I recently had the pleasure of being the tour guide for a wonderful group of food media professionals from Turkey. I had a great time watching them both learn a lot about California rice and take in that special essence of our surroundings that we Californian’s often take for granted—“the California experience.” They helped me to remember what it’s all about around here: sunshine, delicious cuisine, beautiful scenery, fine wine, Hollywood and the Apple Store.
These ladies were truly a classy group of fashionistas! Although I scheduled the time to drag them through all the essential components of our industry—rice fields, rice mills, and the Port of Sacramento—they also found plenty of time for the shopping malls and Apple Store to gather up all those cool essentials of today’s modern woman.
As much as they loved California, we appreciate Turkey as well. Their appetite for California rice helps keep our export markets healthy. On average, Turkey imports about 30-40,000 metric tons of our rice each year. It is an important existing market with room to grow. This is why we brought several of their best food writers here to come see all aspects of the industry, all the way from the beautiful wildlife living in our fields to the state-of-the-art technology operating in our mills.
We hope that their excitement of our industry here amongst that legendary “California experience” will provide great material for more articles, recipes and Turkish television segments to ignite even more excitement for California rice being an important part of the Turkish culinary experience.
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Turkish visitors and USA Rice Federation reps along with Fred Klose of the CA Wild Rice Advisory Board (2nd from left), farmer Jack DeWit (center) and myself (right).
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Here are comments from one of the participants after driving a rice harvester in a field near Marysville:
Paul Buttner is Environmental Affairs Manager for the California Rice Commission.
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