County Crops Set Record of Nearly $922 Million in Revenue in 1995

Despite the fruit flies and torrential winter rains that plagued Ventura County farmers in 1995, gross revenues for the county’s crops set a record of nearly $922 million for the year, according to a report released Thursday.

The new high, largely the result of last year’s strong prices for such crops as strawberries and celery, took some agricultural officials by surprise.

“Obviously, we did much better than we anticipated,” said county Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail, whose office prepared the report.

In part, Ventura County agriculture profited from the hardship of others. Local crops fetched high prices because 1995’s harsh winter weather hit other agricultural regions even harder, McPhail said.

“We did gain some benefits from other people’s losses,” he said.

Local production of strawberries, for instance, dropped 9% between 1994 and 1995. But the price jumped about 25% during the year because of even greater shortages elsewhere, boosting gross revenues from $129.1 million to $149.1 million.

Celery, the county’s third-highest grossing crop, also saw a decrease in production during 1995, from 383,723 tons to 363,716. But the price per ton increased from $235 to $386, bringing a gross revenue of $140.3 million.

For some other crops, production increased during the year. Ventura County avocado groves produced 53,334 tons of the fruit, a 75% increase.

Peppers saw both production and price go up, causing the crop’s value to more than double.

The report’s results would have seemed like a dream a year ago.

For the first seven months of 1995, 86 square miles of the county lay under a quarantine zone imposed after two Mediterranean fruit flies were found near Camarillo in 1994. Avocados grown within the zone had to be fumigated with pesticide. Lemons from the affected area could be sold only in domestic markets.

McPhail estimated that the quarantine cost growers within the zone about $20 million.

And heavy rains in January and March 1995 flooded some fields on the Oxnard Plain, damaging the strawberry crop.

“Given all the things we dealt with in 1995, I share Earl’s surprise [at the record],” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “We’ve had floods, mudslides, fires, disease, pestilence--I’m kind of waiting for the grasshoppers. If I see four horsemen, I’ll get worried.”

Still, last year’s weather had some positive effects. Winter and spring rains kept many avocado producers from picking at times of the year that otherwise might have seen a flood of fruit on the market, said Don Reeder with Pro-Ag Inc., a farm management company. By spreading out the harvest, the rains actually helped keep the price stable.

“Mother Nature has more to say about what we do than anyone else in this world, and she decides what we have,” Reeder said.

For Richard Pidduck, who grows citrus and avocados in Santa Paula and Oxnard, last year’s stormy winter was relatively easy to handle. In late 1990, a sudden and severe cold snap killed many of his avocado trees. The rains in 1995 did little to his young trees other than feed them.

“I was out of production for 2 1/2 years, basically, so last year was welcome,” he said. “Last year was sort of our payback time.”

Despite the glowing gross revenue figures, farmers are still feeling some lingering ill effects from the problems they faced last year.

Malathion spraying, intended to kill fruit flies, also wiped out many of the insects that eat crop-destroying pests. As a result, farmers are finding more pests and having to spend more to replace the good bugs that they lost, Reeder said.

“The bugs are still costing us,” he said.

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A Decade of Growth

The total value of Ventura County’s agricultural harvest from 1986 through last year:

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1995 $921,818,000 1994 $851,983,000 1993 $848,100,000 1992 $725,460,000 1991 $909,906,000 1990 $852,616,000 1989 $805,977,000 1988 $785,860,000 1987 $669,273,000 1986 $613,030,000

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Source: County agricultural commissioner