By Mark C. Anderson

Go ahead and envision Jonathan Merrill and his fellow farmers smudged with soil, hay in their hair, trotting out counting-chickens-before-they're-hatched cliches till the cows come home.

Which would be a major misconception – and Merrill’s favorite one about farmers, in fact. 

“Farming has typically had something like a stigma that farmers are all overalls and pitchforks, riding horses on the ranch,” he said. “Some of the most intelligent people I’ve met in my life are based in agriculture, and the amount of technology and innovation [they employ] and highly strategic business decisions they make are almost militaristic – and have to be, because we’re operating on cents per unit and have very little room for error.”

Not that he doesn’t enjoy hands-on fieldwork for his fourth-generation family operation, Merrill Farms, one of the leading growers in the ag-intensive Salinas Valley.

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