Agri-Business Luncheon Features John Diener

Cutline: John Diener

By Beth Souza

 The 24^th annual Agri-Business Luncheon will be held Thursday, July 8, in the Wine Garden at the Kings Fairgrounds and will host John Diener as the event’s guest speaker. This special lunch will bring the agricultural

 community together with a variety of local service organizations to inform guests of what is happening in agriculture throughout the county. This year’s event will again serve as the official start of the Kings Fair held July 8-11. Tickets to the luncheon are $15 each, which also includes a complimentary entrance pass for any one day of the fair. As guest speaker of the event, John Diener is as a perfect example of the innovative farmers setting the current trends in agriculture today.

Diener is a second-generation farmer in Five Points, a small farming community on the westside of Fresno County.  Although he modestly refers to himself simply as a ‘farmer,’ he has done tremendous work in the world of conservation and innovative technology, and has received numerous awards for his efforts. A graduate of University of California, Davis, Diener farms both conventional and organic land, and has applied his education to further his efforts in conservation and reclamation. He developed a pilot Integrated On-Farm Drainage Management prototype that essentially turns a regional problem with saline soils into a resource. By tiling saline land and recycling water through a series of fields, he has found that farmers can reclaim land, harvest runoff water, produce marketable crops, and ultimately mine salts for commercial use. 

Diener has also successfully implemented center pivots for irrigation, thus saving on labor costs, the ability to use water he may have otherwise been unable to use with other irrigation methods, while still maintaining excellent production. A brilliant resource to the agriculture community and an outstanding example of innovative thinking, Diener was recently awarded the Leopold Conservation Award for California in 2009. 

Diener was also recognized by the California Ag Leadership Program’s ‘Profile of Leadership’ in the environment and natural resources stewardship category in 2002 and received the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award in 1999; only to name a few of his many accomplishments. 

For tickets to the luncheon please call the Kings Fair office at 584-3318 or the Kings County Farm Bureau at 584-3557. Tickets are also available at the Hanford, Lemoore and Corcoran Chambers of Commerce.