For its first nine years, the California Fig Fest, sponsored by the California Fig Advisory Board, a marketing order for dried figs, and its sister organization, the voluntary California Fresh Fig Growers Association, was held in Fresno, CA. This year, the 10th Annual Fig Fest was moved to San Diego and held Sept. 8 at the new San Diego Public Market.

While Fresno, besides being the home of the two fig organizations, is located in the heart of Central California’s traditional fig growing area and close to the state’s major current fig groves, making it seem a natural location for a fig festival, San Diego also has a strong connection to figs, according to Karla Stockli, chief executive officer of both the board and the association.

The first fig tree was planted in California 244 years ago at Mission San Diego, she said.

Additionally, considerable fig acreage has been planted in recent years in Riverside County, which adjoins San Diego County, so San Diegans certainly have cause to regard figs as a local crop.

Significantly, holding the festival in San Diego, a larger metro area than Fresno, gave the fig board an opportunity to expand its public awareness activities into an important new market, Stockli explained.

“The event was absolutely incredible,” Stockli told The Produce News, the day after returning from the festival, which was co-hosted by the two fig industry organizations and Les Dames d’ Escoffier, a culinary group of about 1,800 influential women in the fine food and hospitality industry with which California Figs has had a working partnership for several years.

There were between 500-600 attendees at the event and more than 40 food purveyors with chefs creating “a variety of dishes from sweet to savory,” she said. Eleven wineries from Baja California, Mexico, participated. A culinary competition was judged by chefs from New York, Houston, Lodi, CA, Fresno, and San Diego.

The public relations activities of California Figs extends to social media and also to bloggers, who “really are influential media that we need to be working with,” Stockli said. Over the coming year, “we will be working with [bloggers in] several different markets,” including San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, and a couple of others yet to be determined. The focus in November and December will be dried figs for the holidays, then in April and May the focus will shift to fresh figs. Care packages with figs will be delivered to selected bloggers “to create a buzz through social media with both fresh and dried figs,” she said.

“In our efforts, we are always trying to be very targeted with the influencers in media and in nutrition,” Stockli said.

In October, she will be going to the Food & Nutrition Conference in Houston , where “we will be participating with an invitation-only event for supermarket registered dieticians. We are educating them on the nutritional benefits of California dried figs.” That will be followed by a registered dietician influencer lunch.

“The chef we are working with, Robert Del Grande in Houston, will also do a culinary figology education” presentation at the conference, giving participants an opportunity to learn not only about the nutritional aspects of figs but “the science and flavor profiles.”

California Figs works with Del Grande not only in Houston but nationally and internationally in its programs. He will be representing California Figs, for example, at an upcoming national conference of Les Dames in Austin, including participation in a figology moderated discussion group, Stockli said.

Throughout the year California Figs will be participating with different chapters of Les Dames in various markets “to develop programs in those markets,” she said.

PBS’s Creative Living with Sheryl Borden will be working with California Figs in taping five fig episodes this year that will be aired in 2014, Stockli said. Each of the nationally syndicated shows will reach about four million people.

One segment will give the PBS audience a fig industry overview, one segment will talk about fig nutrition, one will talk about fig varieties, and two will involve fig recipe demos.

California Figs will also be working with national media publications in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago to get editorial content for the product.

The 2013 fig crop is estimated at 10,000 tons, very similar to last year but “probably 15 to 20 percent less than what it should be,” Stockli said. “We are four weeks into the harvest,” which should be finished by the end of September.

Approximately 1,000 acres of young fig orchards are yet to come into production, and those will phase in over the next five years, giving the industry around 12,500 tons a year “which we really need” because of growing demand, Stockli said. Presently, “we are selling every fig we are producing.”