunately, her mother, Agnes, died when Betty was only 12 years old. Betty lived with her oldest sister and family until she met and married her husband John McGuire on June 24, 1950. They were married for 70 years!

John worked as a Terrazzo mason throughout Scotland and England before being offered an opportunity to emigrate to Vancouver, Canada in 1956. Embracing this chance, John went to Canada to begin work and earned enough money to send for the passage of Betty and their two “wee” sons, John and Gerald. After a 4 months apart, Betty began her travels to Vancouver with the young boys on a long ocean passage from Liverpool, England to Quebec, Canada. She told stories about the trip where she and the boys slept in one small bunk and a kind steward would bring them occasional treats. Once they arrived in Quebec, they boarded a train for the trip to Vancouver through the plains of Manitoba and over the Canadian Rockies. During the 1950s this was quite a feat for a young woman alone with two small children.

After four years in British Colombia, the family which now included the youngest son Stephan, moved to Eureka in 1960. It took three cars to travel from Vancouver to Eureka, where they were able to fulfill their dream of owning a home. Settling into life in Humboldt County, Betty attended night school learning secretarial skills. In 1967 she became the administrative secretary for Zoe Barnum Continuation High School, from which she retired 23 years later. Betty truly enjoyed her job and the students. The students equally appreciated Betty and her no-nonsense but caring approach.

Upon retirement, Betty and John moved to a home they had previously built in Willow Creek. Betty loved golf and she and John became members of Willow Creek Golf Club. While living in Willow Creek she played golf daily and looked forward to the Women’s Club events, where she developed close friendships with many of the ladies. She took many golf trips to Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, and throughout California. She and John were very fortunate to enjoy many years of golf, friendships, family and sunshine.

Betty was preceded in death by her husband, John Kennedy McGuire. She leaves behind sons John, wife Melody, Jerry, Stephan, wife Sherry, grandchildren Jason, Adam, Jake, Brittany, Stephan and Katie, great-grandchildren, Maya, Luke, Natalie, Avery, Lucy and brother-in-law Charlie McGuire, along with numerous nieces and nephews in Scotland and Canada.

A special thanks to the staff at Hospice and Timber Ridge for their compassionate care in the last few days of our mother’s life.

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Marvin John Rogers, 74, of Eureka, passed away on April 24.

John was a loving father and grandfather whose hobbies were classic cars and motorcycles. He worked with his brother Ron for many years specializing in custom furniture. He then went on to being the number-one sales man at Harper Ford Motors. Lastly, he worked for Richard Miller Motorcycles, where he retired from.

John loved playing his guitar and singing karaoke. He even taught his grandchildren to play the guitar.

He is survived by his brother Ron, his three sisters, Kim, Christine, and Tamara, and his three sons, John T, Don, and Dan. John T’s partner Trish and his children John Jr., Damon, Britton, Lucy, and Aimee. Don’s children Levi, Sierra, and Tessa. Dan’s partner Heather and their children Dylan and Madison.

John loved his family, and he will be forever in their hearts. No public services are planned, and a private celebration of life will be observed by his family.

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HUMBOLDT TODAY: Did you ever dream you’d get your Humboldt news delivered to you in the dead of night from the streets of the world’s oldest republic? Yes? Well, you’re an odd one.

This week LoCO has dispatched our very own John Kennedy O’Connor to the nation state of San Marino. New temporary location, same local news. Tune in! Ciao bella!

FURTHER READING:

• Cal Poly Humboldt Professor Leads First-of-its-Kind Study on Legacy Cannabis Genetics
• Up in Brookings, a Church Keeps Feeding the Hungry Despite the City’s Orders to Stop
• Cal Poly Humboldt to Hold Its First Regional Commencement Ceremony in Beverly Hills Next Monday

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m.

Want to LISTEN to HUMBOLDT TODAY? Subscribe to the podcast version here.

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Some Redwood Coast Montessori High School students have been working hard to add a colorful mural to the side of the schools newest campus, which is in the former Ten Building (and Arcata Bowl before that) on K Street in Arcata. 

