BOOM IN BAJA : Lower Costs, Consumer Demand Year-Round Pushing Fruit, Vegetable Production South

Six years ago, Luis Rodriguez, his father and seven brothers grew tomatoes, squash and green peppers on a tiny, 200-acre farm near this hamlet on the Pacific, 235 miles south of San Diego. They sold most of their vegetables to domestic markets and distributors, sending only an occasional truckload north to the United States.

Today, the Rodriguezes’ Rancho Los Pinos vegetable farm has expanded to a whopping 3,000 acres, mostly dedicated to tomatoes. During peak harvest periods in spring and winter, several thousand migrant workers pick buckets of vine-ripened tomatoes which are cleaned, sorted and packed at the company packing plant nearby.

And 80% of the crop now comes to the United States. Business is so good north of the border, in fact, that Luis Rodriguez is looking for more farmland in the La Paz and Vizcaino areas of Baja to grow more tomatoes.

On any given day this month, as many as 13 Rancho Los Pinos semitrailer trucks may be seen lumbering north up the coastal road from San Quintin to the family’s distribution center in Chula Vista, carrying up to a half a million pounds of tomatoes a day mostly headed for supermarket produce counters across the United States.

The Rodriguezes’ success exemplifies the booming market for Baja fresh vegetables, especially tomatoes, in the United States. A dozen other farms have expanded in equally dramatic fashion. And that, in turn, has hurt U.S. growers, particularly in California, who are increasingly worried about the flood of imported fruits and vegetables in U.S. supermarkets.

Tomato production in Baja increased tenfold from 1980 to 1986 to 250 million pounds per year, before dipping to 198 million in 1987. University of California, Davis agricultural economist Roberta Cook called last year’s drop an aberration because of crop pests and poor weather. Meanwhile, tomato harvests in California have been flat or down in the same period before rising sharply in 1987 because of favorable weather in the state, Cook said.

And it’s no accident that Baja’s tomato boom has matched a drastic decline in San Diego County tomato farming, where the growing cycle matches that of Baja. San Diego had been the nation’s prime winter growing area for the most popular kinds of vine-ripened tomatoes sold fresh in supermarkets. (“Green” tomatoes that are ripened artificially off the vine are grown in other parts of California, the largest growing area being the San Joaquin Valley.)

That decline in San Diego, caused by higher labor and water costs and by encroaching real estate development, helped create the bigger U.S. market for Baja farmers such as Rodriguez.

Total San Diego farm acreage planted in tomatoes declined to 2,400 acres in 1987 from 5,500 acres in 1983 and 7,500 acres in 1962, University of California farm adviser Wayne Schrader said.

The reason for the shift is economics. Farming costs in Mexico compared to those in the United States have dropped with the value of the peso during the past six years. Rodriguez and his brothers say they spend just $2.75 to produce a typical 25-pound box of vine-ripened tomatoes versus $4 to $4.50 in San Diego County.

A worker who costs the farmer $50 per day in San Diego costs only $4 to $5 per day in Baja. Water in San Diego costs as much as $400 per acre-foot and virtually nothing in Baja except for the expense of fuel to operate well and irrigation pumps.

According to a General Accounting Office report made to Congress last week, the dollar value of fruit and vegetable imports from all foreign countries more than doubled from 1980 to 1986, reaching $1.6 billion. Fresh and frozen vegetable imports grew by $440 million to more than $800 million, with tomatoes accounting for 46% of that increase.

Mexico is by far the leading produce exporter to the United States, currently supplying up to 50% of all U.S. fruits and vegetables during some winter months, the GAO report said, as well as 97% of all imported tomatoes. Besides tomatoes, imports of other labor-intensive crops such as strawberries and green onions have also jumped significantly.

From 1980 to 1986, Mexican farmers’ market share of tomatoes sold in the United States increased to 24% from 21%, the GAO said. But that relatively small percentage gain comes in a vastly increased market overall, as Americans have sharply increased their purchases of fresh fruits and vegetables in recent years.

Cook of UC Davis said Baja’s increased importance as a produce exporter has been the result of a “push-pull kind of relationship.”

“Tomato (farming) is being pushed out of San Diego by high costs. But (tomatoes) are also being pulled down to Baja by a longer growing season that accommodates U.S. consumers’ and supermarkets’ need for a year-round supply of produce,” Cook said. As a result, “supermarkets have expanded their space allotted to produce from an average 75 items in 1980 to 225 now,” he said.

The increase in imports has touched off cries for limitations to protect U.S. growers. Rep. Leon Panetta (D-Monterey) convened a special hearing by a House subcommittee on agriculture last week to investigate claims that Mexican and other foreign crops are driving out U.S. farmers and that imported fruit and vegetables may pose health risks because foreign growers have less stringent controls on toxic pesticides.

The GAO study, which was requested by Panetta’s subcommittee, reported that more than 14,000 California workers in food processing plants have lost their jobs during the past decade, in part because of increased imports, a Panetta staff member said. The GAO report also concluded that imports had twice the rate of improper pesticide violations as domestic crops.

Curtailment Unlikely

For their part, Mexican growers such as Rodriguez insist that they use the same chemicals as U.S. farmers. Rodriguez added that Mexican farmers who use prohibited pesticides run the risk of running afoul of U.S. inspectors whose scrutiny at the border can cause delays that ruin shipments of perishable crops. Such a gamble is not “logical” for Mexican farmers concerned with maintaining access to the U.S. market, he said.

Despite the concern by growers and politicians, few people in the produce industry expect imports from Mexico to be curtailed--for a very simple reason. “You stop produce from coming over the border and you’ll see $5 tomatoes in the supermarkets,” said Vern Miller, an executive with Peninsula Vegetable Exchange, a Chula Vista-based grower and distributor with operations in Baja California.

Several San Diego-area agricultural sales and marketing companies that once marketed only locally grown produce have begun distributing Baja vegetables. Agrisales of Vista, for example, offers financing assistance to Baja growers who agree to make Agrisales their exclusive sales agent to retailers such as Lucky and Safeway supermarkets,

Today, 80% of the produce that Agrisales sells comes from Baja farms, compared to nothing just four years ago, Agrisales President Sam Guardamondo said.

Salinity a Problem

In addition to acting as agent, Guardamondo’s company has formed joint ventures with half a dozen Baja farmers. Those ventures often involve technical assistance to Baja strawberry farmers who lack the expertise to grow that finicky crop.

Despite their booming success, Baja’s produce growers see a dark cloud on the horizon--increasing salinity, or salt content, of the water pumped from their irrigation wells. Rodriguez is alarmed enough to say that San Quintin farmers will have serious problems growing their crops within two years unless the region gets rains heavy enough to raise the water table.

One factor that made increased farming feasible in desert-like Baja was excessive rains in the late 1970s and early 1980s that raised the local water table. In recent years, however, rains have not replenished the table, and farmers have been forced to drill deeper and deeper wells to irrigate their crops. That, Rodriguez said, has caused salt water from the nearby Pacific Ocean to begin encroaching on the water supply.