Renewing Ties Between Farms, Classrooms, University President Visits County

By Zeke Barlow, Ventura County Star, Calif.

Jan. 27–University of California President Robert Dynes likes to say there is a third part of the old expression “research and development” — delivery.

“If you only do research and development it’s of no value. The last ‘D’ is where you get value,” Dynes said Friday as he toured some of the R and D — and D — that has been applied to Ventura County’s billion-dollar agriculture industry.

Dynes was wrapping up a two-day tour of the myriad programs the UC system touches around the county. The agricultural industry has long benefited from the university system, from university research to advice from the county’s agricultural extension office.

As Dynes was educated on the way good bugs eat bad bugs at Associates Insectary in Santa Paula, Brett Chandler ticked off how farmers have benefited from the UC system.

Chandler’s insectary, which grows more than 3 million bugs a year, is part of a cooperative that supplies beneficial bugs to the county’s lemon and avocado growers. But the work doesn’t come easy — it took 30 years of research to find the right bugs to help combat the bugs that kill lemons. And research needs funding.

Many were hoping Dynes’ tour might not only help keep research coming from the state’s universities, but also help reinstate some of the funding that the UC extension system lost — estimated at 25 percent — during the 1990s.

Larry Yee, director of the local cooperative office, hoped that Dynes’ visit will help increase the profile and pocketbooks of the extension system.

“The extension system often thinks of itself as second-class citizens,” Yee said. Dynes’ visit “kicks us up a notch.”

In his 30 years with the department, Yee said he’s never known a UC president to visit Ventura County farmers and see how the university system plays a role. “This is a huge morale boost,” he said.

Before touring the insectary, Dynes visited Limoneira’s packing plant in Santa Paula, where 1.5 million cartons of lemons — the rough equivalent of 225 million lemons — are packaged annually.

Limoneira president Harold Edwards said he hoped Dynes’ visit would help shed light on some of the challenges that modern farmers face, including farmworker housing issues, labor shortages and access to the market.

In an era when young people aren’t as attracted to agriculture as they once were, having the UC system as part of the agriculture game helps provide new, young minds to keep the industry alive, Edwards said.

“It’s not about today, it’s about tomorrow,” Edwards said.

Dynes, who has a Ph.D. in physics, asked many questions that reflected his background. When he was shown how the lemons were packed, he asked about the volume of empty space in packaging and later, he made a comparison between having lemons ready for market and producing semiconductors.

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