Learn more about the progress they’re making and about upcoming public paint days and the mural’s official unveiling event in the following press release from Cal Poly Humboldt:

On a busy corner in downtown Arcata, redwood trees are sprouting from the sidewalk, foxes cavort, and a blue whale soars overhead.

Redwood Coast Montessori High School students are in the middle of painting a huge new mural at the corner of 8th and K Street in Arcata. The mural celebrates the North Coast, and is a collaboration with Cal Poly Humboldt students and the community.

Sasha Lyth, an art instructor at Redwood Coast Montessori, initially envisioned decorating just one corner of the building’s wall. But after discussions with the building owner, the scope of the mural expanded to the full wall, 127 wide and about 20 feet tall.

Lyth and her student teacher, Caroline Voorhees, who’s earning a teaching credential through Humboldt, gathered ideas to create the mural.

“We’ve had an amazing amount of student involvement in designing the mural,” says Lyth. “We worked with the entire  school to come up with broad themes and what we wanted to reflect.”

They settled on local landmarks and flora and fauna of the North Coast, and students submitted a wide collection of drawings, which Lyth and Voorhees combined into one design for the wall.

Around the beginning of the year, three Art Education students from Humboldt connected with Lyth to complete their senior project—an eight-week curriculum with Redwood Coast Montessori students to build artistic concepts, skills, and help them complete the mural. With help from Art professor Jim Woglom and Art technician Jim Woodhead, the team projected the mural design onto the wall and students and families worked late into the night tracing the design.

After the completion of the curriculum, the rest of the Humboldt Art Education class began to visit the mural on painting days to help finish it before the end of the Redwood Coast Montessori semester in June. They’ve also had some community painting days, and are anticipating holding more before summer break.

The public is invited to join Redwood Montessori students and faculty for public paint days on Saturday, May 13 and Saturday, May 20.

A Mural Unveiling Party for Friday, June 9 during Arts Arcata (6-9 pm), that will include a student craft fair, the Los Giles Taco Truck, and music by the Redwood Coast Chorus and The Vanishing Pints.

From Cal Poly Humboldt:

Growing under redwood canopies and prohibition, legacy cannabis cultivators cross bred cultivars (plants bred for desirable traits) to create strains such as Blue Dream and Sour Diesel. Popularized in the underground market, these varieties are now some of the best selling strains on the legal market today.

One Cal Poly Humboldt professor is leading the first-of-its-kind study that aims to trace lineage, and preserve these genetics and the communities that steward them.

Corva

Dominic Corva, Sociology professor and Cannabis Studies program director, is the principal investigator (PI) on a research team that received nearly $2.7 million from the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) to support the Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants study. The interdisciplinary, community-driven study aims to identify, document, and preserve California’s cannabis genetics, telling the stories of its legacy communities throughout the state, from Humboldt County to the Central Coast, and Southern California. 

The legacy community, according to the nonprofit research organization, the Origins Council, includes “cannabis producing regions […] that have established prolific small-scale cannabis cultivation and herbal medicine craft over the past two decades, or longer.”

Corva is conducting the research alongside co-PIs Genine Coleman, executive director of the Origins Council; Rachel Giraudo, Anthropology professor at CSU Northridge; Eleanor Kuntz of plant science company LeafWorks; and Todd Holmes, historian at the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley. Researchers are also partnering with the Cannabis Equity Policy Council, an organization that represents the interests of communities of color.  

As part of the community-based research model, the team will conduct town halls, include community-designed advisory boards, and put out calls and recommendations for interviews. They hope to conduct hundreds of interviews, and preserve hundreds of plants. Research outputs will include: herbariums, genomics data, a database of 90 oral history videos, and a series of educational webinars and publications. 

The two-year, scientific study will begin this year. Graduate and undergraduate students in the University’s new Cannabis Studies program—which launches this fall—will help conduct the research. This includes transcribing and coding interviews, and collecting archival data.

Corva describes his part of the team process as synthesizing the California legacy cannabis genetics and community stories through ethnographic and archival research, aided by student research assistants. 

