Farms Weathered Freeze Better Than Feared : Agriculture: Growers suffered crop losses but escaped extensive long-term damage to trees. Laborers face the continued loss of employment.

During last December’s deep freeze, Ojai citrus rancher Bob Davis became the unofficial spokesman for Southern California farmers battling nature’s icy hold on their crops and their futures.

Davis, his unshaven face lined and weary from three nights’ lost sleep, appeared on local, network and international cable news programs and in a national newspaper to tell of his nighttime battle to save his crops.

Despite temperatures that plunged to 18 degrees in Davis’ orchards and even lower elsewhere in the county, Davis told viewers of network television on one freezing night that all was not lost.

“My kids are home from school, my family is here from the East and it’s Christmas.” Davis’ voice cracked. “I think we still have a lot to be thankful for.”

Six months later, it turns out Davis was right. Things could have been much worse for him and for the rest of the county’s growers. For the pool of more than 22,000 farm workers who depend on the agriculture industry for work, however, the worst unemployment may be yet to come, officials said.

The county’s agriculture industry--worth $853 million in 1990--suffered $128 million in damage to crops in the frost, which nearly wiped out some growers and hit others only lightly. The value of crops is expected to plummet by 15% to 20% when the 1991 crop figures are released next spring.

Nevertheless, for the most part, the county escaped the long-term damage to mature trees that many had feared, said Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail. If farmers had found extensive tree damage this summer, McPhail would have revised damage figures beyond $128 million, he said.

In addition, the drenching March rains spurred lush spring growth on some trees and gave new strength to weakened trees that might otherwise have died, he said.

“I think we’re on a good schedule for recovery,” McPhail said. “Instead of it taking us two or three years to get back to normal, it might only take us one or two years. Things are looking better than they could have.”

Also, McPhail said, prices are holding strong, drawing as much as twice the per-pound price than when commodities were more abundant last year.

Finally, McPhail said, none of the county’s estimated 1,800 growers appear to be giving up farming as a result of the freeze.

“These folks are kind of like pioneer people,” McPhail said. “They are not the kind who give up because there are some hard times.”

A quick recovery for farmers will help the farm workers as well, McPhail said. About 7,000 people were thrown out of work immediately after the freeze, and another 5,000 are still out of work, authorities estimate.

But the worst may be yet to come for farm workers. Harvest work will finish early this year, because the freeze reduced avocado and orange crops by half and lemons by 25%. And there will be no fall lemon crop this year.

“Between September and Christmas is when it will really be tough,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “Pickers won’t have anything to pick and the packing houses won’t have anything to pack.”

The freeze, the most financially damaging in county history, destroyed $57.5 million in lemons and another $27.5 million in avocados, according to county estimates. It cost navel and Valencia orange growers $23.4 million. Strawberry farmers lost $4.2 million, nursery owners $7.1 million and flower and vegetable growers a combined $8 million.

Davis estimated his loss as a “quarter-of-a-million-dollar hit” on his 103-acre ranch. But he kept those losses to a minimum, he said, because he and his family stayed up at night during the freeze, lighting orchard heaters, irrigating fields and hiring helicopters to raise the temperature in the groves a few critical degrees.

“My best estimate is that all my efforts for frost protection paid off,” he said. He figures he lost 80% of his lemons and half of his navel oranges, and he isn’t sure about his Valencia oranges.

But the scant supply of fruit has forced prices up, and Davis may yet turn a profit on his farm this year.

“Am I more leveraged than I was? Yes. Am I nice to my banker, even as I watch him measure my living room for his furniture? Sure. But we were more fortunate than most.”

A few miles to the east, on 77 acres in Santa Paula Canyon north of the city of Santa Paula, rancher Richard Pidduck was less fortunate than most. Like some others who were hit hard, his books will close in the red for the next two years.

Pidduck lost all his 1991 avocados, and his trees were damaged so severely that he will have no 1992 crop. Frost damage required him to trim his mature trees back drastically, leaving piles of dried and dead wood in the orchard rows.

He lost more than 90% of his lemons and a good number of young citrus trees in a newly planted grove. He hopes he will be able to market about 50% of his oranges, but oranges are only a small part of his operation.

“The distressing thing is that this is turning out to be a multi-year recovery,” said Pidduck. “But if the consumers don’t begrudge us the good years, then we shouldn’t complain too hard about the bad years.”

The growers in remote areas of Santa Paula, where canyons facing north and south left groves so exposed that no amount of heating could help, were among the most severely hit, officials said.

Farms in the milder climates of the Oxnard Plain and the Santa Rosa Valley escaped with far less damage and will make good profits in a year of short supply, McPhail said.

The state and federal governments offer financial help to farmers who suffered damages in the freeze, but the requirements are so restrictive that farmers would have to be destitute to qualify, McPhail said. Only one grower has applied for federal assistance, he said.

Pidduck said most growers aren’t looking for help, anyway.

“I’m not getting any assistance from government disaster programs, but I never expected any either,” he said. “I expect to stand on my own feet, and that’s the same view that I think most Ventura County growers have.”

Farmers can take income tax writeoffs and receive property tax adjustments.

So far, 75 county growers have asked to have their property values reassessed, said Jerry Sanford, county tax assessor. Sanford could not estimate how much money county growers could save by having their property re-evaluated.

“But they’ll get a lot more back from the federal government on their income taxes than they will from the county,” he said.

Programs are also available for farm workers, but efforts to reach the people who need help have sometimes been ineffective, said Shirley Ortiz, director of the Oxnard office of the Center for Employment Training.

When the Federal Emergency Management Agency came to the county last winter to accept applications for emergency help to pay rent and cover mortgages, only 297 people applied out of the thousands who were out of work.

No figures were available on how many people had been approved for the program, but only $14,000 in benefits has been paid out in the county so far, an agency spokesman said.

“They went to the wrong place to sign people up,” Ortiz said. The agency team languished for five days at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, where it received only 25 applications. Then it moved to Oxnard and Santa Paula, home to far larger farm labor populations and accepted more than 200 applications, Ortiz said.

Ortiz said the Center for Employment Training, a nonprofit organization funded with state and federal money, administers other programs to help victims of the freeze. The center has distributed grocery vouchers to more than 700 people. It has paid for rent, bus tickets home to Mexico, medical bills and other needs for 950 people, she said.

The center also administers another program through which Ortiz hopes to employ 200 people.

“But it’s still not enough,” she said. “There are people still living in cars and fields.”

Only a good year in the agriculture industry will provide enough work for all who need it, McPhail said. And the outlook for that is good.

Davis and other growers in the county look forward to a much better year next year.

The citrus trees have shiny new growth and the avocado trees that weren’t badly damaged have such a full set of flowers that the county’s avocado growers expect that the 1992 crop may be exceptionally good.

“The economics of one year of a freeze won’t put me out of business,” Davis said.

Six months after the freeze, it looks as though Davis still speaks for much of the county agriculture industry.

Ventura County Crop Damage From December 1990 freeze

Damage 1990 Crop in millions crop value Lemons $57.5 $175 Avocados $27.5 $53.3 Valencia oranges $21.7 $51.1 Navel oranges $1.7 $6.8 Nursery stock $7.1 $113.9 Celery $4.3 $84.4 Strawberries $4.2 $126.4 Cut flowers $2.2 $27.5 Lettuce $1.5 $24.5 All other crops $189.7 TOTAL: $127.7 $852.6