San Joaquin County is sniffing out the possibility of being the site of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s next national training center for dogs that can detect plants or soil in packages so they can be checked for pests or contamination.

A potential site has already been picked out in working with U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy, to try to bring a USDA training center to the county, the Board of Supervisors was told this week. The USDA is asking for a site that’s at least 15 acres. The parcel that the county has in mind would exceed the acreage minimum.

For now, the county is waiting for a USDA “visibility study” expected in November that could point to whether it is in the running, Agricultural Commissioner Kamal Bagri said this week. San Joaquin County is one of the nation’s most productive and diverse agricultural regions. The total value of crops, from almonds to cherries, was valued at $3.4 billion, up 6.4% last year from 2024.

Bagri’s office is charged with protecting the industry from pests and disease — and she believes dogs could play a key role.

Currently, the county has one detector dog, a black Labrador mix named Waylon. He is so effective that Bagri said “this dog team is one of the biggest parts of our pest prevention program.”

Inducted into service from a shelter, Waylon was trained at the National Detector Dog Training Center in Georgia, at present the only nation’s only site training nosy pooches when it comes to agricultural detection. The USDA established the program in 1984 through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“Waylon makes our job super easy,” said Bagri. The 65-pound jet-black dog takes only minutes to nose his way through all the packages in a delivery van. Without the dog, the process can take 20 minutes.

As a USDA detection dog, Waylon and handler Erik Baxter not only work in San Joaquin County, but travel as far as San Francisco and Santa Clara to try to inspect shipments believed to be at risk for bringing pests into Northern California. In the annual agricultural report, Baxter credits the dog with plant found to have a rare anamoly, Jasmine Virus T, in an unmarked package that hadn’t been found in California previously.

Waylon is only one of 17 agricultural detector dogs in the state, underscoring the need, Bagri said.

“Agricultural commissioners are fighting for more dogs to make sure that we can have a strong pest prevention system in the state,” she said.