Growers Express Fears and Anxiety Over Medfly War

California growers expressed heightened frustration and anxiety Thursday about Southern California’s stubborn infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies, saying they particularly feared erosion of the public’s acceptance of aerial pesticide spraying.

Amid these concerns, state officials gloomily announced Thursday the discovery of another fly outside the 300-square-mile eradication zone. A mated female was found on Wednesday in Garden Grove, requiring an escalation of the spraying campaign into the Orange County community.

Such discoveries have rattled the nerves of California’s agricultural industry. Some growers, fearful that a fly may eventually make it over the Tehachapi Mountains, want to ensure early detection by increasing the number of Medfly traps in the farm-rich San Joaquin Valley.

Although growers said they remain confident the state can eventually eradicate the pest, they are uneasy about government’s year-after-year failure to keep the insect out of California. In Southern California, aerial spraying to combat the Medfly has been required in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1988, 1989 and now in 1990.

“If there is anything that is discouraging, it is the frequency, the number of times that the Medfly has been reintroduced to California,” said Bob Krauter, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau. “It’s just frustrating for farmers to see that we have another Medfly introduction.”

Michael Durando, president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, agreed.

“The longer it takes to eradicate and the more often we become re-infested--whatever the region of the state--citizens probably become more skeptical and thereby lose their will to get in and attack the problem,” Durando said.

Durando said his organization contacts officials at the California Department of Food and Agriculture on an almost daily basis to press them to continue to wage an aggressive eradication campaign. So far, the league and other growers’ groups are satisfied that the state is doing all it can.

“Growers are anxious, particularly those who are well versed on the issue, because they understand the potential for damage to our industry,” Durando said.

Rex Magee, associate director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said his agency feels pressure not from agriculture, but from public officials whose constituents are unhappy about pesticide spraying over their homes.

“You’re always concerned about the public opinion of your program, and certainly spraying over the top of them is not going to make most people feel very comfortable,” Magee said. “I don’t have any other choice now.”

Some growers, admitting they naively assumed aerial spraying would be accepted by Southern Californians, say they are now scared that opposition might curtail the eradication campaign.

Michael Sarabian, whose family owns a fruit and nut farm in Fresno, said he did not appreciate the depth of public concern over aerial spraying until he read recently about an anonymous claim that flies have been released deliberately to halt eradication efforts.

“It became obvious there are people who are forcefully against spraying,” he said. “They stop spraying, and we would be in big trouble.”

Government agricultural officials originally believed the current infestation could be contained with a single application of malathion and the release of sterile flies, which are used to breed fertile flies out of existence. But the infestation proved to be more widespread than thought, and the effort quickly exhausted all available sterile flies. Officials now plan to apply pesticides over each infested neighborhood a dozen times.

Compounding anxiety among growers and the general public are newly expressed doubts by some scientists that the fly can be eradicated soon, if at all, from Southern California. Durando said he wishes these scientists would keep their opinions to themselves.

“I think it demoralizes the effort and confuses the issue,” Durando said, adding apologetically, “That is a selfish statement I’m sure.”

Most growers and agricultural officials blame the public for the infestations. The flies are believed to have reached California through fruit shipped in the mail or brought back in luggage from places where the insect is endemic.

“The reason all this is happening is we are not doing enough at entry points,” complained Carl Lindgren, an Irvine-based citrus and vegetable grower. “The average person who brings in Medflies might not even know they are doing it.”

State agricultural officials, mindful of such complaints, will soon announce a grower-financed $10,000 reward for any information leading to the prosecution of individuals who bring quarantined produce to California.

State officials have been haggling with the U.S. Postal Service for months over the entry into California of packages containing infested fruit. The state wants to be able to open suspicious packages sent through first-class mail, but postal officials fear such inspections could violate constitutional protections.

Second-, third- or fourth-class mail can be opened for inspection. To determine how much infested fruit may be entering this way, state officials are planning to send packages of treated fruit susceptible to Medflies to California from various parts of the world.

“We’ll know how many we send and how many get through, and then we can start having some meetings with these people to tighten things up,” said Magee.

Some scientists who believe repeated aerial spraying campaigns are wasteful and potentially harmful contend the state must begin to plan for ways to cope with an endemic Medfly population.

But growers applauded the state for failing to undertake such planning, fearing it would divert resources away from eradication efforts.

Living with the Medfly “is not an option, period,” said Durando. “A scientist might think so, but his income does not depend on growing and shipping a crop.”

If the fly became endemic, growers said, they would lose their export markets or be forced to undertake costly treatment of fruit that would drive up its price and potentially reduce its quality. The state’s fruit crop is worth at least $1.5 billion annually, with exports in 1988 totaling $429 million.

“There’s always concern, but they’ve always been able to keep things in check,” said Sarabian, the Fresno grower. “But this seems to be a nagging one. They find one fly here and then another one there. It’s not localized. This is not typical. It’s gotten everyone confused.”