by Lisa Boghosian Papas
Peter Pan would feel right at home on Sarkis and Haig Sahatdjian's Victor Farm in Madera, California.... if there were wild horses roaming through beds of sunflowers; enchanting candlelit dinners amidst rolling green hills; or children in overalls indulging in bucolic pastimes, such as picking grapes from the vines or fetching milk from the cows at sunrise.
Au contraire, Victor farm is not the "never-never-land" that would cast Pan's wings a-sail. However, the thousands of rows of sledded vineyards and technologically advanced packing operations would be a fairy-tale for anyone interested in modern agriculture.
Farming is a "mega-business" in the San Joaquin Valley (the Valley). Though the United States ranks number one in agriculture worldwide, Fresno County ranks number one in the nation, based on the gross value of products produced. Nearly 50 percent of the nation's fruits and vegetables originate from the Valley, and 25 percent of jobs in the Valley are agriculture-related.
Today, farming is not just about keeping your fiefdom producing in order to put food on the table. But it is about competing in the global marketplace, and staying alive in the race to capture more of the market. For several Armenian farming families, like the Sahatdjians, that means keeping abreast of the latest technology, and marketing their commodity with an edge.
"We're the world's largest in the production and market-share of golden raisins," states Sarkis. "We are also number one in production of organic raisins in the world, and have the world's largest dehydrating oven which enables us to produce more raisins faster." Victor Packing's primary business, however, is in sun-dried raisins. They do not sell to the retail market- their end result doesn't go to Dole or SunMaid- but is sold to manufacturers like Lenders for their bagels or Mrs. Fields for their cookies. And they ship nearly 75 percent of their finished product to the Far East, Middle-East, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, with Japan as their leading export country.
Embracing the foreign market has helped the Sahatdjians expand their business many times over. However successful their strategy has proved, few Armenian farmers in the Valley have been able, or have wanted to duplicate their efforts. "When we were growing up in Fresno," explains Haig, "there was a lot of discrimination against the Armenians. I used to have one fight a week defending myself. Today, it is not that much better. Now, instead of there being prejudice against the Armenians from "others," there is prejudice against the newly arrived Armenians from the American Armenians. We have forgotten that we were foreigners once ourselves." The Sahatdjian's "open-arm" policy has helped them establish working friendships with many "newly arrived" Armenian distributors and wholesalers who have been able to open new markets for them in the Middle-East and Europe.
In addition, the brothers' willingness to work with early cooperatives, otherwise known as "hippies" during the 1960s, to produce organic raisins, has lead to Victor Packing's success in this niche market. "We've seen the market for this product go from the hippies in the 60s to the yuppies in the 80s to the health-conscious consumers of organic raisins in the 90s," explains Haig.
The Sahatdjian family, including father Vagharshag (Victor), mother Makrouhi, and brothers Sarkis and Haig, fled the Genocide and their ancestral home of Erzerum, Turkey, arriving in Fresno in 1924, joining many of their Erzerumtsi friends and relatives. "When we first arrived, Haig and I were around one-and-a-half and four years old," says Sarkis. "In the beginning, my parents supported themselves by working in packing-houses and canneries. They followed the crops as migrant farm-workers, without any of the benefits that farm-workers enjoy today. They went to Rio Vista, near Sacramento, to pack asparagus, back to Fresno for figs and grapes, and then to Yuba City for peaches."
Four years after they arrived, young Victor purchased a vineyard of his own. "The funny part about my father being in the farming business was that he didn't like to farm," says Haig. "He was in the leather tanning business in the old country. And when he became a grower he hated it. He always said he just didn't fit in with the soil!"
But during the Depression, the Sahatdjian's learned to love their land- for it kept enough food on the table for their immediate and extended family. "People were in the poor house then, including the farmers," says Haig. "We were lucky in that we had a garden on the land that produced enough fruits and vegetables for my mother to give away to her relatives. Every morning we'd get up and milk three cows- we went through hell- everything was outside, including our water and bathroom."
In 1949, the Sahatdjian's purchased a 40-acre vineyard in Madera- the land which would eventually be the base of Victor Packing today. Sarkis and Haig began farming part-time while working as a mechanic and banker during the day. Then in November 1963, with the support of their then-widowed mother, Sarkis and Haig went full-time into farming and packing- starting Victor Packing Company- to process and package their own crops of raisins, as well as purchase raisins from other farmers to sell.
Today Victor Packing is one of the leading packing houses in Fresno County, and is known worldwide. What has made them successful over the years, in addition to their finished products, has been a willingness to work together, to sacrifice time and money, and to take risks. "When we were expanding the business," says Sarkis, "we had the confidence to pay top dollar for additional vineyards so we could vertically integrate our business. We pooled our efforts, our money, and sacrificed by not taking home paychecks, borrowing against personal assets to make the business strong. Yet, we always met payroll for the employees. Haig and I and our family have worked hard together. My wife, Iris, worked scale for 20 years, and my son, Victor, passed up generous offers following graduation from California State University of Fresno in agribusiness to help the company. Haig's son, Steven, currently presides over the orders and the export and domestic operation."
"Victor Packing Company is named after my grandfather Victor," says Steven. "My father and uncle wanted to honor him for everything he had done for them."
"And the logo on our boxes is the Liberty Bell," says Haig. "When we were growing up, my mother would always say 'thank God that we are in this land of freedom.'"
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