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www.dailyrepublic.com/news/vacaville/norcal-walnut-king-cracking-asian-markets
NorCal ‘Walnut King’ cracking Asian markets
By Todd R. Hansen From page A1 | November 13, 2016
VACAVILLE — Raj Sharma is taking on a new challenge – and reveling in the opportunity.
That, however, is nothing new for the man who has become known as the “Walnut King” in Solano County and in many other parts of Northern California.
Sharma is also widely credited with the success of the Vacaville-Dixon Greenbelt when he turned 800 acres of what was viewed as unsuitable orchard land into a grand walnut grove.
That act of faith in 1996 has opened many doors for Sharma, the latest leading directly to Vietnam.
“The main purpose for me is to go and analyze the soil and to see . . . what would be the best to grow,” said Sharma, sitting in the living room of his magnificent Rio Oso home known as the Raj Mahal.
He leaves for the Far East in a couple of weeks, and is adding an office in Vietnam to go with the three he has in India and the one he has in Hong Kong.
“And to see what opportunities California has there,” Sharma said.
Medical student becomes a farmer
Sharma came to the Sutter County area with all intentions of becoming a doctor. He was studying medicine when he left Punjab, India, for the United States in 1980. He was 19 years old.
“I was doing college and working in an orchard to support myself, and that is when I saw my first (walnut) tree,” Sharma said.
At some point he decided that becoming a doctor was going to take too much time, and because he had worked on the rice farms in India and had a science background, he decided he would become a farmer.
His first opportunity to purchase his own land – primarily a peach orchard – came in 1989 when he bought Sunrise Orchards on Bear River Drive in south Sutter County.
“I bought the orchard from an insurance company,” said Sharma, who kept the Sunrise name, which later proved to be quite appropriate when he took on another challenge in the greenbelt. Vacaville’s office seal features a sun in the center of the image.
Sharma now has farming operations in six counties and hopes to add two more counties to that list in the near future. He grows walnuts, peaches, pomegranates, plumbs, persimmons, prunes, pistachios and almonds.
“I even have some apples,” Sharma said.
He grows walnuts, peaches and pomegranates in Solano County.
“And we are going to start growing some fresh vegetables: tomatoes and strawberries and all sorts of other vegetables,” he said.
That is in preparation of opening a 26,000-square-foot “fruit stand” at the corner of Midway and Oday roads. He expects to break ground in a couple of weeks, and if all goes well, he hopes it will help give a kind of rebirth to an iconic Vacaville destination.
“It will be the only stand in America that is a real stand with nothing but locally grown (goods),” Sharma said. “The way we are going to build that, it will bring back the memory of the Nut Tree.”
Sharma views it as an ongoing commitment to the greenbelt and a way to give back to a county that he said has given him a great deal.
“If the county and the city can work together with me, we can accomplish it. If they don’t, they are going to miss a big opportunity,” he said.
Hardship before rewards in Solano
Sharma met with a representative of the University of California Cooperative Extension when he was considering buying the 800 acres in the Vacaville-Dixon Greenbelt.
“And he said, ‘Raj, that dirt is no good for trees,’ ” Sharma recalls about the meeting in a Woodland cafe.
“And when I signed the agreement with the cities, they had a disclaimer that they are not guaranteeing the land is good for what I was planning to do,” he said.
Moreover, the contract required he plant the full 800 acres within the first two years.
Sharma took on the challenge, going to such lengths as to hire about 100 workers and hand-watering the trees.
“That was one of my secrets to establish the orchard, and investment-wise, there was a lot going out and not a lot coming in, so I was doing with what I had,” Sharma said.
“Then in 1997, we had the El Niño and we had lots of rain,” he said.
Sharma lost 70 percent of the orchard and had to replant. He convinced the cities to rework the loan so he could have a little more time, and paid it off in full early.
He also lost a fair amount of his trees to frost one year, and when he applied for disaster relief, he was denied because the local agency felt that the land was too suspect to grant the application. He appealed to the state level and again was denied. He then took his claim to the federal level.
An agriculture representative came in to look at the situation and asked Sharma how many trees he had. At 800 acres, he only had an estimate, and that was not good enough. So the agent took it upon himself to do the count. Well, he started to. In the end, he accepted the estimate.
