Storms May Help Local Berry Crop

The county’s recent spell of storms and spot flooding battered strawberry crops, set back their harvest schedules several weeks and may create a temporary rise in berry prices at grocery stores.

But Orange County growers say disaster was averted and that after the area’s prolonged drought, the rains may ultimately help Orange County’s biggest crop.

“Well, we lost quite a few (strawberries), but we are bouncing back,” said Johnny Magarro, owner of the 200-acre Magarro Farms in Irvine. “But it is still early in the season. If the rains had come three weeks from now, we would be in the middle of our main strawberry harvest.”

During the storms, Magarro and his employees scrambled to pluck ripened strawberries from the vines in hopes of saving them from the pounding rain and runoff.

Since the rains subsided, growers have been stripping those vines and discarding strawberries that have decayed after being submerged in muddy storm runoff.

Magarro and other growers said they lost up to half of their current crops.

“We can never really prepare for a major rain,” Magarro said. “We just kind of had to gulp and take it.”

Magarro added that although workers had to scramble to save crops, the impact of the rain damage was limited because berries have yet to reach peak season for output and quality. Magarro said he has simply written off the losses and does not plan to calculate the damage.

The County Agricultural Commissioner’s Department has also not attempted to assess the financial impact of the flooding on county agriculture, officials there said.

Deputy Commissioner John Ellis predicted that consumers would notice in coming weeks a temporary price increase for strawberries--the county’s most productive crop, accounting for about $34 million in income for local farms.

Growers say their strawberries are already fetching about 40% higher prices from distributors since the rains decimated possibly more than half of the immediate supply throughout the Southland. But as fields dry out and plants rejuvenate, growers should be back to normal output within weeks and prices should decrease, they said.

“This is just February, so we are just getting started, so supply was down anyway and price fluctuation is not that bad,” said A.G. Kawamura of Western Marketing, a cooperative that farms about 200 acres of strawberries. “Rain will not really hurt (growers) down the road. It was not nearly as severe as a frost or heavy hail.”

Nonetheless, the decline in supply and quality of the berries has already been apparent at the Farmer’s Market at the county fairgrounds.

“There is noticeably less out there,” said Emilia Ramirez, an employee of the Orange County Farm Bureau who recently visited the market. “The color and taste is different” because growers have had to salvage marketable produce just shy of ripeness, she said.

Most of the fields have been cleared of moldy berries and growers are now preparing for peak season harvests.