From Sour to Sweet : Rains Nourish Strong Recovery by Citrus Crops After Devastating Freeze

Ventura County’s citrus crop is making an “incredible” comeback this year because of the plentiful winter rains in the last few months, according to growers and agricultural officials.

With the spring picking and packing season now moving into full swing, officials say that many citrus trees believed to have been destroyed by the devastating freeze of 1990 have unexpectedly produced new fruit.

As a result, agriculture officials said, an exceptional lemon crop is expected this year as well as an abundant Valencia orange crop that is now ripening on the trees.

The navel orange crop, which makes up only one-tenth of the oranges grown in the county, will be back to 70% of normal, much higher than previously expected, officials said.

Avocado growers, however, said this year’s rains will have less of an immediate impact on their crops. Avocado trees, which take longer to recover, will produce about 25% of their yield for normal years.

It won’t be until next year that avocado growers who were hit hardest during the freeze can expect their trees to produce any fruit at all, growers said. However, the outlook is considered good for an abundant crop at that time.

“I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now,” said Richard Pidduck, a Santa Paula canyon grower who lost all of his avocado crop and 90% of his lemons in 1990. “Six months or a year ago, it seemed like a hell of a long tunnel.”

Despite the predictions of a strong recovery for citrus crops, however, growers said citrus revenue throughout the county is expected to be slightly down from last year, when the loss of one-fourth to one-third of the crops sent prices soaring.

Pete Dinkler, vice president of packing at Santa Paula’s Limoneira Associates, the county’s largest lemon ranch, said more competition this year from the San Joaquin Valley, where crops have also rebounded, will drive prices back down to levels that are closer to the five-year average before 1991.

But this year, the revenue will be more evenly distributed among the county’s estimated 2,000 growers, Dinkler said.

“Last year, 70% (of growers) had probably the best year they’ve ever had,” he said. “But the other 30% had nothing at all to take to the bank.”

The unexpectedly strong recovery also has created work for all but about 10% of the estimated 25,000 farm workers who lost seasonal jobs due to the freeze, said Shirley Ortiz, manager of the Center for Employment Training, a nonprofit agency funded by state and federal grants.

“We are not back to full employment, but a lot of people have gone back to work,” she said.

The four-day freeze that began Dec. 21, 1990, sent temperatures plummeting to 15 degrees in some canyon orchards, prompting officials to declare it the worst freeze in the county in 50 years.

Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail estimated the total damage to all citrus, vegetable and flower crops at $128 million, with damage to lemons accounting for the largest share.

The chill wiped out nearly a quarter of the county’s lemon crop, valued in 1990 at $175 million. It also ruined a third of the $51-million Valencia orange crop and a third of the $53-million avocado harvest. The $6.8-million navel orange crop suffered 25% damage.

At the time of the freeze, the county’s orchards were already under stress from five years of drought. Then came the “miracle March” of 1991 that drenched the agricultural valleys with more than 15 inches of rain and brought totals to above-normal levels for the year.

That was followed by a cool summer and a rainy season beginning in October that has been so prolific that it led a National Weather Service meteorologist in Santa Paula to declare the drought over.

“This has been an absolutely wonderful year,” meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer said the rains could continue into April, providing a good source of water for growing trees that cannot be duplicated with irrigation.

The steady rain is in good part responsible for a lemon crop that is plentiful, large in size and bright in color, said Curtis Anderson, a vice president at Sunkist, which markets fruit for about 800 to 1,000 growers in Ventura County.

“During the drought years when we didn’t have rain in the winter, the lemons matured so fast that we didn’t have a good crop,” he said. “But this year we’re going to have a beautiful crop because the weather has been with us. The recovery has been incredible considering the temperatures we experienced.”

For Valencias, however, the weather brought mixed blessings.

The trees, which have a natural inclination to grow faster after relief from a trauma such as drought or freeze, produced an abundance of blossoms.

But the blast of hot weather that usually knocks off some of the blossoms in late spring did not come last year. The steady rains since December have helped turned the blossoms into fruit.

It is because there is so much fruit on the trees that the Valencia orange crop will probably be smaller than usual, officials said. Up to 40% of the Valencias could be too small for grocery stores, said Mark Flippen, general manager of the Fillmore-Piru Citrus Exchange, a cooperative of 300 area growers.

Flippen said the Valencia oranges that are too small to sell as fresh fruit will be shipped for processing as orange juice and other products.

“It’s been a much greater than expected recovery this year,” he said. “Last year, it was a very dismal-looking sight.”