Orange Growers Still Want Quotas : California Industry Told USDA Will Act Quickly on Request
Despite last week’s opposition by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, California’s orange industry asked again Tuesday for shipment quotas on the new navel crop as wholesale prices continue to slump on the eve of the prime holiday sales season.
This week, however, key USDA officials sat in on the deliberations and promised an answer to the recommendation as early as today. Last Wednesday the answer was “no.”
Industry representatives fear that a continued lack of controls will only worsen a season they described as “lackluster,” with average prices per carton about $1.50 below last year’s. That view is not unanimous, however.
The 11-member Navel Orange Administrative Committee, meeting in Los Angeles, unanimously voted to recommend that the USDA approve the shipping quotas--called “prorate”--for the week starting Friday and running through Thanksgiving. Two committee members voted against the 1,300-carload limit, however, one judging it too low, the other too high. (A carload represents 1,000 37.5-pound cartons of fruit.)
Limit Is the Same
That limit was the same as last week’s rejected quota, which James Handley, who administers the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, told the committee would have been premature. Agriculture Secretary John R. Block sent him to Los Angeles, he said, to gather additional information to clarify “uncertainties” concerning the broader question of prorate’s use as a marketing tool.
Handley said Block may respond today to that broader issue, a crucial element of the industry’s proposed strategy for marketing the new crop, which he has been considering for some weeks. The document serves as a planning guide for shippers and buyers.
Block shattered tradition last Jan. 28 by abruptly lifting quotas, then refusing to allow them to be reimposed. So the industry anxiously awaits his view of the prorate strategy developed by the committee, which carries out the industry-financed federal “marketing order,” which seeks to help growers promote consumption of their crop, conduct research and stabilize prices and supplies.
The theory is that the stability improves returns to growers, who get what money is left after handlers, wholesalers and retailers take their cuts, provides more secure employment for farm workers and provides consumers with a steady supply of oranges at reasonable prices.
Despite the committee’s vote for imposing prorate, growers and packers opposed to its use were well represented. Ken Wiseman, general manager of Bakersfield-based Belridge Farms, an independent grower-packer owned by Shell Oil, said: “We think conditions are very favorable to continue without regulation. We see a lot of holiday opportunity out there.”
Added Carl A. Pescosolido of Exeter-based Sequoia Orange Co.: “I don’t see any evidence that the sky’s about to fall.”
Other growers and packers voiced concern, however, that anticipated colder temperatures will speed the ripening of fruit and encourage excessive picking. Joel Nelsen, president of Visalia-based California Citrus Mutual, supported the 1,300-carload limit, explaining: “We have concern for an expected cold front leading to overenthusiasm in picking.”
Without restrictions last week, Central California handlers sent 1,332 cars of fruit to market--32 more than the rejected quota. But, the committee said, rain interrupted picking, reducing a much larger flow of fruit to packing houses.
“The rain saved our tails last week,” said J. A. Wollenman, general manager of independent Lo-Bue Bros., which he said produces 6% of the Central California orange crop and favors use of prorate.
