.png)
Thank You for Showcasing California Agriculture!
We’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s California Farm Bureau Photo Contest.
Your incredible submissions truly captured the beauty and diversity of California’s agricultural community.
We’d also like to thank all who took the time to cast their votes in the People’s Choice category.
Your votes helped shine a spotlight on the creativity and talent within our Farm Bureau family.
1st place $1,000
2nd place $500
3rd place $250
People’s Choice $100
Six Honorable Mentions $50
1st place $250
2nd place $100
“It was a beautiful moment,” Rachel Ramey remembers about the birth she unexpectedly witnessed while visiting Adamscows Dairy in Laton for a practice dairy-judging session with her Frontier FFA team. Ramey says she advocates being a “light to shine on ag wherever you go” and uses her smartphone to capture farming moments. This experience inspired not only this first-place image, but also a reminder that through all the work, unexpected instances of wonder make farming worth it. “People outside of the agriculture community don’t get to experience moments like these. I wanted to capture (them) to show why agriculturalists do what we do.”
“What is so unique about this photo is that it was not posed,” Maddy Nissen says. “There are not many photos of my grandpa. When I saw him leaning on the gate, I knew this was a memory I wanted to capture.” For Nissen, her image represents the strength of farmers like her grandpa, Jack Bucke, a feed store owner and rice farmer. He was watching his cattle graze when she took the shot. “This photo serves as a testament to the people who work so tirelessly for not only California agriculture but to feed the world,” Nissen says.
A 5 a.m. wakeup call, a Nikon D3400 with a tripod and a specific Oakdale hillcrest nevertheless resulted in “complete awe of the unexpected result” for Jacob Rix, a fieldman irrigation systems designer. A Nebraska native, Rix says he feels compelled to share the beauty he finds in Central Valley nut orchards. “Almond orchards in full bloom in every direction each season have given me the opportunity to bring California agricultural awareness back East with my photography,” Rix says. He says he hopes his image communicates “hope and faith for better days on the horizon.”
Timothy Danley is a fifth-generation farmer who embraces technology to help him tell stories about modern farm life, including this drone shot of Danley’s father working lime into the soil. “Farmers tend to be secluded homebodies. (Photography) makes it easier to explain what we do and exactly what goes into it,” Danley says. This minimalistic shot reminds Danley of water confluence, where two bodies of water mix and combine colors, and clearly depicts agricultural advances over time. “My grandfather used horsedrawn harvesters for rice. Now we can cover hundreds of acres a day. I want people to look and realize one person can get so much done.”
Pumpkins may not be the first things that spring to mind when you hear San Diego, but Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center makes a case with this winning photo. Monica Morris, a Bates employee, used her smartphone for this shot as the sun set over the Big Macs in the pumpkin patch. “We hope this photo makes people smile and enjoy the beauty of growing pumpkins,” Morris says, adding she also hopes it shows “how beautiful it can be as the sun sets over a farm such as ours that grows pumpkins every year.”
When a colleague of Drew Scott expressed interest in getting family portraits made, Scott and his wife, aspiring photographer Krislyn Peterson, thought of the Kaweah Oaks Preserve as an ideal setting for a family photo shoot. “Life’s best moments are spent with family and in nature. Agriculture is grounded in both,” Scott says. As the children interacted with cattle and frolicked in the orchards, a “perfect moment” appeared. Using a Canon R5 digital camera and natural light, this photo shows the joy of being in full bloom.
Livestock guardian dogs contribute to a cohesive farm operation, even if it looks like everything is all smiles. Julia Elgorriaga captured this photo on her Madera County farm, where she herds cattle and deploys sheep for tasks such as orchard grazing among almonds and pistachios. While no longer as visible as before, Elgorriaga says sheep are still a key component of agriculture in the Golden State. “A lot of people forget there’s sheep in California,” she says. “We may have to do weird things like orchard grazing, but we’re still here and making it work.”
Last February, Sean Long glanced out the window overlooking his 10-acre ranch in southern Nevada County and saw baby lambs. “That sealed the deal and out I went,” says Long, who recently reignited his photography hobby with a Canon R7 and telephoto zoom lens. Although he was skeptical any of the lambs would stray far enough from their mother for him to achieve a proper portrait, this little one struck a pose. When thinking about the story his photo tells, the father of four couldn’t resist a dad joke: “Smile! Come on, I know ewe can do it!”
Leafy greens, the signature crop of Monterey County’s “Salad Bowl,” are typically harvested in cool overnight temperatures. “This county helps feed people all around our country and the world,” Christian Rivas says. With most of the crop obscured by darkness, Rivas’ winning photo—taken with a smartphone—focuses instead on the employees harvesting greens around midnight at this Western Harvesting LLC farm near King City. He says he hopes the photo helps viewers “appreciate the hard work and sacrifice of working on this type of schedule to ensure the safest, high-quality product for consumers.”
The distinct reward of pulling a root vegetable from soil is illustrated in Michelle Foster’s photo taken on the land of her employer, Talley Farms. Foster reports carrots are one of the most popular crops at the farm, which ships 3,500 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) produce boxes weekly to customers in the Western U.S. “I’ve always been drawn to up-close harvesting shots and feel that hands are at the center (of our work),” Foster says. “(Distribution) wouldn’t be possible without the hardworking men and women harvesting the crops out in the field or packing the boxes in our cooler.”
