City folk get a look at local ag

When 250 people climbed aboard buses for an annual tour of North Sacramento Valley agricultural operations this week, among them was Chico Enterprise reporter Heather Hacking to document the trip for the newspaper's readers who couldn't attend.

The tour's five stops included a Mediterranean food producer, a pistachio orchard, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.'s new rail shipment yard, a prune orchard and a walnut farm. At the latter two stops, UC Cooperative Extension researchers explained their work.

In photos accompanying the story, UCCE farm advisor Allan Fulton is shown discussing stress testing trees and farm advisor Richard Buchner is shown explaining the use of pheromones for coddling moth control.

Hacking noted she was aboard Bus 4, in which farm advisor Joe Connell manned the microphone and "chatted up the local farm scenery and answered questions from bus passengers."

A perhaps unfair but fun part of writing this blog is pointing out amusing errors that reporters make.

At a pistachio farm north of Chico, Hacking reported on growers John and Sue Roney's description of their operation.

"The pistachio trees are wind-pollinated and require one male bee for every 25 trees, John Roney told the groups of visitors," Hacking wrote.

Now that would be one busy bee! Actually, I'm pretty sure Roney said that 25 (female) pistachio trees require one male tree for pollination.

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