Freeze destroys 70 percent of California orange crop
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 6:59 AM PST
By Los Angeles Times
Printable version
E-mail this articleAs much as 70 percent of California's $1-billion orange crop has been destroyed by record cold temperatures across the state, officials and farmers said Monday.
It will take days to make a full assessment of the losses. But the state's top agriculture official said Monday that damage appears to be greater and more widespread than in the freeze of 1998, which destroyed $700 million worth of produce across California.
"This cold incident will surpass the 1998-99 freeze," said A.G. Kawamura, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Losses, while greatest in the San Joaquin Valley, seem to be spread throughout many parts of the state typically immune to freezes, he said, "from San Diego, to the Central Valley, to the coast."
In addition to citrus fruits, growers are reporting damage to leafy greens, avocados, strawberries and blueberries, said Kawamura, who has spent the past few days visiting farms from Fresno to Ventura.
Some farmers are reporting 100 percent damage to their crops, and many others say well over half their produce is destroyed, he added.
Consumers could feel the impact in price at the grocery store, said Toni Spigelmyer, spokeswoman for Sysco Corp., the largest U.S. food-service distributor.
"We've lost about 50 percent of the orange crops, had significant losses on lemons, and it's going to have an effect on vegetables," Spigelmyer said. "Basically, what we're going to see is a tighter supply and much higher prices."
The cold snap is particularly insidious because it has lasted twice as long as normal winter blasts and plunged temperatures below 25 degrees, essentially making night warming efforts by farmers futile.
"The trees are looking sad," said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual, a growers association. "They're normally a vibrant green color with these bright orange dots all over them. Now the leaves are curling, and they're turning yellow. They're really stressed."
Citrus farming employs 12,500 people in California, not including those who pack the fruit and drive the delivery trucks. Even the companies that make the boxes in which the fruit is shipped will have a bad year, he said.
Claire Smith, spokeswoman for the 6,000-member the Sunkist Growers cooperative, said that up to 70 percent of the navel oranges still on its members' California trees have been damaged. That amounts to about half of the state's overall navel crop and would be worth about $500 million. It remains unclear whether the trees are damaged, something that could cause problems next season.
As the state recorded another morning of record lows Monday, farmers worked to assess the damage, hopeful that rising temperatures predicted for Tuesday will help preserve the crops that have survived.
"We will be lucky to salvage a quarter to a third of what was left. It is a bleak situation," said Charles Sheldon, who had picked less than a third of his 900-acre citrus orchard near Lindsay when temperatures plunged. On Monday he started juicing a portion of the crop too damaged to sell as fresh fruit.
Avocado farmers say this past weekend was the most damaging in 16 years, when the Big Freeze of 1990 wiped out crops.
Guy Witney, of the California Avocado Commission, said the frost could not have come at a worse time for avocado farmers.
Only 5 percent of the $350-million crop was picked before this weekend, Witney said, meaning that most of the fruit was still on the trees and vulnerable to the cold.
Santa Paula Canyon avocado farmer Richard Pidduck said the stems on his avocados are turning brown, a sure sign of failure. When cut open, dark veins running through the fruit indicated the first signs of decay.
"My avocado crop was a total loss," Pidduck said. "That is several hundred-thousand dollars lost from what is just a small family farm."
Damage to Ventura County's $1.2-billion agricultural industry was extensive, said Earl McPhail, the county's agricultural commissioner.
Besides wiping out citrus and avocado groves, the frigid temperatures damaged the winter strawberry crop just as it was going to harvest.
McPhail said he would not have a dollar estimate on the crop losses for several days. But based on what he saw early Monday as he toured ranches with Kawamura, it could exceed the $74.3 million lost by county farmers in the 1998 freeze.
McPhail will ask Sheriff Bob Brooks to declare a local disaster Tuesday, a first step in helping farmers qualify for low-interest loans from the federal government.
Throughout the state, citrus growers were voluntarily holding back fruit that was exposed to the cold so that it can be inspected for damage, officials said.
Oranges and lemons might look undamaged from the outside, but freezing alters the fruit inside so that it is no longer juicy, said Nancy Lungren, a spokeswoman for the state Agricultural Department.
John Gless, whose Gless Ranch grows citrus on about 5,000 acres spread across Riverside County, Kern County and the Coachella Valley, spent the past three nights with his crops trying to keep temperatures up.
"It's been pretty bad," Gless said. "We've been below freezing every night for several hours. You are never prepared for it. There is nothing you can do. We can run water and can bring up the temperatures 3 or 4 degrees, but it was just too cold."
Times staff writers Catherine Saillant in Ventura and Jonathan Abrams in Riverside contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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