Interview with Mark Draper

MJ: Mark Draper, thanks for joining us today.

MD: You're welcome.

MJ: Well, we're here in the offices of Mark Draper Enterprises.

MD: That's correct.

MJ: What exactly goes on here?

MD: Well, Mark Draper Enterprises is a diversified farming operation,

vegetable production in the Coachella Valley. I also have a labor

contracting business called Del Puerto Harvesting. And I also grow alfalfa

hay under the... Oak Flat Cooling is the corporate name for my alfalfa

growing operation.

MJ: What sort of vegetables particularly do you grow?

MD: Well, we grow a variety. At one time, I've been growing vegetables for

about 12 years, at one time we grew up to 25 vegetables during the course

of the year. But we grow string beans, hard squashes, zucchini squash,

yellow crookneck. We grow cauliflower, broccoli, artichokes, cilantro,

spinach, leaf lettuces; basically red leaf, green leaf, butter, and

romaine, and then in the spring, that's basically the fall and the winter,

in the spring we grow sweet corn, watermelons, bell peppers, jalapeno

peppers, and again squash and beans.

MJ: And you also are involved with wheat.

MD: Yes, we do grow some wheat as a rotation crop, a couple hundred acres a

year, and just as a way to clean up the ground. We have some herbicides

that we can use to help clean up the ground, and then it's a good crop

rotation.

MJ: Now, how much time to you spend here in the office, and how much time

out in the field?

MD: I would say I spend 80 percent of my time out in the field, checking on

my different operations, and I don't always enjoy office work, it's a

necessary evil, but especially in California with all the regulation, but

probably 20 percent of my time.

MJ: And these days, you're in the office quite a bit.

MD: Yes, we're at the end of our season. We've just finished harvesting our

watermelon and bell pepper and tomato crops, and I'm doing planning

schedules for next fall. I'm doing actual costs to our budgets for this

past spring. I'm making my bank loan application out, so I'm trying to

determine how we did profit-loss wise, and so I'm spending more time in the

office.

MJ: How did you do profit and loss wise last year?

MD: It's... I think I made a slight profit, but California agriculture is

so tough now because of the competitiveness of Mexican product, high cost

of doing business in the state of California, just for an example, my cost

of production over the last 12 years has practically doubled in lettuce and

vegetable crops, and I'm making oftentimes the same amount of money now,

I'm receiving the same amount of money that I did 12 years ago.

MJ: What are the causes of that doubling?

MD: Basically input cost; fuel cost, fertilizer cost, labor cost, pesticide

cost, everything is increased. Our biggest challenge now, and I don't know,

it's not talked about very often, but we have a tremendous problem with the

retail sales in chain stores We... Retail prices are very high, and on a

supply and demand basis, if there's a huge supply, and if by the chain

stores raising or lowering the retail price, it can affect demand

dramatically. And if there's a low supply and prices are raised, then

demand drops off, and if there's not a low price when there's a huge

supply, then the system, the pipeline gets plugged up and causes all sorts

of problems.

MJ: Why... What would your pitch be to consumers? Why would they, should

they purchase your products as opposed to maybe cheaper products from

overseas?

MD: I'm not so sure they're cheaper products, but certainly in California,

and I know you spoke with Ann Veneman, but California has the safest supply

of food in the world. Our regulations here in the state are absolutely the

strictest, bar none, in the world. We are... the state is very stringent in

how we apply pesticides, how we harvest after we apply pesticides, and the

monitoring of pesticide application. We have county agents and we have

state agencies monitoring what we do when we apply pesticides. The cost,

that's obviously an important aspect, but the safety of our products after

we apply any pesticides is probably the top most priority in the state.

MJ: Would you say it's too strict?

MD: Well, I think a lot of growers have a lot of pride, and I don't think

any grower intentionally is ever going to apply anything that might cause

the consumer to become ill. That's just not in the nature of a farmer. I

would like to see a little bit less stringent standards, because I think

growers are able to police themselves, by and large. There are always

exceptions. But the cost of complying with the state's regulations, not

only in pesticides application, but in labor regulations is tremendous.

MJ: Are you seeing a lot of people getting out of vegetable growing?

MD: I don't know if people are getting out of it. I see there's a

consolidation. What I have... what I see in this valley is larger

year-round shippers evolving into business in this valley. They'll ship

from here during the winter, and they'll ship from Salinas in the summer,

and maybe Heron or Bakersfield in the spring and the fall. But it's

definitely, there's a consolidation going on. But rather than people like

myself getting out of business, we're forming alliances or joint ventures,

partnerships with the larger shippers.

