December 1, 2025 • 23 mins
Part 2 of 4
This special episode series features Colusa County rice farmers George and Carson Tibbitts discussing the multi-generational history of their family farm, and how Carson is now taking on more responsibilities as a junior partner while learning from his father's decades of farming experience.
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Rice in the Delta
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the University of California. The material and information presented here is for general purposes only. The "University of California" name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
It's a lot of work to take a field out of rice.
It's a lot of work to put itback in.
SPEAKER_04 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a podcast
hosted by the University ofCalifornia Cooperative Extension
Rice Advisors.
I'm one of your hosts, SarahMarchionish, and I'm a rice farm
advisor for Colusa and Yolocounties.
SPEAKER_00 (00:21):
I'm Whitney Brimda-Forest.
I'm the Cooperative ExtensionRice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba,
Placer, and Sacramento counties.
SPEAKER_03 (00:28):
My name is Luis Espino.
I'm the Rice Farming SystemsAdvisor for Butte and Glene
Counties.
I'm Michelle Leinfelder-Miles.
I'm a Farm Advisor in the Deltaregion.
I work on all sorts of fieldcrops, grains and forages, but
one of those is rice.
And the counties that I coverare San Joaquin, Sacramento,
(00:50):
Yolo-Solano, and Contra Costacounties.
SPEAKER_04 (00:53):
Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek to
provide relevant topicalresearch-backed information This
is part two.
(01:14):
of the Tibbets Farming Company'shistory, as told by George and
Carson Tibbets.
The first part of our talktogether really focused on each
of their individual impetusesfor joining the farming culture.
Carson talked about how hisinterest in agriculture was
really revved up during his highschool FFA experience, and
(01:37):
George went into detail abouthow even as a child he knew he
wanted to be a becoming a farmertook him a little bit longer
than he'd anticipated.
Today we're going to go a littlebit further into some of those
challenges and discuss a littlebit more about how the Tibbetts
Farming Company was revitalizedand became a functioning farming
(02:00):
organization in the mid-90s.
As always, we'd really like tothank George and Carson Tibbetts
for taking the time to sharetheir story with us because it's
a pretty good one.
UNKNOWN (02:13):
Music
SPEAKER_04 (02:29):
So with that, I think we're going to move into
probably more of the technicalpart of the conversation,
talking about the farmingpractices that you implement
with your operation.
Because, and I'm going to give abit of a spoiler here, there are
some practices that you all dothat aren't terribly common in
rice farming systems.
And so with that, let's talk alittle bit about crop rotation,
(02:52):
because that's not something youoften see in the Sacramento
Valley rice fields.
Let's let Carson take a test.
stab at that.
SPEAKER_01 (03:00):
All right.
Well, a lot of my information isgoing to be coming from my dad,
just because that's where I gotall my experience from.
But crop rotation, we're veryfortunate to be able to rotate
our crops from rice.
And that's mostly because of oursoil.
A lot of growers in theSacramento Valley have much
(03:20):
heavier clay soils than we do.
We do have a lot of clay, but wehave enough sand and silts in
our soils to allow us to growvery successful tomatoes,
safflower, sunflower, vine seed.
We do not have much limitationin what we can grow.
(03:41):
We would probably strugglegrowing anything orchard related
because we have a high watertable.
But regarding crop rotationitself, we do not have a hard
struggle besides the first yearfollowing rice.
Because having rice paddies,ground gets soaked to the point
(04:03):
where crops will struggle.
So you have to do transitioncrop like safflower or sunflower
to absorb up some of that water.
But yeah, we don't have as muchchallenge as other people would.
We're very fortunate to do that.
It allows us to give a break inthe weed aspects.
And just because five or sixyears of rice has a lot of water
(04:25):
grass, that gets annoying aftera while.
SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
Crop rotation is an integral component of integrated
pest management, IPM, right?
So we practice IPM.
We try and rotate our herbicidechemistries.
We try and rotate our cropsbecause we can.
And Carson's right.
A lot of the rice soils in theSacramento Valley are too heavy,
(04:50):
really, to grow anything else.
It's just adobe.
But our soils are on the lighterend of that spectrum.
And particularly regardingtomatoes, particularly with the
advent of drip irrigation andtransplanting.
Tomatoes have become a veryviable crop on this farm.
We don't farm the tomatoesourselves.
We rent out.
(05:10):
We always have one or two orsometimes even three fields of
tomatoes rented out.
But in the 90s, our neighbors,the Poundstone family, they
tried growing tomatoes on thisfarm several times and their own
property, but they were directseeding and sprinkling it.
And it never did that well.
(05:31):
I mean, tomato seeds are littletiny things.
