By: Veronica Chalfin, AgriScience Education | Genoa, OH
Over spring break this year, several college ambassadors had the awesome opportunity to travel to California for the week. Our trip was all about learning how the agriculture industry in California works in comparison to the industry we all know and love in Ohio. We visited many different farms, organizations, and companies during our time in California. We started in Sacramento and traveled a little over 1,000 miles south of there ending up in Los Angeles. One of our stops along the way was a citrus processing and packing facility, Fowler Packing, located in Fresno, California. Fowler Packing was started in 1950 and is a family owned business. Today they are one of the largest shippers in the fresh produce business. They handle over 15 million boxes of citrus per year and they own and farm two thirds of their own fruit. The facility that we visited while we were there was where they processed and packaged Halos, their brand of seedless and easy-to-peel mandarins and clementines. We were able to walk through the entire plant and see how the mandarins go from freshly picked through the process to be ready to package. There obviously isn’t a lot of citrus farming going on in Ohio, so it was a very interesting experience to see the way that industry works. The entire trip was a great learning experience and I’m extremely grateful that I was given this awesome opportunity. But for Ohio State…I would have never been able to take such an affordable, fun, and informative trip. Go bucks!
