Still Alive and Kicking . . . Tractor Tires

Now it may be true, as many prophets proclaim, that the end is coming for farmers who walk the furrows of California’s agricultural heartland. Ask anyone around here about the future of farming, and the answer almost inevitably turns into a dissertation on when, not if, to sell out to the subdividers.

The outlook is understandable, supported by statistics and changing scenery, and also by California history. Every day, housing tracts gobble up more good land. Every day, the San Joaquin Valley looks just a little bit more like, say, the San Fernando Valley, itself once regarded as an impenetrable stronghold of the rural set.

Despite this ominous undercurrent, the struggle between farm and city in fact is far from settled. Agriculture still dominates the landscape here, as well as the economy. Anyone who doubts this need only to have attended the California Farm Equipment Show, held here last week in an open field hard by Highway 99.

“This is the Super Bowl of farm equipment shows,” said Mark Watte, a 44-year-old cotton grower and former show chairman. “This is the largest annual farm equipment show in the world. There is a similar one in Paris--which is kind of strange, when you think about it--but they hold it only every other year. So we’re the biggest annual show.”

Yet another example of why Paris will never be Tulare.

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As he maneuvered a golf cart through the 170 acres of exhibits, Watte provided a short history of the show. Like so many successful ideas, this one was stolen. In the 1960s the little town of Colusa, a few hundred miles north of here, initiated a farm equipment show. The Tulare Chamber of Commerce dispatched spies. They came back and asked: Why not here? The first Tulare show attracted 157 exhibitors. This year it drew 1,300.

They came from across the country to hawk tractors, fertilizers, irrigation systems, corn-headers, wood-splitters, bigger tractors, cow mattresses, fly blockers, crop insurance, coveralls, forklifts, backhoes, bull semen, vine clippers, even bigger tractors, pickup trucks, squeeze chutes, organic compost, orange seedlings, scrapers, irrigation boots, de-twiggers, posthole diggers and nut shakers. Among other items. Seminars were conducted as well, with such titles as “How to Identify Your Least Profitable Cows,” and, sigh, “Farming the Internet.”

Some tractor manufacturers, it was said, spent close to a half-million dollars on their displays, which included large corrals for on-the-spot test drives. At smaller booths, sales reps in headsets conducted demonstrations called out like carnival barkers to the throngs that shuffled through the tented pavilions: “Now let’s say a guy has got some levee work to do. . . .”

A baling wire dealer from Patterson installed at his booth a busty model dressed in the skimpiest of tank tops. Never before had so many farmers displayed such a driving curiosity in the properties of baling wire. “Ridiculous,” said a middle-aged woman one booth over. She sat alone amid her fruit-picking ladders, all but invisible to the baling wire enthusiasts. “Every year, I get stuck next to that guy. Every year.”

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Attendance for the three-day show was believed to exceed 100,000. “You get some tire-kickers,” said a Caterpillar dealer, “but you can also put together deals here.” Farmers from 50 foreign countries were registered. A South American grower ordered 30 almond tree shakers on the spot. Three bearded men in business suits and turbans--one toting a large, locked briefcase--marched purposefully through the tractor tents, making sales reps giddy with anticipation.

“Exhibitors are more interested in quality than quantity,” said Watte. “These are real farmers. Somebody who says, ‘What does that thing do?’ is never going to buy anything. But when you get people asking about bearing configurations, then you know you have got serious buyers.”

While the focus was on commerce, the flavor was that of a county fair, minus the Tilt-A-Whirls. The smell of barbecued tri-tip permeated the tents. Loud country bands played at the pickup truck displays. Overhead biplanes pulled banners promoting steakhouses. A fashion show was staged in the Women in Agriculture tent: “And look at Mama wearing a blue denim jumpsuit. . . .”

In short, it was California agriculture in a nutshell--colossal in scale, and yet still countrified in texture. “This is still the heart of California farmland,” Watte said. “Right here, this is it.” He has chosen to end the tour at a flower garden memorial to his father, a farmer and trade show pioneer who died last year. Watte told how his grandfather, also a farmer, had moved to this valley in the late 1950s. Before that, the family had farmed in Los Alamitos--now the heart of that flat-topped suburban metropolis known as Orange County. Another story, perhaps.