And to get a good seed bed forlittle tomato seeds and
seedlings on heavy rice soil isa challenge.
But they were doing it and theywill keep doing it.
And then irrigating was– youcouldn't furrow irrigate it
because our fields are, for themost part, too flat.
(05:52):
So, they would sprinklerirrigate.
I mean, that worked.
But that's not ideal either.
So when drip irrigation becamethe norm in tomatoes and
transplanting the seedlingsinstead of trying to get a
direct seed going, that put usright in the ballgame with other
(06:13):
tomato areas.
Even though our soil is not thebeautiful sandy loam like it is
down in Davis, they can get areally good tomato crop here now
with the way they farm it now.
For a while, when we wererotating, I would leave a field
and rice on a couple of yearsand then take it out, put it in
row crops for two, three, fouryears and then back in and rice.
(06:37):
It's a lot of work to take afield out of rice.
It's a lot of work to put itback in.
I've stretched out thatrotation.
I have two fields.
We have four fields of rice thisyear.
Two of them have been in ricefor six or seven years, I think.
Whatever benefits we had earlyon in those fields of crop
rotation is gone.
(06:58):
We're fighting the wheat We'refinding the water grass.
But our other two fields, theywere just brought into rice last
year.
And you get a little honeymoonbecause the weed pressure is
down because rice is an aquaticcrop.
So it's dominated by aquaticweeds.
And then you go into row cropsand you're dealing with
(07:18):
terrestrial weeds.
So you break up that cycle bygrowing rice and then taking it
on rice.
It works for a while, but itdoesn't work forever.
So at some point Those twofields I mentioned that have
been in rice for a while, we'llhave to take them out.
But I also look at the markets,and I don't know what we put
(07:40):
those fields into right now.
We were relying on sunflowers asa transition crop from rice to
row crops because we could makemoney on sunflowers.
But we couldn't even get acontract this year.
A lot of sunflower acres havedisappeared.
I hope it's not forever.
I hope it comes back.
California has a very goodreputation for producing
(08:03):
high-quality sunflower plantingseed for our exporter around the
world and we were proud andprivileged to be a part of that
so this year I've got a fieldthat we're growing safflower in
instead of instead of sunflowersalthough that would not that was
not following rice that wasfollowing following tomatoes.
Our tomato tenant felt the fieldneeded a break, so we were going
(08:26):
to take it out of tomatoes for awhile.
Safflower is not a lucrativecrop, let's just say, but
hopefully we'll make a littlemoney on
SPEAKER_04 (08:36):
it.
The thing I've always heardabout safflower is you plant it
and you get hopefully a neutralyear.
Hopefully you don't lose anymoney, but you're not going to
make any.
And so we've talked about croprotation, but there's another
thing I wanted to bring up thatI think might be a little
unfamiliar to some of ourlisteners, and that's the
Leathers Method.
That's pretty common in thisarea.
(08:58):
George, do you want to take afirst crack at describing the
Leathers Method and why you useit?
The
SPEAKER_02 (09:03):
Leathers Method is named after Jim Leathers, who
was a very well-known PCA.
I think I may have met him, butthis was decades ago.
It's also known as PinpointFlood, although I think there's
technically a small differencebetween the two, and I can't
tell you what that differenceis.
The general gist of theLeather's Method is you aerial
(09:26):
seed like normal, but after twoto three days, depending on how
warm it is, basically you wantto get that seed committed to
growing.
If you drop the seed into thewater and took the water right
off, a lot of that seed willjust stop growing and wait for
the water.
But if it's in the water for twoto three days and then it
(09:48):
becomes committed to growing.
And at that point, you take thewater off for a few days, and
that tells the rice seedlingsomething.
When it's underwater, it wantsto grow a shoot.
It wants to grow a shoot to getabove the water so it can get a
breath of air.
But when you take the water off,it changes into sending down a
(10:08):
root instead.
And that's very important.
We're here on the west side ofthe Sacramento Valley, and I've
been told that we're muchwindier on the west side than
they are on the east side.
I don't know if that's a fact ornot because a lot of those guys
on the east side, they don't useleathers.
They don't use pinpoint flood.
This spring was just as windy asany other spring and frankly, I
(10:34):
just can't stand it because ifthat seedling is growing a
little shoot without a root toanchor it and the wind comes up
like it does virtually everyday, it makes waves out there
and the those little shoots actlike sails, even if it's
partially rooted.
And then all those waves pushall those little boats with
(10:56):
sails into the corner and youdon't have any seed on the field
and it's all on your corner.
And despite using Leather'smethod, we had that problem last
year on a field.
It was what we call new ground.
It had been tomatoes the yearbefore that.
