RANGELAND TRUST TALK
SILACCI RANCH
Family working to keep food on dinner plates by Madison Goss, California Rangeland Trust Communications Specialist In the Salinas Valley of California, known as the “Salad Bowl of the World,” a local ranching family is helping to ensure that there will always be protein on the plate. For over 140 years, the Silacci family has called the Valley home – beginning when patriarch Bautista Silacci immigrated to Monterey County. After living in Moss Landing in the early 1880s, he decided to move inland to Salinas to work at a local dairy. In 1887, seizing an opportunity to establish roots on the land and in the industry, he purchased the dairy. Together, he and his family raised dairy cattle and cultivated various crops, contributing to the Valley’s notorious bounty. As the family grew, so did their ambitions. In 1939, they acquired an adjoining property, encompassing 9,400 acres from the Valley floor to the mountain peaks of the Gabilan Range. The area boasts seven different plant communities, including Coastal Oak Woodlands, Chaparral and Annual Grasslands. The varying and rugged terrain was not suitable for many of the traditional crops grown in the area, so they decided to shift their operations. The Silaccis transitioned from raising dairy cattle to beef cattle while continuing to grow crops on 300 acres of the ranch along the Valley floor. This not only diversified their income but also, through rotational grazing, provided significant environmental benefits for the local wildlife and plants, including special-status species such as the golden eagle, California tiger salamander, Pinnacles buckwheat, Tule Elk and California false lupine. Pete Silacci, Salinas, third generation on
30 California Cattleman November 2024
the ranch and current co-manager, noted, “We see wildlife and a variety of plants all the time; it is just a part of being on the ranch. As much as we call this ranch a home, it is our intention [through our management] for it to stay a home for all of them as well.” As the years progressed, the family and their ranching business prospered on the property, but they slowly started to notice a shift in the community around them. Despite its nickname and deep agricultural roots, the Valley could not escape the inevitable growth and development happening throughout the region. In 1940, Salinas was a small town of 11,586 people, primarily populated by farm and ranch workers. Over the following decades, the area experienced significant expansion with the population soaring to 151,060 by the 2000s. This period of urban expansion mirrors trends across California and the nation, where farms and ranches continue to disappear while being replaced by urban development. Statewide, California lost more than 465,000 acres of ranch and farmland from 2001 to 2016. And future trends look just as bleak with projected losses of nearly 797,000 acres of productive agricultural land by 2040— an area over half the size of the Salinas Valley’s 1.2 million