MJ: What kind of innovations are you... have you been working on in terms

of size or quality or anything that you've been particularly working

recently?

MD: Well, we do a lot of work on varieties. It's important for us to

maintain the best varieties, shelf life, appearance. We do a lot of work

on our packing, in other words, we spend a lot of time with our crews, and

we have a quality... my harvest company is one of the few of its size that

has a quality control person that deals nothing with... he grades the crews

on a daily basis on how well they pack and how well the condition of the

product is. We're doing a lot of work with drip irrigation. We do

permanent beds, and grow two or three or four crops with the same t-tape.

We conserve water through our drip irrigation, we do a lot of fertigation,

we fertilize through the drip system. We apply pesticides through the drip

system, and we're doing a lot of work on just trying to become more

efficient producers. Anything that we perceive to be, to enable us to be

more efficient we're willing to try.

MJ: Do you do your own taste testing on the various products?

MD: Sure. I eat 90 percent of everything I grow. There's a few crops that I

don't particularly care for, but by and large I eat 90 percent of what I

grow. Well, that's kind of one of the requisites for me to grow something,

that I'll have to like to grow it.

MJ: What's your favorite?

MD: What's my... I would say romaine lettuce. I can go out in a field in

the middle of the morning and just peel down a romaine head of lettuce and

eat the heart and just enjoy it.

MJ: With no salad dressing.

MD: No salad dressing. Also tomatoes. I mean, I love fresh tomatoes too.

Sweet corn. I have trouble eating cooked sweet corn because we don't eat it

in the... we eat it in the field raw all the time, and so when I prepare it

at home it's hard for me to eat it cooked.

MJ: Really.

MD: Yeah.

MJ: You grew up on a farm.

MD: Yes.

MJ: Tell us about that, and how that influenced where you ended up here.

MD: Well, I grew up on a farm in northern California. My dad was a farmer.

He grew a little bit different crops. He grew cannery tomatoes, which are

harvested by a machine. He grew lima beans, almonds, walnuts, apricots, and

I didn't originally go to college to be a farmer. I started out in

architecture, and I thought my dad was absolutely crazy to let the wind or

the weather, and the insects determine how much money he was going to make.

And I often told him so. But about my first year in college I decided I

didn't want to spend all my time in the classroom or working in an office,

so I decided to switch into agriculture.

MJ: What was it about agriculture that drew you in?

MD: I don't know, I think probably the independence. Farmers are

notoriously independent. I like working... I worked overseas before I

became a farmer, in the third world, and I enjoyed that, but I like working

for myself. There are a lot of problems dealing with production and you

have to know a little bit about a lot of things. You're... It's a pretty

unscientific scientific business, because you have a lot of feel for what

you're growing in terms of irrigation and fertilization and pest control,

but there's a lot of things that you can't control. But I think I just like

being outside and watching things grow.

MJ: When you were a kid, how did you... did you help out around the farm?

MD: Oh, I worked every summer on the farm and I got all those lousy jobs,

so I knew that I wanted to be an owner when I grew up.

MJ: What kinds of things did you do?

MD: Well, the first job I remember, I would... in the tomato fields in

northern California, plant tomato seed, and we have a little sparrow that

comes in there and will eat the seedling. So I was at 12 and 13 years old

walking around the fields with a shotgun, shooting, scaring the birds, not,

I mean, I couldn't hardly hit them, because they were only so big, but just

scaring them so they wouldn't eat the seedlings. The job I remember the

most, is in the apricot trees they put wooden pieces of board underneath

the limbs to support the limbs, and when they were all done harvesting,

we'd have to go pick up what... they're called "props." We'd have to pick

up the props and stack them in the roadways and then pick them up. But your

hands get full of splinters, and it's hot, and lousy work.

MJ: So you graduated with a degree in...

MD: I graduated from the University of California at Davis in a degree in

international agriculture development, which was basically a degree in

tropical agriculture. I went overseas and spent two years in Honduras,

working with Compesino groups and agricultural credit. Then I went to

Egypt and spent a year and a half working with fishermen on the High Dam

Lake helping them to grow vegetables, and then six months in the Sinai with

the Bedouins, and just in 1983 I was in the Congo, the French Congo, not

Zaire as it was formerly known, but working with a group in the jungle

establishing a peanut and seed production farm.