So it was like a garden soil.
I mean, a typical rice field inthe spring is you chisel the
(11:16):
ground and work it up, butyou're farming like golf ball
size pieces of clay, right?
The texture of the soil haschanged just for having been
under a flooded environment.
The year following tomatoes,it's like a garden.
And so the particles are veryfine.
And so any wind at all in a newfield, those waves cover the
(11:37):
seed with silt and they won'tgrow.
They won't grow even if they'recovered with a sixteenth of an
inch of silt.
So between either getting coverwith fine particles of soil or
having the actual seeds move,that's a problem in new ground.
So with new ground inparticular, we use the Leather's
Method, but I routinely use itin every field.
(11:59):
I mean, Jim Erdman taught meabout the Leather's Method, so
that's just like gospel to me.
You think he told me, I believe.
And Kim, following in herfather's footsteps, she's been
using the Leather's Method forher entire time farming, but
this year she didn't.
She kept the flood on and justJust fine.
In fact, I drive by it every dayand it looks beautiful.
(12:21):
And I've done it before a fewtimes, left the water on, but I
didn't sleep very well at nightsand just worrying about it.
And I think I did it three timesand two times it was great.
And then one time I rememberthinking, I should have drained
it.
We use the Leather's Methodbecause we think we're windier
here than other areas.
SPEAKER_04 (12:42):
And so one of the benefits I've heard touted about
the Leather's Method is if Ifyou have tadpole shrimp, it's a
way to get rid of the shrimp inthat early stage of when you put
the water on, the eggs of theshrimp are able to germinate,
for lack of a better word, andthe little shrimp will start to
swim.
But when you pull the water off,the little shrimp will die
before they can affect the riceseedling.
(13:04):
Have you guys had any, I mean,with using the Leather's Method,
you're not going to see anyshrimp, but is that a concern at
all?
I'm going to pass that toCarson.
SPEAKER_01 (13:11):
It's not really a concern because we use the
Leather's Method.
Being out in the rice fields,I've seen tadpole shrimp rarely.
I imagine that is because we usethe leather method.
I imagine if we had a flood thewhole time, we would have a much
larger problem and another thingto consider how to manage.
Then we'd have to
SPEAKER_02 (13:30):
spray pesticides.
We can find shrimp in ourfields, but we really have to
look for them.
And midge, too.
It's the same thing.
Growers talk about midge as anissue, but I remember having
midge issues.
I remember Steve Scaracci in afield with me in one of my early
years, and it was a really coldspring And he drained the field,
but the rice wasn't growing.
And he's looking around andseeing all the midge egg casing.
(13:55):
He goes, hey, you got a midgeproblem.
That field ended up, it warmedup and it finally started
growing.
But draining a field is apotential solution both for
tadpole shrimp and for midge.
SPEAKER_04 (14:08):
Well, actually, you mentioned something, and I kind
of want to touch on that, abouttrying to avoid using the
pesticides to treat tadpoleshrimp.
Because as I understand it, someof your fields are certified
organic.
Can you explain a little bitabout that?
SPEAKER_02 (14:23):
We have nine fields on our farm.
One of them is organic.
Not because I'm a big believerin it.
I don't buy organic produce inthe stores.
I thought we could make somemoney doing it.
The field was farmed, this isprobably going back close to 20
years ago, T&P here in Arbuckle.
They were farming it to alfalfafor us.
(14:46):
field right here, which pointingout the window is an alfalfa
again.
And most of your listenersprobably know to have a field
become organic, you have to gothrough a three-year transition
period.
Doing that with alfalfa is veryeasy because you don't need to
add fertilizer and you're mowingit several times a year, mowing
(15:07):
the weeds.
So, hey, we can transition thisfield to organic and get a
premium for our crop.
So, that's how it T&P had analfalfa.
I said, let's just make itorganic.
So after three years, it wasorganic.
And then they played around withgrowing organic tomatoes.
It never yielded that well, thisfield in tomato.
(15:29):
It didn't yield that well inalfalfa.
Turns out this field hadbasically a sodic issue, saline
issue because of poor drainageover the years.
This field or another one.
So I go back to my brothers andsisters.
I told them, we need to spendsome money.
The field next to it Even inrice, it was our poorest field
because it was just high salt.
(15:50):
We spent a lot of money to putin tile drain.
It transformed.
I'll tell you, it justtransformed the fields.
It was like a soil map beforewhen this was alfalfa.
You could see the really weakareas in the rice field next to
it.
Well, we've had both of thesefields in tomatoes since then,
and they've done great, whereasbefore they were doing.
So my brothers and sistersagreed to make that investment.
(16:12):
And they agreed basicallybecause I asked them to, and
they trusted me.
