Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/117824
Garcia found HIS CALLING Leo Garcia promotes the education of orchard workers. by Geraldine Warner W hen Leo Garcia came looking for a job in the Washington tree fruit industry almost 30 years ago, it was quite different from today. Washington apple production was hovering around 50 million boxes of mostly Red Delicious, and most of the orchard workers were U.S. citizens. Garcia, 56, grew up on his family���s orchard in Hidalgo, Mexico. He first came to the United States in 1974 to do a onemonth English course in Chicago. He returned the following year under a student visa to study at Dodge Community College in Kansas where he earned an applied science degree in farm and ranch management while working part-time in construction and remodeling to put food on the table. College boy He then enrolled at Washington State University to follow his dream of learning about apples. While studying for his bachelor���s degree in horticulture, he worked at the university in order to earn a living and qualify for in-state tuition rates. Drawing on his construction skills, he built singlebox-sized controlled-atmosphere chambers that Dr. Max Patterson, postharvest physiologist, used for apple storage trials. When there weren���t jobs in the horticulture department, he worked in foodservice. While at WSU, he met his future wife, Karen Parkins. After graduating in 1984, Garcia asked his father if he could help him operate the 40-acre family orchard in Mexico, but his father said he wasn���t ready to start making the transition. Garcia decided he would make his home in Washington instead, but had no idea what role a Hispanic person with a horticulture degree could play in the industry. When Les Green, then president of Wells and Wade Fruit Company in Wenatchee, saw that Garcia had a reference from his friend Patterson at WSU, he offered him an orchard job in Wenatchee. ���I learned orcharding from the ground up,��� said Garcia, who was nicknamed ���college boy��� by the other workers, who were mostly Anglos. 14 April 1, 2013 GOOD FRUIT GROWER Leo Garcia, Wenatchee Valley College, HOEEP. Garcia got to know WSU Extension agent Paul Tvergyak, who enlisted his help in producing harvest and pruning safety videos in English and Spanish and suggested that Garcia would make a great fieldman. ���I didn���t really know what that was,��� Garcia recalled. So he asked Fred Valentine, a fieldman at Blue Star Growers in Cashmere, if he would really be able to do the job, being from a different country. ���Leo, my man,��� Valentine responded. ���You���ll make a hell of a good fieldman.��� Valentine, who worked with Garcia���s father-in-law and orchardist Jim Perkins for many years, became his mentor, and when Garcia heard that the Chelan cooperative Trout was looking for a fieldman, he applied and was hired. ���Then I worked with Mel Crowder, who set the standard of what a fieldman was,��� Garcia recalled. As the industry replanted with new varieties following the Alar scare and expanded with high-density systems, he helped WSU Extension agent Tim Smith provide pesticide workshops in Spanish for the growing number of Hispanic orchard workers. He also became a member of the advisory board for Wenatchee Valley College���s tree fruit production program. In 1991, he moved to Chief Wenatchee, one of the premium cherry packers at the time, though as the rookie fieldman, he found himself responsible for the peaches, apricots, and odd apples. A couple of years later, he received a call from Mike Mrachek, head of the field staff at Stemilt Growers in Wenatchee. The company had become aware of Garcia when they sponsored research at Patterson���s lab with the research-scale CA chambers he built and asked if he���d like to be a fieldman. www.goodfruit.com