From the Fields - Grant Chaffin

By Grant Chaffin, Riverside County farmer

We hit our first heat wave. When Southern California has a heat wave, temperatures can get up to 115 to 123 degrees for a couple of days. This type of heat is very tough on the crops.

Alfalfa yields have been good to date. We started our fifth cutting. Pricing is down 35% on about all our commodities from a year ago. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of relief in sight. This may be due to local and regional supply and demand. When you look at alfalfa as a commodity, dairy market pricing is down, and export market pricing is down.

Our different forages and grasses are coming along, but those markets are also down 35%. These things are cyclical, so you try to take advantage of some buying opportunities where you can lock up some inputs at a cheap price. We’re always looking for these opportunities.

In mid- to late June, we start harvesting onions for processing markets. Prices are down 25% from last year. Overall, it looks like a good crop. The onions are dehydrated for fast food hamburgers and cheeseburgers, or they end up in a variety of spices, such as onion salt and onion powder. They also get chopped, diced and minced and put into cans and bottles.

To reduce margins and increase efficiency, we are trying to mechanize every process we can, whether it’s upgrading equipment or irrigation infrastructure. Labor is never getting cheaper. With the upward trends in labor, I think another increase in the hourly wage is around the corner. We’re trying to do more with fewer guys, whether it’s implementing more efficient equipment or mechanizing. We have constantly engaged in different field trial programs with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

We get our water from the Colorado River, and I don’t think we’re out of the drought. The Colorado River Basin states are negotiating the 2026 shortage sharing agreement, so I think there’s going to be opportunities for on-farm conservation programs.