So I'm grateful.
I'm grateful for the leewaythey've given me over the years.
I'm not always right.
I mean, I've made mistakes, butI just don't tell them.
SPEAKER_04 (16:28):
So I wanted to touch on one more thing before we move
on, but that's kind of a trickytopic, which is what happens in
drought years?
When your water sources get cutor your allocations might get
dropped, is there a plan inaction?
And in this case, I'm kind ofreferring back to 2022 when we
had those really bad droughtafter years of bad drought.
(16:51):
Carson, I'm going to ask you tostart.
Well,
SPEAKER_01 (16:54):
that was my second year in farming.
first year was a harder yearjust transitioning to add in the
second year my dad tells me thisis the easiest it's going to get
because we weren't farming wehad a 10% allocation in water
(17:16):
and we had tenants that had touse that water for their
tomatoes so we were able toplant a field of sunflower and
that's because sunflower have atap root that can penetrate the
soil very deep to siphon out asmuch water as they can so we
don't have to irrigate them asmuch.
(17:36):
We managed to irrigate it once.
SPEAKER_02 (17:38):
The sunflower was in a field following rice, so the
soil profile had been wetted andirrigated down deep.
So the sunflowers could takeadvantage
SPEAKER_01 (17:47):
of that water, and we didn't have to divert water.
So when that happened, it kindof raised a concern.
Is this going to be a norm?
Is this something that we haveto worry about a lot?
Because we had never had thisoccur before.
We in RD 108 and ReclamationDistrict 108, we have very good
water rights.
We normally will get most of ourwater and in normal years we'll
(18:12):
get all our water.
In drought years, when thedrought is not too severe, we
will get still a decent amountof water, enough to farm most of
our acres.
So 2022 was the first year wereally could not farm.
It raises the question okay dowe need a well and we after a
(18:34):
lot of discussions opted not tobecause it is clearly becoming
taboo in California to usegroundwater as areas are sinking
(18:55):
and farmers are having to minedeeper and deeper for their
water.
In our area, there's not as manywells because, again, we have
very good water rights, but theamount of money it would cost to
put in a well is too great.
given the risk of potentiallynot even being able to use it
one day due to regulations.
SPEAKER_04 (19:17):
Thanks for kind of clarifying on that because I
think the water situation in theWest and in California is a lot
different than what people whogrow rice in other parts of the
U.S.
are used to.
But, I mean, it's true that in2022, like you mentioned, there
were a lot of people who got 10%water allocation, 5% water
(19:39):
allocation, 0% water allocation,and we saw the effect of that.
We're still seeing the effect ofthat today.
SPEAKER_01 (19:45):
That's true.
A great point that my dad wouldjump in here and he would want
me to jump in here and say it.
We are absolutely still feelingthe effects on the rice market
because people are not.
We had to sell rice at such asteep price.
So in our export markets and ourdomestic markets, California
(20:10):
rice has become a lot lessappealing and we are actively
still trying to win our marketsand
SPEAKER_04 (20:16):
Once those markets are lost, it's pretty hard to
get them back.
And we'll touch on this a littlebit later, but there are
cooperatives that are prettydevoted to trying to create
those markets again.
That's the end of the secondinstallment of the Tibbetts
(20:49):
Farming Company story.
But once again, we'll haveGeorge and Carson back on to
finish up the rest of the storysoon.
For more information about thisand our other resources, please
feel free to check out ourwebsite, which is the UC Rice
Agronomy website, and our blog,which is UC Rice Blog.
(21:10):
We also have newsletters, one ofwhich is Rice Brief, which
covers Colusa Yolo, Rice Notes,which covers Yuba Sutter, Rice
Leaf, which covers Butte andGlen, and Field Notes, which
covers rice in the Delta regionof California.
Thanks for listening to Thoughtson Rice a University of
California Cooperative Extensionpodcast from the University of
(21:32):
California Agriculture andNatural Resources.
You can find out more about thispodcast on our website,
thoughtsonrice.buzzsprout.com.
We'd love to hear from you,whether it's from using our text
link in the show notes, a surveysubmission in our feedback form,
also in the show notes, or in acomment or rating on your
(21:52):
podcast streaming service ofchoice.
Let's have a good season, folks.
And remember, like the growerslike to say, have a rice life.
Mention of an agrochemical doesnot constitute a recommendation,
(22:13):
merely the sharing of researchfindings.
Always follow the label.
The label is the law.
Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu.
The views, thoughts, andopinions expressed are the
speaker's own.
and do not represent the views,thoughts and opinions of the
University of California.
The material and informationpresented here is for general
(22:33):
purposes only.
