Used to Fighting For, Not Against, Growers : Berryhill Finds Himself on Other Side of the Fence

Clare Berryhill, a rough-hewn grower whom Gov. George Deukmejian picked to direct the state’s vast agriculture bureaucracy, finds himself in the midst of perhaps the most serious crisis of his tenure, and he has come out fighting.

In previous fights, however, he has taken on various consumer or anti-pesticide organizations. This time Berryhill is battling some of the farmers for whom he has fought hardest.

In this case, Berryhill said, he wants to “nail to the cross” growers he believes applied the toxic pesticide aldicarb to watermelon fields. Aldicarb is blamed for poisoning watermelon eaters during the last week and causing the recall of millions of melons at peak harvest.

It was unusual to hear the normally affable and outwardly unflappable 60-year-old director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture lashing out at the growers. Berryhill, a former legislator, has been an outspoken advocate for farmers and a fierce defender of agricultural chemicals.

‘He’s a Fighter’

To some of his longtime friends and associates, however, his anger was entirely in keeping.

“He fights for agriculture and he fights hard,” said Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno), who has known Berryhill for more than 10 years. “I think one of the most disappointing things is to have that very entity screw up or double-cross you or make a huge mistake.

“It is in character (for Berryhill) to get hot and mad at a time he feels disappointed and somewhat betrayed by the industry he is trying to protect. He’s a fighter. He doesn’t pretend to be sophisticated or the smartest guy in the world, but he knows agriculture and he’s sharp and quick.”

Another friend, former Assembly Speaker Robert T. Monagan, president of the California Economic Development Corp., said of Berryhill, “He’s a very tough and stubborn guy when he feels he has not been treated fairly. . . . He has kind of a calm exterior personality, but underneath he is a very tough person.”

The watermelon crisis occurs in the wake of successful efforts by Berryhill and other Deukmejian Administration officials to defeat attempts to remove the responsibility for regulating pesticides and other farm chemicals from his jurisdiction and give it to health authorities.

It also occurs as the department’s inspection practices have come under fire in the Jalisco cheese case. Many deaths have been blamed on the contaminated cheese.

“I think Clare is feeling the heat of the Jalisco case and he decided to move very vigorously in the watermelon incident,” said another friend who asked not to be identified.

A Grower Himself

Berryhill was selected by Deukmejian as his Cabinet-level director of food and agriculture in 1983 and pledged to lessen pesticide regulations but not “to lose control over pesticides.”

“I have to lead the agriculture community,” Berryhill told an interviewer six months after his appointment. “If they understand I’m working in their best interest, they will go along. . . . I’m not going to stab them in the back.”

A grower himself, Berryhill still farms 150 acres of almonds and wine grapes in Stanislaus County and 450 acres of almonds and walnuts in Butte County.

A Republican from Ceres, he first was elected to the Assembly in 1969 in a closely fought special election. A recount of returns gave him the seat by a razor-thin margin of 38 votes out of 60,569 cast. In 1972, he was elected to the state Senate.

As a senator, he bitterly opposed then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s landmark bill to create the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board. He retired in 1975, saying that a “legislative career and the proper management of my business interest are incompatible.”