A portrait interview from the From Farms to Incubators journalism project (written by Kristin Platts), featuring Christine Gemperle of Gemperle Orchards in Ceres and Gustine, CA. Covers Christine’s background — a Swiss immigrant father who brought almond farming to California, her biology and fisheries degrees from UC Santa Cruz and Utah State, and her return to farming with brother Erich in 1998 — and her current identity as a self-proclaimed almond advocate and pioneer. The interview focuses on barriers to entry in agriculture (land costs, water scarcity), the farm’s cover crop program (wildflowers, sweet peas, pollinator habitat), whole-orchard recycling work, her leadership roles with the Almond Board of California’s Biomass Workgroup and Project Apis m. (honeybee research), and her philosophy of farming as a lifelong learning process.
