We grow worms in Stanislaus? A dozen oddball facts from your crop report for 2021
Your Modesto Bee ag reporter did his due diligence Tuesday by listing the top 10 farm products from Stanislaus County in 2021.
But a few hundred other items come off our farms and ranches, some of them sizable industries, some of them the tiniest of niches.
Beeswax and quail eggs and goat milk. Kiwifruit and bok choy and hemp. A type of poultry called squab.
The annual report came from county Agricultural Commissioner Kamaljit Bagri and her staff. It listed a total of $3.55 billion in gross income, much of it from cow milk, almonds and other big industries.
The report details the acreage and income for the top 10 and for other major crops including tomatoes, peaches, apricots, chicken eggs and melons.
Hundreds are listed under “miscellaneous,” with little financial detail. They nonetheless show how truly diverse we are in supplying food to the world.
Here are a dozen observations from the depths of the 2021 report:
1. We grew about 27 million pounds of pumpkins, enough to grace 1.8 million Halloween porches at an average of 15 pounds.
2. Our few fish farmers raised large-mouth bass, channel catfish and silver carp.
3. We produced all of $10,000 worth of wool, both sheep and the much pricier alpaca.
4. Quail and ducks laid $3.7 million worth of eggs, but chickens ruled this roost at $36.2 million.
5. Wax sales brought $447,000 to beekeepers. Their main income is renting hives to pollinate almonds, worth $91.5 million, and $18.8 million for honey.
6. Firewood brought $22.7 million, much of it from old orchards being replanted. Woodstove owners up in Tuolumne County burn it along with local conifers.
7. Manure has its price, and it averaged $8.29 a ton last year. This included sales of poultry and cattle droppings. It does not account for the manure retained on dairy farms to fertilize feed crops.
8. Goat and sheep milk totaled $3.8 million, vs. $798 million worth of cow milk.
9. A slim fraction of the $334 million in poultry came from Squab Producers of California, south of Modesto. It’s a type of pigeon favored by fine chefs.
10. Vermiculture, a fancy name for worm farming, was listed under miscellaneous products. The worms end up on fishing hooks and also make great fertilizer.
11. We had not been part of the pistachio belt, stretching from Merced to Kern counties, until $10.4 million worth of the nuts turned up in the 2021 report.
12. Industrial hemp has not yet risen from the miscellaneous category. It had long been illegal because of its botanical brotherhood with marijuana.
