Episode #83: John Warmerdam

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Earth Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2023

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

John Warmerdam is a third-generation stone fruit grower in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His grandfather came to the area from Holland in 1911 and started a small farming operation that John's father, John N. Warmerdam, eventually took over. Today John and his dad farm over 350 acres of peaches, plums, nectarines, kiwi, and almonds. The Warmerdams also have one of the largest cherry-growing operations in the southern San Joaquin Valley and have been innovators in the fruit packing industry for 45 years. In this episode, they discuss:

Cultural management practices for stone fruit
Transitions in his farming systems
Mite management
Driving factors for considering regenerative management
Pruning and thinning management
Future water usage issues
Generational shifts in farming

Additional Resources:
Concepts for Understanding Fruit Trees by Theodore DeJong

Learn more about Warmerdam Packing
Learn more about John Warmerdam

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture. A top expert in the field of biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
The recognized leader in regenerative agriculture since 2006, AEA (Advancing Eco Agriculture) is on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable.

AEA works directly with growers on the application of its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with their products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers in North America to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers around the world who thirst for actionable information about regenerative agriculture.

Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products and check out the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast.

VIDEO: For more conversations with John Kempf about regenerative agriculture, watch this amazing conversation between John and three AEA grower partners about how regenerative agriculture is changing lives and conventional farming: https://youtu.be/n9U6GwbYPDk

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi friends, welcome back. This is John and this is the regenerative agriculture podcast,
0:05.0	where we talk about fun stuff like agronomy and cultural management practices and all the different systems that we can put in place to regenerate soil health and plant health and ultimately human health.
0:16.0	And you're in for a treat today. I've been looking forward to having this conversation.
0:20.0	You know, shifting farming systems and farms to a more regenerative approach often presents lots of gnarly problems.
0:27.6	Like there's difficult pieces that we need to figure out how to transition.
0:31.6	And those are challenges that some people really enjoy and embrace.
0:36.6	And I haven't met very many who enjoy
0:39.9	thinking about challenges and how to overcome them like my guest today, which is John Wormor
0:44.3	Damme, Stone Fruit Grower from California, the wild undomesticated place called California.
0:50.7	So, John, thank you for being here. I've really looked forward to this discussion and love for you to tell us a little bit of the context of your farming enterprise, your history and your story and how you got to be doing the work that you're doing today.
1:05.0	Oh, thank you, John. It's the privilege to be here. I'll see, I'm a third generation stone fruit farmer.
1:11.6	We're in Hanford, which is kind of the central of the Central Valley, south of Fresno, for context.
1:17.6	We grow peaches, plums, nectarines, sweet cherries, and almonds.
1:22.6	We grew walnuts until about two months ago, the price being as bad as it is.
1:26.6	And we're certainly a small
1:28.9	small side around 400 acres my grandpa came over from holland back in the teens and uh started farming
1:37.0	stone fruit eventually and so i'm third generation for that my dad started his own business back in
1:41.9	73 and i'm i was born in 75. So here I am,
1:46.6	just continuing the tradition, I guess, of Central Valley Stonefruit. We do have our own
1:51.7	packing shed for Stone Fruit, which is a rarity these days. A lot of folks have gotten way bigger or
1:58.4	retired. So there's probably just a handful of grower packers that
2:02.7	left, even though there might have been, I'm sure, a couple hundred back even 20 years ago.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from AEA Marketing, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of AEA Marketing and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.