Pictured are some of the 35,000 cattle at Mesquite Cattle Feeders, a Brawley-area feed yard that is part of the Imperial Valley’s $470 million cattle industry. Deemed an essential business, the Valley’s cattle industry continues to operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to ensure the cattle are cared for and a safe food supply reaches consumers nationally and throughout the world.
Photo courtesy of Mesquite Cattle Feeders

During this period of shelter in place directives in light
of the Coronavirus, essential businesses must continue operations to meet the
needs of society. The Imperial Valley cattle industry is among those essential
services.

Imperial-San Diego Currents reached out to Joe Dan Cameron,
manager of Mesquite Cattle Feeders of Brawley, to discuss how the Valley’s
cattle industry has reacted to the Coronavirus and the safety steps his
operation has taken.

Joe Dan Cameron, manager of Mesquite Cattle Feeders, was interviewed by IV-San Diego Currents regarding the safety measures

Read More

Pictured is Imperial Valley farmer Scott Howington, president of the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association, who recently spoke to Imperial Valley-San Diego Currents about the ongoing efforts of those who work in agriculture as the world faces the challenges of the Coronavirus.

With the world struggling through the impacts of the Coronavirus
pandemic, Imperial-San Diego Currents interviewed (by phone) Imperial Valley
farmer Scott Howington, president of the Imperial Valley Vegetables Growers
Association, on how vegetable growers in the Valley are coping with the crisis.

The short answer is that agriculture remains an essential
service not only to serve California, but the nation and the world, and to that
end the harvesting of vegetables is ongoing and expected to continue as the
Valley heads toward the final weeks of the winter vegetable crops.

“We have not to this point been impacted,” said Howington,
whose farm operation, Oasis Farming Inc., focuses on organic crops, but he emphasized
that food safety

Read More

Leaders of the Native Sons of the Golden West, representing different areas of the State, join in prayer as part of the Native Sons’ dedication of the Imperial Valley’s Spreckles Sugar plant as a significant historical part of the Valley. The dedication was held Saturday, February 8, on the plant grounds along Highway 86 north of Imperial. The facility is the last operating sugar plant in California.

In the geographic center of the Imperial Valley,
strategically located to meet the needs of growers in both the northern and
southern ends of the Valley, stands California’s last operating sugar plant—a
monument to the past, a symbol for the present and a harbinger of the future.

The Spreckles Sugar plant, perhaps better known to longtime
residetns as Holly Sugar, towers over the Highway 86 corridor between El Centro
and Brawley just as it has since it was first built in 1947 to serve the needs
and more importantly

Read More