Labor briefly bears fruit

The farmers are reclaiming Orange County.

Well, not quite, but an amazing thing happened in the last two years: After hemorrhaging farmland to homes, roads and buildings for decades, farmers actually gained more land.

People like Richard Manassero, a third-generation berry farmer, were able to hold onto their plots.

Just five years ago Manassero had to vacate a 25-acre parcel in Brea to make way for homes, but now he has a 35-acre replacement in Costa Mesa and this year he signed a new long-term lease in Anaheim Hills.

The stalled housing market and plunging economy have slowed development in O.C., leaving more land available for agriculture. In 2009, farmers planted crops on 380 more acres — more than four times the size of Disneyland Park — than they did in 2007.

But the recent trend may reverse itself as the economy improves and the market for new homes awakens. Eventually, landowners will be able to sell or develop their land at favorable margins and farmers will have to move.

This fickle relationship has shaped the county’s landscape since World War II and will continue to do so until the edges are built out. In the meantime, more fruit stands mean more local produce at the table.

“It’s nice, but I think the writing’s on the wall,” Mike Bennett said, Orange County’s deputy agricultural commissioner. “As soon as the economy improves there will be that many fewer strawberry and avocado farms.”

Indeed, some of the strawberry farms in Irvine have already started to give way to condos again. The Irvine Co., the county’s largest landowner, recently declined one grower’s lease renewal so it could make way for condominiums and town homes.

That 248-home development, called Stonegate East, could be a forerunner of the next building boom. Other builders and developers are looking to the Irvine Co. to see how quickly it can sell homes. So far, it has exceeded expectations; its most recent development, Woodbury East, has sold more than 350 homes since last summer.

But that doesn’t translate to bad news for all farmers. While the county’s strawberry growers have benefited from the building slowdown, horticulturists have suffered. They depend on new office parks and master-planned communities to buy their plants. Since 2005, total sales for the nursery industry in the county dropped by almost half, from $241 million to $126 million, according to the Agricultural Commissioner’s office.

“Some of our members have had major financial difficulties,” said Kathy Nakase, executive director of the Orange County Farm Bureau, a trade group that represents growers.

Horticulturists face an economic Catch-22 during a recession: A slow economy frees up the land nursery owners need to grow their plants, but they still suffer from an economic slowdown as new home construction declines.

“It’s really a paradox,” said Manassero, whose sales also dropped. “When building did slow down it gave us a little reprieve, but people had less discretionary money to spend.”

The reprieve was from frequent relocation — “musical chairs,” as Manassero puts it. Growers typically lease from year to year, sometimes for two or three years, and can pick up their irrigation piping quickly when they to move.

One of the only longer-term leases on the market is at the Orange County Great Park, where the city of Irvine recently accepted applications to farm the first 100 acres of agriculture land there. That lease would be for four years, with a nine-year option.

Eventually, the Great Park will have a farmers’ market, community gardens and possibly an interpretive center about Orange County farming.

Other than at the Great Park, few areas in the county will remain agricultural, experts say. The owners of the vast Rancho Mission Viejo property in South O.C. plan to keep some land set aside for agriculture, but a spokesman couldn’t say how much.

Residents in San Juan Capistrano voted in 1990 to purchase a 28-acre farm with tax dollars; today it produces organic fruits and vegetables that are sold at a historic farm stand and through a community-supported agriculture program.

“The only thing that will be left are these little plots,” said Bennett, from the agricultural commissioner’s office. “The loss of farms means the loss of the farm culture, and the direct link to the Southern California heritage.”

Descendants of Spanish explorers planted citrus groves, small vineyards and walnut orchards here in the 1800s. True to its name, the county became an orange-growing powerhouse until the post-World War II years, when returning veterans and their families provided abundant demand for new homes.

“It’s the best climate and best ground around,” said Derek Knobel, land operations manager for the Rancho Mission Viejo Company. He’s been farming up and down the California coast for 25 years. “I’m just sorry there’s not more of it.”