“He said there were so many trees that if you lined them up side by side, they would go from Dixon to Los Angeles,” Sharma said.
Sharma retold that story at a recent meeting of the Board of Supervisors, which recognized him with a resolution for his 20 years of commitment to the greenbelt.
The orchard has since rewarded Sharma far more than he ever thought it would. Because of its location along Interstate 80, it has caught the attention of many people and agencies.
It even caught the attention of the vast business enterprise of Oprah Winfrey, who has purchased 1,000 acres of farming land in the county.
Vietnam comes calling
As it turns out, Sacramento and Hanoi are sister cities, and Vietnam was looking for some agricultural mentoring.
“They said we have seen what you are doing and we have been working with Vietnam,” said Sharma, who had already counseled Bangladesh about rice, and had worked with Turkey on walnuts.
“So we had a Vietnam delegate come here about a week and a half ago and we signed the agreement,” he said.
In addition to helping Vietnam, he also will represent the state and explore potential trade opportunities, and he recognized it as an opportunity for his own company.
Sharma is opening an office and plans to build a plant there with the idea of exporting directly into China and other Asian markets.
The ‘Walnut King’ and his kingdom
In addition to his vast farming enterprises, Sharma is involved in the fuel industry and has a number of real estate investments.
He owns four event centers, one of which will host the inauguration party for the new Elk Grove mayor, as well as retail properties he leases to a variety of businesses.
Most recently, he has reached an agreement with a hospital group in Marysville to open an urgent care clinic on 60 acres he owns in Wheatland, a southern Yuba County city not far from the Raj Mahal.
The home was actually built by a contractor friend as his own home. When the builder decided it was too big for his needs, Sharma bought it. The name Raj Mahal grew out of some obvious connections.
“The Americans around here call it the White House, and the Mexicans call it Blanca Casa,” Sharma said.
“In the Indian language, Raj is a royal name,” he said.
So it seemed a natural fit to add Mahal, the residence of royalty, a kind of farming White House tucked into the orchards of his adopted home.
“And now I have my own brand that is going all over the world,” Sharma said.
Reach Todd R. Hansen at 427-6932 or thansen@dailyrepublic.net.
NorCal ‘Walnut King’ cracking Asian markets
By Todd R. Hansen From page A1 | November 13, 2016
VACAVILLE — Raj Sharma is taking on a new challenge – and reveling in the opportunity.
That, however, is nothing new for the man who has become known as the “Walnut King” in Solano County and in many other parts of Northern California.
Sharma is also widely credited with the success of the Vacaville-Dixon Greenbelt when he turned 800 acres of what was viewed as unsuitable orchard land into a grand walnut grove.
That act of faith in 1996 has opened many doors for Sharma, the latest leading directly to Vietnam.
“The main purpose for me is to go and analyze the soil and to see . . . what would be the best to grow,” said Sharma, sitting in the living room of his magnificent Rio Oso home known as the Raj Mahal.
He leaves for the Far East in a couple of weeks, and is adding an office in Vietnam to go with the three he has in India and the one he has in Hong Kong.
“And to see what opportunities California has there,” Sharma said.
Medical student becomes a farmer
Sharma came to the Sutter County area with all intentions of becoming a doctor. He was studying medicine when he left Punjab, India, for the United States in 1980. He was 19 years old.
“I was doing college and working in an orchard to support myself, and that is when I saw my first (walnut) tree,” Sharma said.
At some point he decided that becoming a doctor was going to take too much time, and because he had worked on the rice farms in India and had a science background, he decided he would become a farmer.
His first opportunity to purchase his own land – primarily a peach orchard – came in 1989 when he bought Sunrise Orchards on Bear River Drive in south Sutter County.
“I bought the orchard from an insurance company,” said Sharma, who kept the Sunrise name, which later proved to be quite appropriate when he took on another challenge in the greenbelt. Vacaville’s office seal features a sun in the center of the image.
Sharma now has farming operations in six counties and hopes to add two more counties to that list in the near future. He grows walnuts, peaches, pomegranates, plumbs, persimmons, prunes, pistachios and almonds.
“I even have some apples,” Sharma said.
He grows walnuts, peaches and pomegranates in Solano County.
