Agriculture in the Valley: Hands On

Doctor Jim Yager is a crop expert. He’s sharing his knowledge with agriculture students like Kory Gilman and Sarai Calderon. Calderon couldn’t be more excited.

“I think the important thing about hands-on activity is you’re learning by doing,” Calderon says. “You can learn so many things in the classroom, but if you can’t apply it out in the real world it’s pointless.”

Everything Calderon and Gilman are learning is relevant to their careers. They both want to work in agriculture.

“We’ve got to see everything that he does from pistachio harvest to see how the freeze has affected damage to crops,” Gilman says. “It’s not been normal classroom. We get to see it as it happens. Things that are relative to ag. Not theory.”

The lessons the students learn in class stay consistent, but the Central Valley weather does not and it affects the trees.

“Every crop is something different,” Yager says. “The crops that are blooming right now. Obviously, we’ve got dead bloom. We’ve killed. So that’s impacting the harvest. We don’t have anything to harvest.”

Hands-on experience teaches students like Kyle Vierra how the weather works and the damage it can cause.

“We had hot weather during winter,” Vierra says. “Flowers bloom run into false spring so colder weather mixes in with hot and then freeze attacks flower the fruit will abort.”

Lessons, when heard in the classroom, don’t have the same impact as they do when experienced in the field. Which is why Calderon gets so excited when she talks about agriculture and Fresno State.

“As soon as I entered high school I joined the FFA program and I knew that was the industry for me,” Calderon says. “I started to grow a passion for it and in that it ignited.”

And as exciting as it is for these students, it brings a sense of peace.

“I get to come out here sometimes and you’re by yourself and it’s very peaceful,” Gilman says.