“Community stories are a sustainable resource. They keep giving. They’re there in perpetuity to be learned from, drawn on, visited.”

“This research seeks to empower and protect California’s legacy cultivation communities who have overcome great adversity to innovate and steward one of the most important collections of cannabis genetic resources in the world,” says Coleman in a press release. 

Corva also hopes the research motivates other cannabis communities, or those with other agricultural commodities, to preserve their cultural history. These regions may include Thailand, Bangladesh, Morocco, Spain, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iran, Jamaica, and more. 

The project, he says, will also help inform the creation of appellations, like Champagne, which distinguishes products according to their geographical region of origin. 

“It’s a form of collective marketing rights and the ability to record your genetic variant,” he adds. “When federal legalization comes along, this will position Californian’s small producers really well for the national and global marketplace.”

For Corva, the project is an organic development of his more than 13 years of policy and equity assessment research, including co-directing the University’s Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, and co-founding the nonprofit organization, the Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy.

In addition to this project, 15 other academic institutions also received funding from the DCC as part of a $20 million investment in the scientific research of cannabis. Other research topics include investigating the short and long term effects of THC; interactions between THC and CBD; the health of California’s cannabis industry, and more.

In a world of worsening heatwaves, flooding, drought, glacial melting, megafires and other calamities of a changing climate, Gary Gragg is an optimist.

As California warms, Gragg — a nurseryman, micro-scale farmer and tropical fruit enthusiast — looks forward to the day that he can grow and sell mangoes in Northern California.

“I’ve been banking on this since I was 10 years old and first heard about global warming,” said Gragg, 54, who has planted several mango trees, among other subtropical trees, in his orchard about 25 miles west of Sacramento.

Gragg’s little orchard might be the continent’s northernmost grove of mangoes, which normally are grown in places like Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Northern California’s climate, he said, is becoming increasingly suitable for heat-loving, frost-sensitive mango trees, as well as avocados, cherimoyas and tropical palms, a specialty of his plant nursery Golden Gate Palms.

“Climate change isn’t all bad,” Gragg said. “People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.”

Mangoes may never become a mainstream crop in the northern half of California, but change is undoubtedly coming. Hustling to adapt, farmers around the state are experimenting with new, more sustainable crops and varieties bred to better tolerate drought, heat, humidity and other elements of the increasingly unruly climate.

In the Central Valley, farmers are investing in avocados, which are traditionally planted farther south, and agave, a drought-resistant succulent grown in Mexico to make tequila.

In Santa Cruz, one grower is trying a tropical exotic, lucuma, that is native to South American regions with mild winters. Others are growing tropical dragonfruit from the Central Coast down to San Diego.

Some Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries have planted new vineyards in cooler coastal hills and valleys to escape the extreme heat of inland areas. And several Bay Area farmers have planted yangmei, a delicacy in China that can resist blights that ravage peaches and other popular California crops during rainy springs.

“People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.”
— Gary Gragg, Sacramento Valley farmer

Near the town of Linden, farmer Mike Machado, who served in the state Assembly and Senate from 1994 to 2008, is one of many growers in the arid San Joaquin Valley who have replaced some stone fruit and nut trees with olives, historically a minor California crop mostly produced in Mediterranean nations.

“We’re adjusting for survival,” Machado said.

Climate change essentially means that Southern California’s conditions are creeping north up the coast and into the valley, while Oregon and Washington are becoming more like Northern California. Precipitation, winds, fog, and seasonal and daily temperature patterns — all of which determine which crops can be grown where — have all been altered.

“With climate change, we’re getting more erratic entries into fall and more erratic entries into spring,” said Louise Ferguson, a UC Davis plant physiologist.

Researchers predicted that “climatic conditions by the middle to end of the 21st century will no longer support some of the main tree crops currently grown in California.…For some crops, production might no longer be possible.”

“Fruit growers all around the world in the warm regions are worried about” warming trends, particularly in winter, said Eike Luedeling, a coauthor of the study and a professor of horticultural sciences at Germany’s University of Bonn.