For the second consecutive year, Ashley Jansen takes the top prize for her agricultural photography. During a walk with her dog Rocky, a dragonfly against rice plants caught her eye. “Rice is a significant crop in Colusa County,” says Ashley, who comes from a longtime farming background in the region. “I hope the readers will see the beauty in the agriculture that surrounds us.” The Budding Artist and active member of the Arbuckle 4-H (she shows market lambs) used a Minolta MN53Z for her winning shot.
A trip to Solace Lavender Farm in Kerman sparked inspiration for Grady Rocca. He noticed the bees pollinating the pick-your-own lavender and grabbed the family’s Nikon D3200 with a standard zoom lens. Grady, whose dad is a college agriculture professor, also hopes his bee photo reminds viewers of the importance of bees. “I would like people to remember that bees are very important to agriculture,” Grady says. “We wouldn’t have many fruits or nuts if it weren’t for bees pollinating these crops. We need to make sure that we take care of bees.”
Winners of the 2023 Photo Contest
Cayden Pricolo, a plant and soil sciences major at Oklahoma State University, has an insider’s perspective on growing specialty crops after an internship at Bowles Farming Co. in Los Banos and riding alongside her agronomist dad. While this knowledge can be helpful in the classroom, she finds her photography can say even more. Pricolo’s winning photo captures the hands-on harvesting technique for watermelons in Los Banos. “Especially in the ag industry, photography is a good way to advocate and show the rest of the world how the ag industry is done,” Pricolo says. “Without these people doing this manual labor, we wouldn’t be able to have successful farming to provide food for the world.” Pricolo used a high shutter speed and natural backlighting to perfectly capture the airborne fruit.
Winners of the 2022 Photo Contest
Easley works in land conservation, helping farmers, ranchers and forest stewards manage the land. Prescribed fires are used to improve grazing vegetation for livestock, reduce wildfire risk and increase the land’s overall health. During one such fire at a Nevada City ranch, she was struck by the way the sun’s rays were shining through the smoke and silhouetting the trees “in a very ominous and soothing way. … It was an eerily beautiful scene I wanted to capture on camera,” she says. So, she took out her smartphone and quickly snapped it. “The smoke and trees allowed for great lighting naturally.”
Winners of the 2021 Photo Contest
Schneider is a full-time police officer who lives on a ranch with several Clydesdales, sharing a private road with a neighboring cattle rancher. One evening when he went to check the mail and take out the trash, Schneider had his camera with him, hoping to get a good sunset photo. "Louie's a really friendly bull, and as I rode past, he poked his head up and just gave me that look, and I said, 'I've got to get a photo.'" He changed the photo to black and white because the texture was sharper and "it seemed to fit the mood better."
Winners of the 2020 Photo Contest
The Gills have been ranchers in Tulare County for five generations. Hannah Gill said her 2-year-old daughter, Hayden, likes to watch her father, Levi, rope cattle with friend Ralph Garcia on the family ranch in Exeter. Gill saw Hayden watching intently and snapped this Grand Prize-winning photo that captures family ranch life.
"She was so excited to watch Dad on a horse," Gill said. "She loves it. She loves the cows, loves the horses."
Winners of the 2019 Photo Contest
Kathy and John Brimmer are first-generation farmers. Although they had children active in FFA where they lived previously, they didn't go into farming full time until moving to the Smartsville area in 2014 to raise cattle. One evening, while helping her husband feed the animals, Kathy Brimmer saw this scene and grabbed her smartphone. "We have some phenomenal sunsets up here," she said. "Sometimes I feel like we're living in Hawaii."
Winners of the 2018 Photo Contest
Lincoln, a winery employee and son of a vineyard manager, is always out with a camera during harvest, in no small part because of the people who make it happen. "Napa Valley would not be what it is without them," he said. He found Armando Reyes harvesting merlot grapes in a Carneros vineyard. "When you're photographing harvest, there are certain people that you're just drawn to, because of their charisma," Lincoln said. "This gentleman was one of those people."
Winners of the 2017 Photo Contest
An early-morning cattle roundup at the ranch of Dan and Andrea Erickson near Yosemite drew Emela Brown McLaren's interest; she and a friend were there for a workshop. The ranch, founded by Dan Erickson's great-great-grandfather, once fed the builders of Hetch Hetchy Dam. McLaren said the ranch is still run much the same way it was in the old days. "It's a real honor to live in the San Joaquin Valley with all the farms and the cattle ranches, and the different things going on," she said.
Winners of the 2016 Photo Contest
The vineyard before first light "makes for a very surreal environment and very dramatic moments," said Andrew Lincoln of this view of the chardonnay winegrape harvest. "What really matters is the collective process behind the (wine) product—everything from the farmers who manage the crop to the stories of the laborers and to the wildlife who call it their home."
Winners of the 2015 Photo Contest
Using a wide-angle lens, Andrew Austin Lincoln captured this scenic view overlooking a chardonnay vineyard his father manages in Napa County. "The grapes and the rolling hills represent this as a region," Lincoln said, "and I had the fortune of being there just as the cloud formation highlighted the windmill."
.svg.png?cacheid=0.9616018850896426)
