I don't know about you, but I guess I had been indoctrinated by film footage of food running over large conveyor belts with lots of stops along the way to packaging. This week I was shown that this not the case for many types of produce being grown in California.

I was invited by KnowaCaliforniaFarmer.com to go on tours of a couple of farms down in the Salinas area. What an eye opening day it was. I learned a lot about modern farming from the folks at Tanimura & Antle farms and also from Naturipe, the berry producers. This post will talk about Tanimura & Antle and be broken into two parts (Part 2: Workers & Safety). Then stay tuned for another post about Naturipe.

We were greeted at the headquarters of Tanimura & Antle (T&A) in the town of Spreckles. The building looks like it might have been a golf clubhouse at some time, but now it houses the offices for T&A. Inside hangs a portrait of the founders. Our guide for the morning was Brian Antle, third generation in the business. Brian told us the story of the two families.