Modesto's Varni Bros. wins Good Egg Award

Varni Bros., which has bottled beverages in Modesto since 1933, won the Good Egg Award on Thursday morning.

The state’s egg producers presented the 53rd annual honor, which sometimes goes to leaders in their industry and sometimes to people who simply are community-minded.

Kim Hernandez, who announced the surprise award at the Good Egg Breakfast in Modesto, noted how Varni has provided free bottled water and other items for many agriculture-related events.

“You call to ask for a donation – this company is fantastic,” she told the crowd of 330 at the DoubleTree Hotel.

Varni employs more than 250 people at its headquarters off South Ninth Street and in Stockton and Fresno. It started out by bottling wine and has bottled for 7 UP since 1936. Varni introduced its own Noah’s brand of water in 1992 and today distributes a wide range of other products, including wine, beer, water, soft drinks and energy drinks for various companies.

“We’re really proud to be a local family business,” President Tony Varni said from the podium. “We really appreciate the local community we have been working in all these years.”

Other Good Egg Award winners include then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970 and many leaders in business, government and education.

The breakfast once again featured custom-made omelets and raised scholarship money for ag students at Modesto Junior College. Five of them received $700 awards Thursday – Nicholas Elliott, Emily Hoogendoorn, Zaira Arteaga, Jared Campbell and Ruel Celeste.

The audience heard a talk on water issues by Richard Matteis, administrator of the California Farm Bureau Federation. He said the 4-year-old drought should not lead the state to change its long established system of water rights, where earlier claimants have priority over those who came later.

Matteis said farmers must do their part to conserve surface and groundwater, and he endorsed a state bill that would recognize recharge through flood irrigation as a “beneficial use.”

He said his group is dealing with misconceptions about water, including a claim that agriculture uses 80 percent of the California supply. It’s actually 40 percent, he said, while 10 percent goes to cities and the rest to rivers and other environmental uses.

Matteis also took aim at critics of the almond industry, who note that it takes a gallon of water to grow a single nut. The vast majority of the moisture, he said, is absorbed by the tree or returns to the natural water cycle via seepage, runoff and evaporation.

Matteis said the state is one of only five places on Earth with a Mediterranean climate – long, dry summers followed by winters that (usually) provide plenty of rain and snowmelt for irrigation.

“To suggest that we produce crops elsewhere is especially crazy,” he said, citing one critic’s suggestion that fruit and vegetable production move to the Midwest, where summer rain is common.

The breakfast was sponsored by the Pacific Egg and Poultry Association, the California Poultry Federation, the Modesto Chamber of Commerce and the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau.

This story was originally published October 22, 2015 at 3:38 PM with the headline "Modesto's Varni Bros. wins Good Egg Award."