“And we are going to start growing some fresh vegetables: tomatoes and strawberries and all sorts of other vegetables,” he said.
That is in preparation of opening a 26,000-square-foot “fruit stand” at the corner of Midway and Oday roads. He expects to break ground in a couple of weeks, and if all goes well, he hopes it will help give a kind of rebirth to an iconic Vacaville destination.
“It will be the only stand in America that is a real stand with nothing but locally grown (goods),” Sharma said. “The way we are going to build that, it will bring back the memory of the Nut Tree.”
Sharma views it as an ongoing commitment to the greenbelt and a way to give back to a county that he said has given him a great deal.
“If the county and the city can work together with me, we can accomplish it. If they don’t, they are going to miss a big opportunity,” he said.
Hardship before rewards in Solano
Sharma met with a representative of the University of California Cooperative Extension when he was considering buying the 800 acres in the Vacaville-Dixon Greenbelt.
“And he said, ‘Raj, that dirt is no good for trees,’ ” Sharma recalls about the meeting in a Woodland cafe.
“And when I signed the agreement with the cities, they had a disclaimer that they are not guaranteeing the land is good for what I was planning to do,” he said.
Moreover, the contract required he plant the full 800 acres within the first two years.
Sharma took on the challenge, going to such lengths as to hire about 100 workers and hand-watering the trees.
“That was one of my secrets to establish the orchard, and investment-wise, there was a lot going out and not a lot coming in, so I was doing with what I had,” Sharma said.
“Then in 1997, we had the El Niño and we had lots of rain,” he said.
Sharma lost 70 percent of the orchard and had to replant. He convinced the cities to rework the loan so he could have a little more time, and paid it off in full early.
He also lost a fair amount of his trees to frost one year, and when he applied for disaster relief, he was denied because the local agency felt that the land was too suspect to grant the application. He appealed to the state level and again was denied. He then took his claim to the federal level.
An agriculture representative came in to look at the situation and asked Sharma how many trees he had. At 800 acres, he only had an estimate, and that was not good enough. So the agent took it upon himself to do the count. Well, he started to. In the end, he accepted the estimate.
“He said there were so many trees that if you lined them up side by side, they would go from Dixon to Los Angeles,” Sharma said.
Sharma retold that story at a recent meeting of the Board of Supervisors, which recognized him with a resolution for his 20 years of commitment to the greenbelt.
The orchard has since rewarded Sharma far more than he ever thought it would. Because of its location along Interstate 80, it has caught the attention of many people and agencies.
It even caught the attention of the vast business enterprise of Oprah Winfrey, who has purchased 1,000 acres of farming land in the county.
Vietnam comes calling
As it turns out, Sacramento and Hanoi are sister cities, and Vietnam was looking for some agricultural mentoring.
“They said we have seen what you are doing and we have been working with Vietnam,” said Sharma, who had already counseled Bangladesh about rice, and had worked with Turkey on walnuts.
“So we had a Vietnam delegate come here about a week and a half ago and we signed the agreement,” he said.
In addition to helping Vietnam, he also will represent the state and explore potential trade opportunities, and he recognized it as an opportunity for his own company.
Sharma is opening an office and plans to build a plant there with the idea of exporting directly into China and other Asian markets.
The ‘Walnut King’ and his kingdom
In addition to his vast farming enterprises, Sharma is involved in the fuel industry and has a number of real estate investments.
He owns four event centers, one of which will host the inauguration party for the new Elk Grove mayor, as well as retail properties he leases to a variety of businesses.
Most recently, he has reached an agreement with a hospital group in Marysville to open an urgent care clinic on 60 acres he owns in Wheatland, a southern Yuba County city not far from the Raj Mahal.
The home was actually built by a contractor friend as his own home. When the builder decided it was too big for his needs, Sharma bought it. The name Raj Mahal grew out of some obvious connections.
“The Americans around here call it the White House, and the Mexicans call it Blanca Casa,” Sharma said.
“In the Indian language, Raj is a royal name,” he said.
So it seemed a natural fit to add Mahal, the residence of royalty, a kind of farming White House tucked into the orchards of his adopted home.
“And now I have my own brand that is going all over the world,” Sharma said.
Reach Todd R. Hansen at 427-6932 or thansen@dailyrepublic.net.