MJ: What kinds of groups were you with when you were overseas?

MD: I worked for CARE, and CARE is the Cooperative, known as the

Cooperative for America Relief Everywhere. It's the same organization that

sent the CARE packages to Europe after the war. But basically it's a

non-profit United States group, non-governmental, but it receives

donations, and they do water projects, agricultural projects, reforestation

projects and feeding projects all over the world.

MJ: And what was your sort of motivation for joining up and going overseas?

MD: I knew I wanted to be involved in agriculture, and I knew I didn't

want to go home and farm in my hometown with my father, my parents. It was

a very small town, and I wanted to see a little bit of the world, and

fortunately I spoke a little bit of Spanish, and so I just decided to take

the opportunity to go see Central America and it just developed from

there. I was... from the age of 22 to about the age of 30 I worked

overseas, and then at age 30 I came to the Coachella Valley and started

farming here.

MJ: Do you ever feel like you're sort of at war with parts of nature to

keep your products safe until they're delivered?

MD: Yeah. It's a very competitive business, and people only want the best

and freshest product. I think a lot of... We do, we can only do so much,

and because of the wind and the weather the product is pretty good quality

in the field, what happens after it's packed and how it's transported after

it's packed, and how long it sits in the box before it's actually exhibited

in the store, it makes a big difference.

MJ: What about from the pests and from all the animals?

MD: Well, we use a lot of biological controls, and those are insects that

eat other insects, and we use a lot of bacteria which will, are very easy

on... There are two types of insects pests, the beneficials and harmful,

and we try to use beneficial insect pests to control bad insect pests. And

we also use bacteria to try to control the bad insect pests. But by using

the bacteria, we do not kill the good insect pests. So, 12 years ago, I

sprayed a lot more than I do now. I use, I'm a lot more careful about

trying to balance the nature, the natural balance of insects in the field

with the good pests and the bad pests.

MJ: What are some examples of good pests that take care of the bad pests

for you?

MD: Well, you have a ladybug, and I think everybody knows what a ladybug

is, will eat aphids, and aphids are just an insect pest that suck the juice

out of the leaf. And if you can release ladybugs into your fields, they

will control the aphids. Now the hard part is, if there's no aphids and you

release ladybugs, the ladybugs fly away. So you have to have a population

to begin with. And so it's a hard judgment to make, to say, "Well, I've got

enough aphids now to release ladybugs," Because if you have too many

aphids, they reproduce so quickly, then they can get ahead of you. We also

use lacewing which also eats aphids. And the chemical control for aphids

are very toxic chemicals, a lot of which have been outlawed, so we had to

go to a different control there.

MJ: So you're moving away from chemicals and using pests to kill pests.

MD: Yes, as much as we can. And again, we're very cognizent of the fact

that if we have a balance built up of beneficial insects and harmful

insects built up in the field, and we come in and spray a toxic chemical,

then we wipe out all the beneficial insects, the harmful insects can build

up again. So we're very... I employ what we call a PCA, which is a Pest

Control Advisor. He went to school specifically, and he has a college

education, and to study entomology, the study of insects, and he checks my

fields three or four times a week, and he monitors the pests, and then he

tells me which chemicals to apply. But I have instructed him to use the

least toxic chemicals possible, so we're always in discussion about how to

control the insects in the least costly and the least harmful way.

MJ: How conscious are you of your products going overseas, and do you make

any changes based on that?

MD: Certainly in certain markets, if it's exported overseas, we have to

maintain a higher quality than is normally required here. If they're going

to Asia, we certainly have to put the best product in the box, and the best

quality at all times. Again, I have spent a lot of time and energy in my

harvesting company employing somebody to control quality. So my crews

understand what's necessary to put the best appearance on the product in

the box.

MJ: Do you have any idea what percent of your stuff goes overseas?

MD: On vegetables, because it's the leaf lettuce deal... I know broccoli we

send overseas regularly, a little bit of cauliflower, not too much lettuce

because leaf lettuce isn't exported, I think some artichokes are going

overseas, but I would say between five and ten percent.

MJ: You know, it seems like you're, you almost have to be more than a

farmer these days, you have to sort of be a small business man, and an

entrepreneur, and there are a lot things that may not have been so in the

past. Any thoughts on that?