The University of Californianame and all forms and
abbreviations are the propertyof its owner and its use does
not imply endorsement of oropposition to any specific
organization, product orservice.
It's a lot of work to take a field out of rice.
It's a lot of work to put itback in.
SPEAKER_04 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to Thoughts on Rice, a podcast
hosted by the University ofCalifornia Cooperative Extension
Rice Advisors.
I'm one of your hosts, SarahMarchionish, and I'm a rice farm
advisor for Colusa and Yolocounties.
SPEAKER_00 (00:21):
I'm Whitney Brimda-Forest.
I'm the Cooperative ExtensionRice Advisor for Sutter, Yuba,
Placer, and Sacramento counties.
SPEAKER_03 (00:28):
My name is Luis Espino.
I'm the Rice Farming SystemsAdvisor for Butte and Glene
Counties.
I'm Michelle Leinfelder-Miles.
I'm a Farm Advisor in the Deltaregion.
I work on all sorts of fieldcrops, grains and forages, but
one of those is rice.
And the counties that I coverare San Joaquin, Sacramento,
(00:50):
Yolo-Solano, and Contra Costacounties.
SPEAKER_04 (00:53):
Together, the UCCE Rice Farm Advisors seek to
provide relevant topicalresearch-backed information This
is part two.
(01:14):
of the Tibbets Farming Company'shistory, as told by George and
Carson Tibbets.
The first part of our talktogether really focused on each
of their individual impetusesfor joining the farming culture.
Carson talked about how hisinterest in agriculture was
really revved up during his highschool FFA experience, and
(01:37):
George went into detail abouthow even as a child he knew he
wanted to be a becoming a farmertook him a little bit longer
than he'd anticipated.
Today we're going to go a littlebit further into some of those
challenges and discuss a littlebit more about how the Tibbetts
Farming Company was revitalizedand became a functioning farming
(02:00):
organization in the mid-90s.
As always, we'd really like tothank George and Carson Tibbetts
for taking the time to sharetheir story with us because it's
a pretty good one.
UNKNOWN (02:13):
Music
SPEAKER_04 (02:29):
So with that, I think we're going to move into
probably more of the technicalpart of the conversation,
talking about the farmingpractices that you implement
with your operation.
Because, and I'm going to give abit of a spoiler here, there are
some practices that you all dothat aren't terribly common in
rice farming systems.
And so with that, let's talk alittle bit about crop rotation,
(02:52):
because that's not something youoften see in the Sacramento
Valley rice fields.
Let's let Carson take a test.
stab at that.
SPEAKER_01 (03:00):
All right.
Well, a lot of my information isgoing to be coming from my dad,
just because that's where I gotall my experience from.
But crop rotation, we're veryfortunate to be able to rotate
our crops from rice.
And that's mostly because of oursoil.
A lot of growers in theSacramento Valley have much
(03:20):
heavier clay soils than we do.
We do have a lot of clay, but wehave enough sand and silts in
our soils to allow us to growvery successful tomatoes,
safflower, sunflower, vine seed.
We do not have much limitationin what we can grow.
(03:41):
We would probably strugglegrowing anything orchard related
because we have a high watertable.
But regarding crop rotationitself, we do not have a hard
struggle besides the first yearfollowing rice.
Because having rice paddies,ground gets soaked to the point
(04:03):
where crops will struggle.
So you have to do transitioncrop like safflower or sunflower
to absorb up some of that water.
But yeah, we don't have as muchchallenge as other people would.
We're very fortunate to do that.
It allows us to give a break inthe weed aspects.
And just because five or sixyears of rice has a lot of water
(04:25):
grass, that gets annoying aftera while.
SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
Crop rotation is an integral component of integrated
pest management, IPM, right?
So we practice IPM.
We try and rotate our herbicidechemistries.
We try and rotate our cropsbecause we can.
And Carson's right.
A lot of the rice soils in theSacramento Valley are too heavy,
(04:50):
really, to grow anything else.
It's just adobe.
But our soils are on the lighterend of that spectrum.
And particularly regardingtomatoes, particularly with the
advent of drip irrigation andtransplanting.
Tomatoes have become a veryviable crop on this farm.
We don't farm the tomatoesourselves.
We rent out.
(05:10):
We always have one or two orsometimes even three fields of
tomatoes rented out.
But in the 90s, our neighbors,the Poundstone family, they
tried growing tomatoes on thisfarm several times and their own
property, but they were directseeding and sprinkling it.
And it never did that well.
(05:31):
I mean, tomato seeds are littletiny things.
And to get a good seed bed forlittle tomato seeds and
seedlings on heavy rice soil isa challenge.
But they were doing it and theywill keep doing it.
