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We have relied on Santa Cruz County Bank for all our banking needs for over a decade. We're on a first-name basis with bankers who understand the seasonality of our business and the recent impacts of the pandemic. Dependability is everything, and our bank has come through for us every time. ~ JJ Scurich, Creekside Farms S A N T A C R U Z C O U N T Y B A N K As a community bank, our objective is to help local businesses thrive, even as economic seasons change. We're a community bank, staffed with local market experts and decision makers. So we can dig into your business and create a plan that works to your advantage. No waiting for approvals from "the folks at HQ." If you'd like some fresh ideas on how to grow your business, call us or stop by. Our team is ready to serve you with resourceful, relationship-based expertise. Like a greenhouse for business growth. S C C O U N T Y B A N K . C O M ■ 831. 457. 5000 Spring 2021 Central Coast A Special Advertising Supplement to Monterey Herald and Santa Cruz Sentinel. April 30, 2021 Local ag-related business flourishes during pandemic and adds a new location By Green Rubber Kennedy Ag Spring 2021 represents what seems to be the end of a very challenging period and the beginning of a completely new season. The whole world has had to deal with life in a way that is radically different than any other time in history. Many industries and businesses have been greatly affected by global health-related challenges. Unfortunately, some businesses were not able to adapt and survive the worldwide crisis that began in March of 2020. However, Spring is now springing to life! Many communities are opening up indoor shopping and dining, businesses are reopening and flourishing, youth sports are taking place again with precau- tions, parks are opening up and many schools are back in session. This is an exhilarating glimpse of what returning to normal life will look like. At Green Rubber – Ken- nedy Ag (GRKA) contin- ued growth and new life are happening as well. To achieve that new growth, GRKA had to first overcome the challenges related to maintaining a thriving business during the new age of a global pandemic. GRKA was fortunate enough to keep its stores and fabrication shops open during the lockdown. With their customers under pressure to keep up with demand for their critically needed products, GRKA had to adapt to changing public health requirements on an almost daily basis. Interactions with custom- ers were adjusted to meet safety criteria and many staff temporarily worked from home to accommo- date physical distancing guidelines. With increased sanitation and distancing, curbside and store-front sales, and an increased volume of deliveries, GRKA managed to pro- vide the supplies, parts, services, materials, and tools to keep their custom- ers' operations running. With nationwide demand for safety and sanita- tion products exceeding supply, GRKA took the initiative to formulate and produce a supply of its own proprietary hand sanitizer. The GRKA urethane fabrication department designed and produced customized plas- tic shields and sanitary barriers to protect workers on food processing lines, and new lines of portable hand washing stations were brought in to fill the need. One GRKA employ- ee even sewed hundreds of handmade, silk face masks for distribution among company staff. Due to the pandemic, some of the products in the highest demand were Victory Electrostatic Sprayers, and Vital Oxide disinfectant to help fight the spread of Covid-19. These items became widely used together to disinfect schools, airports, businesses, and more. The non-toxic nature of the disinfectant made it a popular alternative to harsh chemical agents for daily use. The com- bination of the gentle but effective disinfectant and the enhanced coverage from the electrostatic spray technology made the duo highly desirable during a time when daily disinfection was such a necessity. The most obvious sign of new growth for GRKA is the opening of a brand new store to add to the existing five locations in Salinas, Watsonville, Greenfield, Modesto and Yuma. The sixth store in the chain has been es- tablished in Santa Maria, CA, where the thriving agricultural industry is the lifeblood of the commu- nity. GRKA has been working with customers from the Santa Maria area for many years, sending outside sales reps on the road on a regular basis. "We set up the new Santa Maria location to pro- vide a more permanent presence and a higher level of service to meet the growing needs of the local industry," says Jaime Lopez, the new store manager. "We have received a warm welcome and established a lot of new business relation- ships here. Our Santa Maria staff has years of local experience and is extremely knowledgeable about the products and services we have to offer." Growth is stirring on the technological front as well. Green Rubber – Kennedy Ag's website has received further product catalog upgrades with improved navigation to help customers locate the specific item they need. GRKA's internet pres- ence has expanded onto fully active social media platforms where updates are made to keep the com- munity aware of specials, new products, events, and other Green Rubber – Kennedy Ag news. With new servers, hardware up- grades, security software and protocols, GRKA is staying ahead of the curve and looking forward to seeing what else this new season has in store. Provided photo Provided photo New book focusing on Salinas coming out this Fall Although much has been written about the urban-rural divide in America, the city of Sa- linas, like so many other places in the state and nation whose economies are based on agriculture, is at once rural and urban. For generations, Salinas has been associated with migrant farmworkers from different racial and ethnic for maintaining the local workforce. Carol Lynn McKibben draws on extensive original research, including oral histories and never-be- fore-seen archives of local business groups, tracing Salinas's ever-changing demographics and the chal- lenges and triumphs of Chi- nese, Japanese, Filipino, and Mexican immigrants, as well as Depression-era Dust Bowl migrants and white ethnic Europeans. McKibben takes us from Salinas's nineteenth-cen- tury beginnings as the economic engine of Cali- fornia's Central Coast up through the disproportion- ate impact of Covid-19 on communities of color today, especially farm- workers who already live on the margins. Throughout the centu- ry-plus of Salinas history that McKibben explores, she shows how the political and economic stability of Salinas rested on the ability of nonwhite minorities to achieve a measure of middle-class success and inclusion in the cultural life of the city, without overturning a system based in white supremacy. This timely book deepens our under- standing of race relations, economic development, and the impact of chang- ing demographics on regional politics in urban California and in the Unit- ed States as a whole. McKibben is a lecturer at Stanford University, director of the Salinas History Project, and the author of two previous books on the history of Monterey County: Beyond Cannery Row: Sicilian Women, Immigration, and Community in Monterey, 1915-1999 (2006) and Racial Beachhead: Diver- sity and Democracy in a Military Town (2012). McKibben's newest book will be available for pre-order sometime in May through Stanford University Press. groups. This broad-rang- ing history of "the Salad Bowl of the World" tells a complex story of com- munity-building in a multiracial, multiethnic city where diversity has been both a cornerstone of civic identity and, from the perspective of primar- ily white landowners and pragmatic agricultural industrialists, essential