MD: Absolutely. I have to be able to work... I do speak Spanish, so I can

able, I'm able to communicate with my workers, I have to understand

accounting, I have to understand payroll procedures. I definitely consider

myself an entrepreneur, because without some sort of optimistic nature and

a willingness to create something from scratch nobody would ever get

involved in farming. This certainly is not my family's business it's

something I started from scratch. And you have to know a little bit about

soil science, you have to know a little bit about organic chemistry for

pest control, you have to know a little bit about botany for plant breeding

purposes, and it's a... labor relations, a little bit about law, I mean

there's just a lot of different areas that you have to know a little bit

about.

MJ: Have you ever thought of getting involved in other areas, like maybe

fruit farming or other things?

MD: No, I'm diversified in the sense that I have a hay operation like I

said, a labor contracting, and a vegetable operation. I also operate a

fruit stand, and that's real, I haven't mentioned that before, but that's

real interesting to sell fresh product on a retail basis to the public, and

it's real interesting to hear their comments about what they think of the

product, and what they like and what they don't like. But it's... because I

operate basically 12 months out of the year, I grow or plant something for

ten months out of the year, and I do ground preparation for two months.

There's not enough time to do either citrus or dates or grapes.

MJ: What time of the year is the most hectic for you?

MD: Well, we've, like... We're basically planting from late August,

planting or harvesting from late August to June, to the end of June, but

the biggest period of time is, that we're the busiest is certainly probably

December, January and February, where we're finishing our winter crops and

trying to get the ground ready for our fall crop, I'm sorry, for a spring

crop, like watermelons, or corn or tomatoes.

MJ: And has this been a good year for you generally?

MD: Parts of it were very good, and the money we made in certain crops we

lost in other crops, so it's just a very basically typical year. I've made,

I tell this, and I guess I can say this, I've already made more money in my

lifetime than, farming than I ever thought I'd every make in my entire

lifetime. But I've all ready lost more. So it's... you just hope at the end

of your career you have had more good years than bad years and that you can

put something in the bank and retire on it.

MJ: What is life like here in the Coachella Valley?

MD: I find it very crowded now. 12 years ago when I came, there were not

nearly as many people, and most everybody left in the summer. Now more and

more people are staying year-round. People do not understand the importance

of agriculture here. They... people, most people don't know that

agriculture exists in this valley because it's known as Palm Springs and

the tourism industry. I've had people complain about the dust, I've had

people complain about the noise, and this is a "right to farm" county, so

we have the right to farm here because we were here before a lot of the

population moved in.

MJ: Explain "the right to farm."

MD: Well, it's a county ordinance that the county has passed to say that

people that are bothered by farmers, that's basically too bad. The farmers

were here, and they have the right to farm. If you move near a farm, and

he's plowing or disking or running a pump at night, and it bothers you,

that's your problem, because he was here first, and he has the right to

continue do that.

MJ: And they can't call the police and complain about your...

MD: They can call, I've had the police called, and I've had the police,

I've had the City Hall call me and say, " A lady's complaining because your

bathroom is in her view." And I say, "Is it smell?" "No." "Are there any

flies?" "No." "What's the problem?" "Well, she looks out her window and

sees your bathroom, your outhouse, your portable toilet, and she doesn't

like it." So to be a good neighbor I would move it. And it's just amazing

when people complain, that they don't understand the benefits that they're

deriving from the industry in Riverside County. Riverside County is the

seventh largest producing county in the state, with producing well over a

billion dollars in annual revenue in farm products.

MJ: How do you see your work changing in the years ahead with technological

innovations or other things?

MD: Well, it's certainly going to get more technical. I mean, the

application systems for pesticides are going to get more technical. Instead

of pounds per acre we're going to use ounces per acre. We're going to get

more scientific in our use of water monitoring systems. We use

evapo-transpiration models now. We have it dialed in on our drip system on

how many acre-inches per hour we put on, so when we know what the e.t.'s

are, with evapora, we know how much water the plant's going to use during

the day, we can put on the exact amount of water. We do water analysis on a

weekly basis to figure out how much nutrients are in the soil solution to

be able to fertilize more uniformly, and use less fertilizer. I see a

biggest... The biggest part of my job I see is, though, educating the

public in what we do and why we do it. There's so many people in

California, so many children that think that their vegetables come from the

grocery store, and we need to do a better job as California farmers to show

them where their fruits and vegetables are coming from.