UC Davis researchers are at the cutting edge of the push to adapt, working to make California’s lucrative walnut, pistachio and stone fruit orchards more resilient by selectively breeding for heat, disease and drought tolerance.

About three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts are grown in California, but fruit and nut trees are among the most vulnerable crops to climate change.

Luedeling’s research suggests that high winter temperatures could severely reduce walnut yields about once a decade.

Katherine Jarvis-Shean, an orchard advisor with the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources program, said that effect will be magnified farther south: “That’s probably one in five years in the southern San Joaquin Valley,” she said.

Searching for genetic resilience

Pistachios have grown to one of the state’s mightiest crops, with acreage of mature trees now covering more than 400,000 acres. The 2021 harvest totaled about 577,000 tons and was valued at nearly $3 billion.

Now crop scientists are working to save these valuable orchards from the effects of warming.

Warmer winters can cause male varieties to bloom and release pollen too late, after the female flowers have opened. This means less pollination and less fruit, and in 2015 many orchards suffered total crop failure.

Patrick Brown, a UC Davis nut crop breeder, said farmers have solved this problem, at least for now, by grafting additional male varieties with different blooming schedules into the groves. “It’s a fairly easy hedge against that problem (of warmer winters),” he said. “No matter when the females bloom, there should be some pollen for them.”

Breeding programs to reduce nuts’ chill requirements are underway, but Brown said these trees have trade-offs: They tend to wake up earlier from winter dormancy, which can put premature foliage at risk of frost damage and expose young leaves to rainfall that causes blight.

Gragg’s farm near Winters grows an array of crops, including citrus (shown above) and less-traditional ones like tropical fruits. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters

Brown is now leading a hunt for genetic resistance to walnut blight in the shady groves of the Wolfskill Experimental Orchard, a repository of nearly 9,000 grapevine and tree fruit varieties from around the world. This genetic bank, owned by UC Davis and jointly run with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, includes walnut trees of several species and hundreds of varieties.

Brown’s experiment involves showering the walnuts with sprinklers in spring and summer and observing which develop the symptoms of blight — oil-black stains on the leaves and fruit.

His research is focused on walnut trees grown from seeds collected in the Republic of Georgia, where humidity creates conditions amenable to the disease. This likely has created localized genetic resistance — what Brown hopes to find.

“It gets pretty hot and humid (in Georgia) during the growing season, and if there’s resistance to blight anywhere, that would probably be a good place to look,” he said.

“Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant.”
— Claire Heinitz, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Still other problems are emerging as California’s weather patterns grow more erratic.

Early fall rains have been a problem for walnuts, spoiling ripening fruits. And heat waves — especially when they follow a rain event — can cause fruit to drop or spoil. Almost 40% of last fall’s walnut crop was lost when Central Valley temperatures approached 115 degrees, according to Robert Verloop, executive director of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission.

Walnut growers “are worried about heatwaves, and they should be,” Jarvis-Shean said.

Another UC Davis study at the Wolfskill orchard aims to identify genes for heat tolerance in European walnut trees. Claire Heinitz, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research leader, said trees are sampled with an instrument that measures photosynthesis. The idea is to find unique individuals that maintain basic functions under brutal heat conditions.

This year, she said, the project, led by researchers Andrew McElrone and Mina Momayyezi, might be expanded to include grapes, which are highly prone to heat damage, as well as pistachios and almonds.

Heinitz said much of the research aims to create hardier root systems, which can protect the trees against soil pathogens, salts and other stressors. However, breeding drought resilience into California’s major crops may be a more elusive goal.

“Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant,” Heinitz said.

Researcher Andrew McElrone uses a porometer on an almond tree leaf at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards near Winters. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters

California’s subtropical future?

The winter of 2023 was an unusually cold one, but it hardly suggests a trend toward nut-friendly weather.

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said last month that the low temperatures of the past several months were “a fluke” amid a long-term trajectory of increasingly warm winters. In fact, he said, “this may well be the coldest winter that some places will see now for the rest of our lives.”

