Medfly Infestation Has Farmers Unsure How to Save Crops : Agriculture: Three thousand acres of commercial crops are in the quarantined area. They cannot be sold until growers take complicated and costly precautions.
Tom Mazzetti would like to take to the air and spray his grapefruit and Valencia oranges with malathion as soon as possible. But he still hasn’t heard from the government, the agencies that must sign off and supervise his precautions.
John Gless has a small stand of tangerines that he’d like to fumigate and eventually sell. But no one can tell him how to go about it, he said.
Welcome to Week One of the first Mediterranean fruit fly infestation to hit a commercial agriculture area since the pest flew again into the Southern California consciousness nine months ago. It’s a time of assessment and confusion, waiting and frustration.
To date, it is unclear just how severe the economic consequences will be. But what is clear is who will pay: The 95 growers within the 81-square-mile quarantine area designated by the state and federal government last Friday.
The Riverside County town of Woodcrest is at the center of the Medfly zone. Radiating out from the rural community are approximately 3,000 acres of commercial crops that cannot be sold until the farmers take complicated and costly precautions.
Some of those precautions--such as fumigation and cold treatment to kill potential flies--could damage the fruit enough to bring down prices or even render the crop worthless. Others, such as spraying with malathion bait, are costly in terms of time and money.
At stake for Sunkist Growers Inc.--the largest citrus marketer in the area--is between $7 million and $8 million worth of Valencias and grapefruit. But if the crop is lost, Sunkist won’t be hurting.
“It’s the grower’s individual loss,” said Curt Anderson, vice president of public and member relations for Sunkist. “It’s just like in a freeze or cold weather. We have no overall pooling to protect people. It’s always been the individual grower’s loss. It’s always been the way they’ve played the game.”
In the past month, government officials have found two Medflies in the Woodcrest area. The first find, about four weeks ago, was in a Gless grove. The second, on April 13, was about two-thirds of a mile away.
What this means for Gless, who has about 200 acres of citrus within the quarantine area, is deep trouble. About 100 acres of navel oranges were harvested before the quarantine hit. About 100 acres of Valencias and a few acres each of tangerines and grapefruit remain.
If no more flies are found in the next three months--enough time for three generations of Medflies to grow and the government’s Cooperative Medfly Project to declare the area clean--Gless and his neighbors will be home free. The quarantine will be lifted, and they can harvest and sell with no problems.
But that’s a big “if.” At first, Gless was willing to cross his fingers and hope for the best. But as the gravity of the situation hit and the confusion mounted, his plans began to change.
Gless on Monday: “If we can jump on it and eradicate it, our Valencias could last until August when it’s eradicated. If there are no new finds, we might be able to harvest.”
Tuesday: “I think at this point, we’d like to ride it out and see if we can get past the quarantine time. . . . But I’m waiting to see what they tell us to do. I will do the baiting if necessary.”
Wednesday: “We’ll do whatever we think is necessary. I plan on spraying mine. . . . We’ll probably start Monday.”
Probably is the key word here, because the Medfly project still does not have instructions and permission forms together to allow the farmers to start salvaging their crops. While the agencies involved have been working on the urban infestations for nine months, the last time crops were hit was in 1981 and 1982.
Gless hopes to get the project’s package of information by Friday so that he, Mazzetti and as many other farmers they can get to join them can pool their resources, rent a helicopter and spray their fields with a combination of malathion, corn protein syrup bait and water.
“We will give them the formula to mix the bait, if I ever get this packet together,” Deborah McPartlan, a regulatory supervisor with the project, said Wednesday. “The (necessary permits) will be in the packet if we ever get it together. That’s the only way they can apply something.”
Under the guidelines, fruit within a half-mile radius of the fly finds cannot be sold unless it is cold treated or fumigated. All other fruit in the 81-square-mile area must be sprayed with malathion bait every six to 10 days for 30 days before harvest.
Cold treatment is a problem because very few packing houses have enough cold storage space to care for the fruit, which must be kept around 34 degrees Fahrenheit for 14 days, said Sunkist’s Anderson.
“It’s tough on grapefruit,” Anderson said. “The rind gets brown spots on it from too cold temperatures. . . . You wouldn’t be able to ship it very far. Cold that long doesn’t do oranges any good either.”
Fumigation causes pitting in many citrus fruit, and, as Gless has found out, instructions are hard to come by. “No one right now knows how to tell me what to do to it,” Gless said. “It’s a small amount, but I would like to try to salvage that by fumigating or cold treating it.”
Spraying with malathion bait is not without its troubles either--one of which could just be finding the chemicals to treat the groves. In the promised packet of information, the Medfly project will place a list of suppliers. But some of the listed companies don’t carry the chemicals and have no plans to.
Consider Country Farm Supply in Chino, which is on the project’s supplier list: “Malathion bait? We’re not going to sell that,” said manager Mark Foley. “I don’t know why they have us on the list. We only sell malathion in little retail packages. We don’t really take on much ag business any more. I don’t think we’re going to handle it.”
Still, the more optimistic growers look past this first troubling week to a time when they will have a harvest. The question for them is how the market will react to their fruit. And the answer is just as confusing as Week One has been.
Bill Wood, an agricultural economist with the UC Cooperative Extension, said that predicting the marketplace is “a high-stakes dice game.”
“If there were 1,000 acres at 500 boxes per acre, you’re talking about 500,000 boxes of oranges, and that ought to make a dent in the supply and therefore the price should go up a bit,” Wood said. “On the other hand, will people stop buying the oranges?”
QUARANTINE IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY
The discovery of two medflies in a Riverside citrus-growing area marks the first time a commercial area has been hit in the current infestation. The quarantine area covers 81 square miles and affects about 95 growers with 3,000 acres of citrus.
Black circles indicate most severely affected areas, roughly a half-mile radius around the two medfly finds. Those growers must fumigate their already harvested crop or subject it to cold treatment before it can be brought to market.
The rest of the groves in the quarantine area may have to be sprayed with malathion bait every six to 10 days before the fruit can be harvested.