MJ: Why is that. Has something broken down in society that kids have no

idea about that?

MD: I just think that urban populations are so large, and the rural...

although California is a very rural state there's a lot of parts of

California that are urban, and kids just don't understand where their milk

comes from or where their vegetables come from.

MJ: Have you encountered any kids who were surprised to learn where it does

come from?

MD: Absolutely. I had a class from college here about, oh, two years ago

that had never been on a farm. These were college age kids, 18 to 20 years

old, and they had never been on a farm. The first question they asked me is

what I paid my workers. Everybody thinks that we pay minimum wage, and have

all these workers that are subservient and are only working here because

we're forcing them to work here.

MJ: What do you... is the average wage earned by some of your employees?

MD: Well, the minimum wage in California has just been raised to $5.15 an

hour. Our minimum wage that we pay on our ranches is $5.40, and we also pay

a lot of piece rate, so there's a lot of times when people are making six,

seven, eight dollars an hour. I prefer to pay piece rate, so if somebody is

working hard they can make more money.

MJ: If I can get you to play philosopher for a minute, what do you learn

about life from farming?

MD: You learn to be very patient. You learn to take what little rewards

that come your way and appreciate them, and you learn to be very optimistic

because the business is difficult at best, we work long hours, and you have

to be eternally optimistic that tomorrow or next week or next year will be

better than this year.

MJ: We've seen you walking around on your crutches. Was this a farming

accident that you were involved in?

MD: No, I broke my... My daughter wanted to go sky diving, and so I thought

that, and she's a sophomore in college, and I thought, well, I'd go along

with her to help her in case she got hurt, and unfortunately I was the guy

that took a bad fall landing, and I broke my ankle.

MJ: What is a typical day like both during planting or, you know,

harvesting, and a typical day otherwise for you?

MD: Well, I go to work at 6:00 o'clock in the morning. I live about 20

miles from the ranch, so I get up around 5:00 o'clock I'm at the ranch by 6

a.m. My... I have two dogs, I have a German shepherd and a golden

retriever, and they go with me everyday, and I let them run on the ranch. I

get there, and I tell my tractor drivers and my irrigators what to do,

which fields to plant, which fields to cultivate, to disk, to plow, to

prepare, and then I drive around the fields, and I may go down to my

alfalfa ranch, I may not. Then I talk to my harvesting company foremen and

find out where they're harvesting and what they're doing, and then I may

come by the office around lunch time or a little after. I try not to have

too many lunches with salesmen. I'm constantly bombarded with salesmen, but

I try not to spend too much time with them. I've gotten to a point now

where I make everybody have an appointment. I used to take a lot of cold

calls, but now because I'm so busy, I make everybody have an appointment.

If it's an important person then I'll make time for them. And then in the

afternoon I do the rounds all again. I talk to my harvest company again, I

talk to the sales company to make sure that the product is getting to the

packing shed in the proper condition, and at 4:30 when my drivers quit and

all my irrigators quit, I get back with them again to tell them what to do

for the following morning to make sure that we're on the same page, and a

normal day I get home at 6:00 o'clock at night or maybe after.

MJ: That's a long day.

MD: Yeah. 6 to 6 is pretty much a normal day. At least 6 days a week, and

oftentimes seven.

MJ: What are your goals for the future with the company and with the

various enterprises?

MD: My goals are to become more consistently profitable. I'm in the process

of restructuring some of my enterprises to become more consistently

profitable. I'd like not to work seven days a week. I'd like to work maybe

six days a week and have one day off a week, and I'd like to have a little

bit more fun. Just that the econ

omic burden and stress is so intense in farming because we borrow a lot of

money and we have a lot of money at risk, that I would like to get to a

point where I'm not risking as much, and have a more profitable,

consistent, not as large a profit, but a more consistently profitable set

of businesses.

MJ: Do you ever feel like your whole operation and your whole existence is

sort of at the mercy of God and the weather...

MD: Absolutely.

MJ: And is that a difficult thing for you?

MD: No, because I'm an optimist by nature, and it's part of the business.

If I decided that I didn't like being that way, then, or feeling that way,

then I would get out. I don't own any land, I rent all my land. A lot of

farmers, have, they own their land, they have large land payments. I've

structured my businesses that if in case I decided it wasn't fun any more

then I could walk away hopefully.

MJ: Mark, thanks for your time today.

MD: Thank you.