And then irrigating was– youcouldn't furrow irrigate it
because our fields are, for themost part, too flat.
(05:52):
So, they would sprinklerirrigate.
I mean, that worked.
But that's not ideal either.
So when drip irrigation becamethe norm in tomatoes and
transplanting the seedlingsinstead of trying to get a
direct seed going, that put usright in the ballgame with other
(06:13):
tomato areas.
Even though our soil is not thebeautiful sandy loam like it is
down in Davis, they can get areally good tomato crop here now
with the way they farm it now.
For a while, when we wererotating, I would leave a field
and rice on a couple of yearsand then take it out, put it in
row crops for two, three, fouryears and then back in and rice.
(06:37):
It's a lot of work to take afield out of rice.
It's a lot of work to put itback in.
I've stretched out thatrotation.
I have two fields.
We have four fields of rice thisyear.
Two of them have been in ricefor six or seven years, I think.
Whatever benefits we had earlyon in those fields of crop
rotation is gone.
(06:58):
We're fighting the wheat We'refinding the water grass.
But our other two fields, theywere just brought into rice last
year.
And you get a little honeymoonbecause the weed pressure is
down because rice is an aquaticcrop.
So it's dominated by aquaticweeds.
And then you go into row cropsand you're dealing with
(07:18):
terrestrial weeds.
So you break up that cycle bygrowing rice and then taking it
on rice.
It works for a while, but itdoesn't work forever.
So at some point Those twofields I mentioned that have
been in rice for a while, we'llhave to take them out.
But I also look at the markets,and I don't know what we put
(07:40):
those fields into right now.
We were relying on sunflowers asa transition crop from rice to
row crops because we could makemoney on sunflowers.
But we couldn't even get acontract this year.
A lot of sunflower acres havedisappeared.
I hope it's not forever.
I hope it comes back.
California has a very goodreputation for producing
(08:03):
high-quality sunflower plantingseed for our exporter around the
world and we were proud andprivileged to be a part of that
so this year I've got a fieldthat we're growing safflower in
instead of instead of sunflowersalthough that would not that was
not following rice that wasfollowing following tomatoes.
Our tomato tenant felt the fieldneeded a break, so we were going
(08:26):
to take it out of tomatoes for awhile.
Safflower is not a lucrativecrop, let's just say, but
hopefully we'll make a littlemoney on
SPEAKER_04 (08:36):
it.
The thing I've always heardabout safflower is you plant it
and you get hopefully a neutralyear.
Hopefully you don't lose anymoney, but you're not going to
make any.
And so we've talked about croprotation, but there's another
thing I wanted to bring up thatI think might be a little
unfamiliar to some of ourlisteners, and that's the
Leathers Method.
That's pretty common in thisarea.
(08:58):
George, do you want to take afirst crack at describing the
Leathers Method and why you useit?
The
SPEAKER_02 (09:03):
Leathers Method is named after Jim Leathers, who
was a very well-known PCA.
I think I may have met him, butthis was decades ago.
It's also known as PinpointFlood, although I think there's
technically a small differencebetween the two, and I can't
tell you what that differenceis.
The general gist of theLeather's Method is you aerial
(09:26):
seed like normal, but after twoto three days, depending on how
warm it is, basically you wantto get that seed committed to
growing.
If you drop the seed into thewater and took the water right
off, a lot of that seed willjust stop growing and wait for
the water.
But if it's in the water for twoto three days and then it
(09:48):
becomes committed to growing.
And at that point, you take thewater off for a few days, and
that tells the rice seedlingsomething.
When it's underwater, it wantsto grow a shoot.
It wants to grow a shoot to getabove the water so it can get a
breath of air.
But when you take the water off,it changes into sending down a
(10:08):
root instead.
And that's very important.
We're here on the west side ofthe Sacramento Valley, and I've
been told that we're muchwindier on the west side than
they are on the east side.
I don't know if that's a fact ornot because a lot of those guys
on the east side, they don't useleathers.
They don't use pinpoint flood.
This spring was just as windy asany other spring and frankly, I
(10:34):
just can't stand it because ifthat seedling is growing a
little shoot without a root toanchor it and the wind comes up
like it does virtually everyday, it makes waves out there
and the those little shoots actlike sails, even if it's
partially rooted.
And then all those waves pushall those little boats with
(10:56):
sails into the corner and youdon't have any seed on the field
and it's all on your corner.
And despite using Leather'smethod, we had that problem last
year on a field.
It was what we call new ground.
It had been tomatoes the yearbefore that.
So it was like a garden soil.
I mean, a typical rice field inthe spring is you chisel the
(11:16):
ground and work it up, butyou're farming like golf ball
size pieces of clay, right?
