May 4, 2012

World is marketplace for these California farmers

If you were growing fruit in California during the last several years, Asia was a good place to be.

Richard Taylor, who with his brother, John Taylor, owns and operates Taylor Brothers Farms in Yuba City, Calif., said exports and operations in Asia and Poland made weathering the rough economy back home more manageable for their operations.

“These emerging markets have really helped California dodge whatever recessionary bullets that are out there,” Richard Taylor said. “If we were hanging sheetrock or building homes in California, we wouldn’t have done anything for the last five years.”

Traditional beginnings

It’s been just the opposite for this family, whose farming origins go back to 1916. That’s when their grandfather started out as a grower, about 30 miles north of Sacramento. Their father, George, continued the family farm, retiring in 1980.

In the meantime, Richard and John each went to college for agribusiness-related studies.

Richard came back, and with a $10,000 loan from his father, began farming.

“My brother and I built it from there,” Richard said.

They did some apple production, but let that fade in favor of prunes, walnuts and almonds. And then they discovered exporting. First out: dried prunes.

Selling China

“We’ve been selling to China since the late 1990s,” Richard Taylor said.

Four years ago, they hired a husband-and-wife team, Chencheng Cai and Ariel Borremans, to represent them in China. Cai was born in China, and while she and Ariel, a French Canadian, are based in Montreal, they spend 10 months of the year in China on behalf of the Taylors.

“We were doing business there before we had people there, but it was always through a West Coast trading company or big importer in Hong Kong,” Richard Taylor said. “Now, we’re going direct and we understand the market better.”

It can be complicated, he said, with a lot of bureaucracy and red tape. Cai and Borremans work out of an office the Taylors rent in Shanghai.

“It’s registered with the Chinese government – it’s called a WOFE (wholly owned foreign enterprise), which means you have to be registered with the government to be recognized to do business in China,” Richard Taylor said. “It’s like an LLC.”

World gets smaller

The company’s exports have continued to multiply. They’ve been exporting to Japan – California’s largest importer of dried prunes – since 1993. Their plant in Poland imports products from California and remanufactures for retail and wholesale distribution throughout Europe. Last year, the Taylor brothers opened a plant in South Korea – they ship pitted prunes that are repacked for distribution in Asia at the Korean facility, which also makes prune juice.

Back home, the Taylors’ Yuba City plant pits prunes and produces prune ingredients, supplying its organic products to the baby food industry. When they make juice, it’s co-packed elsewhere in California.

“We’re 85 percent export, 15 percent domestic,” Richard Taylor said. “We’re in enough countries around the world that, hopefully, we’re viable all the time somewhere.”

Trade mission

When USDA led a trade mission to China in March, Cai and Borremans participated on the Taylors’ behalf.

“We’re not a first-time exporter, or in our exposure to China,” Richard Taylor said. “It’s just making more contacts.

“There are so many potential buyers, and they want California products – they want U.S. products – and they want healthy food.”

Next stop? Very likely India, where they just shipped some samples.

“The growth and the market potential is enormous,” Richard Taylor said. “Farming’s one thing, but processing, exporting … you evolve. It’s not that difficult – you’ve got to stick with it.”

By Kathy Gibbons, Editorial Director