Freeze Causes $24 Million in Crop Damage : Agriculture: Strawberries are hardest hit in Ventura County. The harvest is “knocked out” for two to four weeks.

Strawberries were the hardest hit among crops damaged by a two-night freeze that struck Ventura County’s fields and orchards this week, causing an estimated $24 million in losses, industry spokesmen said Friday.

According to preliminary estimates by the Ventura County agricultural commissioner’s office, about 5% to 10% of the county’s nearly $400-million-a-year citrus, avocado and strawberry industries were ruined by temperatures that dropped to the mid- and low 20s Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Temperatures were expected to rise this weekend, removing the threat of another freeze, said a Santa Paula-based meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Chief Deputy Agricultural Commissioner David Buettner characterized the estimated losses as moderate compared to more than $51 million in damages caused by a severe December, 1987, freeze.

Still, the strawberry harvest, which began last month, would be “knocked out” for the next two to four weeks of the seven-month growing season, reducing the supply and driving up prices, Buettner and two of the county’s largest strawberry growers said.

The cold temperatures caused ripened fruit ready for picking to freeze, then turn to slush, and white blossoms to wither to black, preventing them from becoming the berries that would have been harvested over the next three to four weeks, growers said.

“It will hurt us quite severely,” said Ken Morena of the Watsonville-based Driscoll Strawberry Assn., which farms about 500 acres near Oxnard.

Another major strawberry grower, the Oxnard-based Bob Jones Ranch, might have lost as much as a third of its crop, according to early estimates, controller Richard Doerner said.

“We’ve had our wind machines going the past two nights and we’re hanging in there,” Doerner said, referring to the large fans used to raise temperatures by churning the air and mixing hot drafts with cold.

Growers also used helicopters to mix and warm the air and irrigated their crops, which also raises the air temperature, after being warned of the approaching freeze by weather forecasts.

No more than slight damage or superficial blistering was expected to occur in row crops such as broccoli and lettuce, Buettner said. He estimated that about 5% of the citrus and avocado crops would be damaged but cautioned that the freeze’s full effects could not immediately be determined.

Damage to citrus, in which cold causes leaves to burn and fruit to crystallize, often is not ascertained until the produce arrives at the packing plant, where it is floated in water before crating, Buettner said. Damaged fruit will float higher than healthier citrus, he said, because it contains more dried cells.

Agriculture in Ventura County grossed $786 million in 1988, said Buettner, with strawberries contributing about $90 million and citrus and avocados about $300 million to that total.

The freeze was caused by a dry, cold northern air mass that moved into Ventura County from the east, said Terry Schaeffer, an agricultural meteorologist in Santa Paula. Usually, such masses sweep down the coast and are warmed by ocean moisture before hitting the county.

Schaeffer said nocturnal temperatures should hover in the 40s this weekend in the county’s agricultural areas. “Basically, we’re out of the woods as far as cold,” Schaeffer said.