The texture of the soil haschanged just for having been
under a flooded environment.
The year following tomatoes,it's like a garden.
And so the particles are veryfine.
And so any wind at all in a newfield, those waves cover the
(11:37):
seed with silt and they won'tgrow.
They won't grow even if they'recovered with a sixteenth of an
inch of silt.
So between either getting coverwith fine particles of soil or
having the actual seeds move,that's a problem in new ground.
So with new ground inparticular, we use the Leather's
Method, but I routinely use itin every field.
(11:59):
I mean, Jim Erdman taught meabout the Leather's Method, so
that's just like gospel to me.
You think he told me, I believe.
And Kim, following in herfather's footsteps, she's been
using the Leather's Method forher entire time farming, but
this year she didn't.
She kept the flood on and justJust fine.
In fact, I drive by it every dayand it looks beautiful.
(12:21):
And I've done it before a fewtimes, left the water on, but I
didn't sleep very well at nightsand just worrying about it.
And I think I did it three timesand two times it was great.
And then one time I rememberthinking, I should have drained
it.
We use the Leather's Methodbecause we think we're windier
here than other areas.
SPEAKER_04 (12:42):
And so one of the benefits I've heard touted about
the Leather's Method is if Ifyou have tadpole shrimp, it's a
way to get rid of the shrimp inthat early stage of when you put
the water on, the eggs of theshrimp are able to germinate,
for lack of a better word, andthe little shrimp will start to
swim.
But when you pull the water off,the little shrimp will die
before they can affect the riceseedling.
(13:04):
Have you guys had any, I mean,with using the Leather's Method,
you're not going to see anyshrimp, but is that a concern at
all?
I'm going to pass that toCarson.
SPEAKER_01 (13:11):
It's not really a concern because we use the
Leather's Method.
Being out in the rice fields,I've seen tadpole shrimp rarely.
I imagine that is because we usethe leather method.
I imagine if we had a flood thewhole time, we would have a much
larger problem and another thingto consider how to manage.
Then we'd have to
SPEAKER_02 (13:30):
spray pesticides.
We can find shrimp in ourfields, but we really have to
look for them.
And midge, too.
It's the same thing.
Growers talk about midge as anissue, but I remember having
midge issues.
I remember Steve Scaracci in afield with me in one of my early
years, and it was a really coldspring And he drained the field,
but the rice wasn't growing.
And he's looking around andseeing all the midge egg casing.
(13:55):
He goes, hey, you got a midgeproblem.
That field ended up, it warmedup and it finally started
growing.
But draining a field is apotential solution both for
tadpole shrimp and for midge.
SPEAKER_04 (14:08):
Well, actually, you mentioned something, and I kind
of want to touch on that, abouttrying to avoid using the
pesticides to treat tadpoleshrimp.
Because as I understand it, someof your fields are certified
organic.
Can you explain a little bitabout that?
SPEAKER_02 (14:23):
We have nine fields on our farm.
One of them is organic.
Not because I'm a big believerin it.
I don't buy organic produce inthe stores.
I thought we could make somemoney doing it.
The field was farmed, this isprobably going back close to 20
years ago, T&P here in Arbuckle.
They were farming it to alfalfafor us.
(14:46):
field right here, which pointingout the window is an alfalfa
again.
And most of your listenersprobably know to have a field
become organic, you have to gothrough a three-year transition
period.
Doing that with alfalfa is veryeasy because you don't need to
add fertilizer and you're mowingit several times a year, mowing
(15:07):
the weeds.
So, hey, we can transition thisfield to organic and get a
premium for our crop.
So, that's how it T&P had analfalfa.
I said, let's just make itorganic.
So after three years, it wasorganic.
And then they played around withgrowing organic tomatoes.
It never yielded that well, thisfield in tomato.
(15:29):
It didn't yield that well inalfalfa.
Turns out this field hadbasically a sodic issue, saline
issue because of poor drainageover the years.
This field or another one.
So I go back to my brothers andsisters.
I told them, we need to spendsome money.
The field next to it Even inrice, it was our poorest field
because it was just high salt.
(15:50):
We spent a lot of money to putin tile drain.
It transformed.
I'll tell you, it justtransformed the fields.
It was like a soil map beforewhen this was alfalfa.
You could see the really weakareas in the rice field next to
it.
Well, we've had both of thesefields in tomatoes since then,
and they've done great, whereasbefore they were doing.
So my brothers and sistersagreed to make that investment.
(16:12):
And they agreed basicallybecause I asked them to, and
they trusted me.
So I'm grateful.
I'm grateful for the leewaythey've given me over the years.
I'm not always right.
I mean, I've made mistakes, butI just don't tell them.
