Alumna Named Riverside County Ag Commissioner

A College of Agriculture alumna was named the first woman to serve as Riverside County’s top agricultural official.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors appointed Delia Jimenez Cioc (’02, agricultural biology) as its agricultural commissioner/sealer of weights.

Cioc joined the agricultural commissioner’s office in 2004. Since then, she has served as a supervising agricultural and standards investigator, deputy agricultural commissioner/sealer, and most recently as assistant agricultural commission/sealer.

In her various posts, she oversaw critical aspects of departmental operations, including managing substantial budgets, supervising personnel, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

With more than 50 employees, the agricultural commissioner’s office promotes and protects Riverside Couty’s agricultural industry and environment through pest prevention and management, food quality control, nursery regulation, and training in the safe use of pesticides.

In addition, the office protects consumers by enforcing local and state laws and performing inspections of commercial scales, point-of-sale systems, utility meters and packaged commodities, petroleum product labeling, and service station ads.

The county boasts a diverse, $1.3 billion agricultural industry that includes vegetables and citrus in the Coachella Valley desert; the Temecula wine country; cotton, alfalfa, and wheat along the Colorado River; and the historical citrus in and around the city of Riverside.

In addition to her baccalaureate from Cal Poly Pomona, Cioc also has a master’s degree in public administration from California Baptist University.

She succeeds Ruben Arroyo, who retired from the post.