If true, that could mean smooth sailing for Chiles Wilson Jr. and his family. A fifth-generation Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmer, Wilson has planted thousands of avocado trees of a dozen varieties near Walnut Grove and Cortland. Now the fruit, harvested almost year-round, is a key component of the family’s fruit-packing company, Rivermaid.

Most California avocados are grown between San Diego and Santa Barbara, covering nearly 50,000 acres and producing more than $300 million in direct farm sales.

Wilson recalls that when he pitched the avocado idea to his family nearly a decade ago, they discouraged him.

“They said, ‘Nah, they won’t produce here,’” he said. “And I said, ‘But that one does.’” He pointed to a large, fruit-laden avocado tree within sight of the farm’s main office. They gave it a shot, planting more than 600 avocado trees per acre.

Wilson knows, even in an era of warming, that his avocado orchards are a gamble. “We’re one killer freeze away from being wiped out,” Wilson said.

However, this winter, the temperature dipped below freezing 16 times in the Wilsons’ avocado groves, yet the trees survived and are producing fruit.

Gragg holds Pinkerton avocados that he grows in the Sacramento Valley. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters

Still other fruits, barely known to most Americans, could rise to greatness in a warmer California. Charlie Lucero, a home orchardist in Menlo Park, is helping introduce Californians to yangmei. Lychee-like red orbs with pits inside like a cherry and a taste like pomegranate and pine resin, yangmei are typically grown in China.

Now Lucero is serving as a consultant and marketer for several Northern California growers who are preparing to harvest their second crop.

Lucero said the fruit — a relative of the bayberry — has “zero chill requirement” and is also resistant to fungi and bacteria that can plague stone fruit growers.

“If we get a late rain, it doesn’t hurt us,” Lucero said of his small yangmei collaborative, called Calmei. “These trees are well suited for California, where the weather is becoming less predictable.”

Lucero said they’ve been retailing for about $60 a pound. Last year’s crop totaled about 2.5 tons; this year, he expects about twice that.

An orchard project near Santa Cruz offers another glimpse into California’s possible future of farming.

Nate Blackmore of Wildlands Farm and Nursery is planting several acres with subtropical fruits, mostly from Central and South America — white sapote, ice cream bean, cherimoya, uvaia, dragonfruit and guabiroba.

The main attraction of his up-and-coming orchard will be lucuma trees. Native to western South America, lucuma resembles a round avocado with a pointed bottom, with mealy, sweet flesh like a yam.

All these species are tolerant of frost — but just barely.

“It’s so scary having all these subtropical fruit trees, and wondering how many would survive a bad freeze,” Blackmore said.

Yet another tropical crop could gain an advantage from California’s warming climate: coffee.

It’s being grown at orchards in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Diego counties, and it’s not cheap: One company is selling organic coffee beans for $286 per pound. But the trees are hardly sustainable in those regions, which are reliant on water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River: Watering them takes at least several feet of water per year.

Another tropical fruit more suitable for drought-prone land is the pitaya, or dragonfruit. Grown from tropical cactus plants, it can be farmed in California with as little as 1.5 feet of applied water — a third of what citrus and avocados need, according to Ramiro Lobo, a San Diego County farm advisor with the UC Cooperative Extension program. His program has distributed about 50,000 dragonfruit cactus cuttings to small farmers from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego and at least 1,000 acres are in production.

Dry farming to cope with water scarcity

Among all the pressures for California farmers, none is so persistent and serious as water supply. The agriculture industry uses about 80% of the water Californians consume. During droughts, farmers — especially those growing some 4 million acres of grapevines and fruit trees — pump water from the ground.

This has caused thousands of drinking water wells to run dry and land to sink as aquifers shrivel. The state passed a new groundwater law in 2014 that is beginning to take effect, and could force as much as 900,000 acres of irrigated cropland, mostly in the arid San Joaquin Valley, out of production.

But this is inconsequential to farmers like Tristan Benson. Based in western Sonoma County, he practices dry farming.