SPEAKER_04 (16:28):
So I wanted to touch on one more thing before we move
on, but that's kind of a trickytopic, which is what happens in
drought years?
When your water sources get cutor your allocations might get
dropped, is there a plan inaction?
And in this case, I'm kind ofreferring back to 2022 when we
had those really bad droughtafter years of bad drought.
(16:51):
Carson, I'm going to ask you tostart.
Well,
SPEAKER_01 (16:54):
that was my second year in farming.
first year was a harder yearjust transitioning to add in the
second year my dad tells me thisis the easiest it's going to get
because we weren't farming wehad a 10% allocation in water
(17:16):
and we had tenants that had touse that water for their
tomatoes so we were able toplant a field of sunflower and
that's because sunflower have atap root that can penetrate the
soil very deep to siphon out asmuch water as they can so we
don't have to irrigate them asmuch.
(17:36):
We managed to irrigate it once.
SPEAKER_02 (17:38):
The sunflower was in a field following rice, so the
soil profile had been wetted andirrigated down deep.
So the sunflowers could takeadvantage
SPEAKER_01 (17:47):
of that water, and we didn't have to divert water.
So when that happened, it kindof raised a concern.
Is this going to be a norm?
Is this something that we haveto worry about a lot?
Because we had never had thisoccur before.
We in RD 108 and ReclamationDistrict 108, we have very good
water rights.
We normally will get most of ourwater and in normal years we'll
(18:12):
get all our water.
In drought years, when thedrought is not too severe, we
will get still a decent amountof water, enough to farm most of
our acres.
So 2022 was the first year wereally could not farm.
It raises the question okay dowe need a well and we after a
(18:34):
lot of discussions opted not tobecause it is clearly becoming
taboo in California to usegroundwater as areas are sinking
(18:55):
and farmers are having to minedeeper and deeper for their
water.
In our area, there's not as manywells because, again, we have
very good water rights, but theamount of money it would cost to
put in a well is too great.
given the risk of potentiallynot even being able to use it
one day due to regulations.
SPEAKER_04 (19:17):
Thanks for kind of clarifying on that because I
think the water situation in theWest and in California is a lot
different than what people whogrow rice in other parts of the
U.S.
are used to.
But, I mean, it's true that in2022, like you mentioned, there
were a lot of people who got 10%water allocation, 5% water
(19:39):
allocation, 0% water allocation,and we saw the effect of that.
We're still seeing the effect ofthat today.
SPEAKER_01 (19:45):
That's true.
A great point that my dad wouldjump in here and he would want
me to jump in here and say it.
We are absolutely still feelingthe effects on the rice market
because people are not.
We had to sell rice at such asteep price.
So in our export markets and ourdomestic markets, California
(20:10):
rice has become a lot lessappealing and we are actively
still trying to win our marketsand
SPEAKER_04 (20:16):
Once those markets are lost, it's pretty hard to
get them back.
And we'll touch on this a littlebit later, but there are
cooperatives that are prettydevoted to trying to create
those markets again.
That's the end of the secondinstallment of the Tibbetts
(20:49):
Farming Company story.
But once again, we'll haveGeorge and Carson back on to
finish up the rest of the storysoon.
For more information about thisand our other resources, please
feel free to check out ourwebsite, which is the UC Rice
Agronomy website, and our blog,which is UC Rice Blog.
(21:10):
We also have newsletters, one ofwhich is Rice Brief, which
covers Colusa Yolo, Rice Notes,which covers Yuba Sutter, Rice
Leaf, which covers Butte andGlen, and Field Notes, which
covers rice in the Delta regionof California.
Thanks for listening to Thoughtson Rice a University of
California Cooperative Extensionpodcast from the University of
(21:32):
California Agriculture andNatural Resources.
You can find out more about thispodcast on our website,
thoughtsonrice.buzzsprout.com.
We'd love to hear from you,whether it's from using our text
link in the show notes, a surveysubmission in our feedback form,
also in the show notes, or in acomment or rating on your
(21:52):
podcast streaming service ofchoice.
Let's have a good season, folks.
And remember, like the growerslike to say, have a rice life.
Mention of an agrochemical doesnot constitute a recommendation,
(22:13):
merely the sharing of researchfindings.
Always follow the label.
The label is the law.
Find out more at ipm.ucanr.edu.
The views, thoughts, andopinions expressed are the
speaker's own.
and do not represent the views,thoughts and opinions of the
University of California.
The material and informationpresented here is for general
(22:33):
purposes only.
The University of Californianame and all forms and
abbreviations are the propertyof its owner and its use does
not imply endorsement of oropposition to any specific
organization, product orservice.
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