A sixth-generation farmer, Cannon Michael is president of Bowles Farming Company headquartered in Los Banos, Calif. There, he oversees an 11,000-acre farm where the company grows cotton, fresh market and processing tomatoes, field crops, and other commodities. 

Michael’s great-great-great-grandfather was Henry Miller, a German immigrant whose partnership with Charles Lux became known as Miller & Lux and resulted in the build-up of landholdings in the San Joaquin Valley to more than 1 million acres.

Michael began working on his family’s farm at age 13 during the summer months. After college, he worked in commercial real estate in Atlanta. He returned to California in 1998 to become the shop foreman at Bowles Farming Company under his uncle, Philip Bowles, and rose to vice president of business operations in 2002. Bowles retired at the end of 2013, when Michael became president.

Michael serves as a director San Luis Canal Company, and as president of the San Luis Resource Conservation District. In addition, he is a director for the California Tomato Research Institute, the chairman of the California Cotton Growers Association.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from University of California, Berkeley, and graduated from the California Agricultural Leadership Foundation program in 2010.

He joined the Water Education Foundation board in 2015.