Benson and his partners usually harvest 20 to 30 tons of heirloom wheat and barley from loamy hillsides, selling the grain for use in bread, beer and distilling. To grow these staples, they just need a little rain, forgoing the irrigation that other growers, like those in the Central and Imperial valleys, rely upon.

Even through recent droughts, Benson said, he has always pulled in a crop. “The closer to the coast we are, the better we do,” he said. Fields are planted in October or November, and about a week after the first heavy rain, the seeds germinate, and usually the ground stays moist until the summer harvest time.

Benson’s methods could be a model for sustainability for other California growers, who have “planted millions of acres of trees that always need water, and our reservoirs have at most a three-year supply,” he said.

Claire Heinitz, a scientist with the U.S. Department of of Agriculture, helps manage the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a collection of thousands of crop varieties used for breeding experiments. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters

Benson thinks a smart farming model is to grow winter crops without irrigation, and when reservoirs are full — as they are now — plant irrigated fields with annual summer fruits and vegetables. Apples, tomatoes, pears, grapes and potatoes can all be dry-farmed in cooler regions; farther inland and to the south, dry farming is more challenging, at least for most crops.

Geoff Vanden Heuvel, director of regulatory and economic affairs at the Milk Producers Council, said winter farming of grain and feed crops, with just a few inches of irrigation water, could help feed livestock with less groundwater use.

More than a quarter of the state’s feed crops are grown in areas entirely reliant on groundwater, and this dependency will likely translate into fewer California cows in the future, he said. By the 2040s, when the groundwater law takes full effect, dairy herds are expected to drop by about 10%. “That’s about 130,000 fewer cows,” Vanden Heuvel said.

Ferguson of UC Davis said Central Valley farmers have grown accustomed to harvesting maximum yields because “we had more reliable water. Maybe now, when we don’t have the water or it’s more expensive, they’ll have to settle for a lower yield.”

Daniel Sumner, a UC Davis professor of agricultural and resource economics, said California’s agricultural identity already has changed drastically over time. In its earliest days of statehood, California was a major producer of rain-watered wheat, grown on several million acres. When irrigation became ubiquitous, so did specialty crops that thrive in a hot, dry climate but need water in the summer.

Almonds now cover more than 1.6 million acres of the Central Valley, and pistachios have seen explosive growth, “from almost nothing to a $2 billion crop in a few decades.”

He said predicting what crops will be trending in California in several decades is impossible, “but it’s hard to picture that we wouldn’t stay a specialty crop producer,” he said.

Economic turbulence, too

It’s not just the changing climate that’s guiding the future of one of California’s top industries. In the decades to come, growers will experience economic shifts, competition from imports and rising labor costs.

The increasing minimum wage, for example, has made even some high-value crops, like table olives, unprofitable to grow in California unless machines prune the trees and pick the fruit. Hand-based labor can suck up 45 to 60% of gross revenue, largely because olives must be carefully handled.

Spain, the world’s superproducer of olives, generates a cheaper product and has forced California growers to adapt, said Dennis Burreson, a vice-president at the Musco Family Olive Co., based in Tracy.

Burreson said machine harvesting is now becoming standard for many tree crops, adding, “eventually, I think hand-harvesting of many orchard crops is going to be in the rear-view mirror.”

Meanwhile, the state’s mighty walnut industry has been knocked on its side as oversupply and competition from China have sent prices crashing. In 2013, a ton of walnuts sold off the farm for $3,700. Now it’s about $700 per ton. On top of that, growers “are still sitting on 130,000 tons of the 2021 crop,” Verloop said, with some of that excess distributed to food banks.

So many walnut growers are now reportedly scheduled to have their trees uprooted and chipped that removal services can’t keep up.

Sumner said the economic upheaval of the walnut industry “doesn’t look like it’s turning around.”

Brown suspects that labor costs and land values will be just as strong drivers of agriculture’s evolution as the changing climate. Other regions of the world are producing crops for less, he said, which means California’s specialties will be niche and higher-quality produce.

“Whatever is going to be grown in California in 50 years,” he said, “is what can’t be grown elsewhere or what can be grown better here.”

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