‘Farming’s Never Boring,’ SunWest Fruit Company’s Kelley Morrow Shares Her Take On The Role Of Today’s PCA
September 9, 2014 [blackoutgallery id=”64686″]
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In many ways, Kelley Morrow is a typical California PCA (pest control adviser). There are almost 143,000 miles on her 2012 work truck, and while she didn’t put every one of them on there, you get the idea. This is a gal on the go.
She’s been at SunWest Fruit Company, one of American and Western Fruit Grower’s Top Stone Fruit Growers, for just seven months, but she’s been a PCA for 20-plus years. And she’s spent a lot of that time working out of her truck, whether on her mobile phone, walkie-talkie, or laptop computer. WiFi is available at all the SunWest farm shops, so she doesn’t even have to get out of her truck to scan documents and digitize them for use with the Agrian Mobile crop protection product information system.
“It helps make me more efficient,” she says. “A lot of information needs to be crunched to make good decisions.”
Surprisingly, Morrow has no farm background. But she’s always loved the outdoors — when she took one of those tests in high school that supposedly shows you what you should be doing, it said she should find a career where she could work outdoors. If you combine that with the fact that she’s always been interested in science, it was more or less natural for her to fall into the crop science program when she went to college at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo.
“That’s the best part of farming, the science,” she says.
But it’s not just any science, it’s applied science. Like following flights of insects and figuring out ways to manage them.
“It’s all about outwitting the bugs,” she says with a laugh.
Here is Morrow’s take on being a PCA:
One of the biggest mistakes she sees young PCAs make is that they focus exclusively on the orchard.
“You want to manage the orchard floor too, because some bugs lay eggs in the weeds,” she says.
Also, remember that even if you are being attentive, there are things beyond your control.
“You can’t manage your neighbor’s orchard floor,” she says.
Yes, you need to know every potential pest cold.
“But you also need to know the personalities of the growers,” Morrow says. “Some will just say ‘Do what you need to do.’ Others will say ‘Let me know your suggestions and why.’”
If you’re going to be a PCA, you have to have thick skin.
“The grower’s not always thinking like you are because growers are thinking more holistically,” she says. “Yes, they’re thinking about spraying, but also irrigation, personnel management, etc. You’ve got to know your bugs, but also who you’re working with.”
One grower/client was a psychology major. “He said, ‘Get inside my head and think what I’m thinking.’”
More and more women are becoming PCAs, and Morrow’s really encouraged by all the young women coming out of the programs at California State University-Fresno and her alma mater, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, but the California Association of Pest Control Advisers (CAPCA) could definitely use more. CAPCA Executive Director Terry Stark estimates there are 400-500 female PCAs in the state, or aboout 10% of the total.
“There are more women lately,” Morrow says, “but I can show up to CAPCA meetings and still be the only woman there.”
In Morrow’s first job, she worked for a medium-sized grower which, after a couple of years got swallowed up by a very large company. She then learned one lesson pretty much right away: “Some growers can’t take advice from a woman.”
But over time as she proved herself, the old guard came around. And the newer people are more open to females in the workplace.
“As a female, I just need to be on my game all the time — the total professional,” she says. “But it’s really not as much of a problem any more.”
For someone who claims to enjoy the science of farming best of all, Morrow certainly has some artistic sensibilities. Here’s how she sums up her role:
“Every stone fruit has its own needs; you have to know all the varieties. It’s like a grand movie — an epic with a cast of thousands — and every single one is a prima donna, with special needs to be at their best.
“Sure, it’s a science, but farming’s never boring. Sometimes I wish I knew what was going to happen on a given day, but at least it’s not boring.”
No Easy Year
In part because of the state’s well-documented drought, California’s “Fruit Bowl,” the Fresno area, was extra warm this past winter. So was the spring, which complicates matters and means more pest problems.
“Low chill makes for some odd maladies, such as splitting of pits, bumpy skin, the bloom’s all strung out, and the crop’s not as uniform, which means it will need five picks, not just four,” says SunWest Fruit Company PCA Kelley Morrow. “But everybody’s in the same boat when it comes to weather problems.”
Some stone fruit varieties colored up well, but others not so evenly. Mylar reflective film helps with that, getting light up into the tree. It works really well with the red nectarines like September Bright. Their only drawback, she says, is that the workers don’t like the Mylar because of the extra heat and the glare.
Also this year, big bugs, such as stink bug or katydid, have become problematic.
“We have good products, softer materials, that are effective when they’re nymphs, but when they’re adults, you almost have to put on an OP or a pyrethroid,” she says. “Farmers need to think outside the box a lot — everything’s changing all the time, weather, regulations, you name it.”
Export Headaches
SunWest Fruit Company is seeking to grow fruit with a systems approach in which the fruit is not fumigated.
“Fumigation can make the fruit break down more, especially the plums,” says PCA Kelley Morrow. “If we do employ the systems approach and don’t fumigate, we have to pull samples for Mexican buyers to prove quality.”
At the packing house, they take samples from all the culls for every pack date to make sure the fruit will pass phytosanitary restrictions.
The inspector, the Mexican equivalent of our USDA and County Ag Commissioner, will check the fruit under the auspices of a program set up by the California Grape and Tree Fruit League.
“If you find just one worm, the whole lot is out,” she says.
Similar tests are done on cherries headed for Japan.
Some countries, such as Taiwan, have really low Maximum Residue Levels, so Morrow says you must know where the fruit is going to go.
“We’re always wrestling with MRLs. If they have levels close to (those of) the U.S., that’s OK, but some countries have no MRLs at all — zero tolerance. Keeping up with who allows what isn’t easy.”
The marketing department helps out the PCAs as much as possible in terms of what fruit is going where.
“If you know where the fruit is going, you’re OK, but you don’t always know,” she says. “If I know certain varieties are targeted at certain countries, I can set a targeted pest program.”
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