Fred brings a unique blend of banking and agriculture backgrounds to the business community. Fred grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin. He served in the U. S. Navy during the Vietnam conflict. He worked for Crocker Bank in a variety of positions with the most notable being Special Assets where he was able to use his problem solving abilities to work on turn-around programs for the largest problem agricultural loans in Crocker’s portfolio. He gained additional experience with as the California Controller for four bean warehouses and a harvesting division that harvest in excess of 25,000 acres of beans for ConAgra as well as owning a computer business. Fred started with the Carberry family in 1999 as they were about to file bankruptcy. The family grew alfalfa, almonds, cotton, garbanzos, garlic, tomatoes, and wheat on over 18,000 acres. Fred successfully led the process of obtaining new short term and long term financing as well as a restructuring of the family operations into twenty five separate business units. He founded A-1 Agri-Business Services, Inc. in 2001 to supply management and labor to the family entities. When the Carberry family decided to sell their farming organization, Fred was one of the lead participants in negotiating the sale of the properties and the re-investment of much of those sales into commercial real estate investments via 1031 and 1033 tax deferred exchanges. Formerly, Fred served on the California Bean Council, the California Garbanzo Council, and the Bean Advisory Board. He currently is on the Environmental Committee of the California Almond.