Farmers Fear Trade Agreement : Agriculture: They could find it hard to compete with Mexican exports, officials say. But not everyone is worried.

Ventura County growers said Thursday that they expect to feel the competitive pinch from farmers south of the border if a proposed North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect.

“I don’t expect a big bang at first, but we might see some encroachment in our market share over the long term,” said Rob Brokaw, vice president of Brokaw Nursery in Saticoy.

Brokaw, who serves on the California Farm Bureau Federation’s board of directors, said local farmers are planning to analyze the agreement in coming weeks. The agreement must still be ratified by Congress and the legislatures of Canada and Mexico.

As proposed, it would gradually remove import duties on many farm products while cutting inspections and government red tape.

About 250 California farm products would be affected by the agreement, a state farm bureau spokeswoman said.

Some growers fear that the elimination of protective barriers could hurt their competitive edge. Farmers whose crops are vulnerable to an influx of cheaper commodities, such as strawberries and vegetables, would be the first to feel the crunch, Brokaw said.

“Those are the crops which Mexico can gear up to produce quickly,” he said.

Bolstered by the lemon and strawberry harvests, Ventura County produced a $909-million crop last year, the largest in local history. Agriculture is still the largest industry in the county.

But the high cost of operating farms in Ventura County adds to the prices consumers see at the produce stands and hurts growers’ ability to compete, county Agricultural Commissioner W. Earl McPhail said.

“Because of the cost of labor, land and water, we’re going to be at a distinct disadvantage,” he said. “I can’t see any benefits for us (in the agreement) unless we’re producing at a time of year they’re not.”

Ventura County’s dwindling tomato harvest in recent years dramatizes how competition from Mexico can affect local crops, growers said.

“There used to be hundreds of acres of tomatoes here a few years ago,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “That’s all gone now.”

The loss of the harvest has also meant lost jobs. When Oxnard Frozen Food shut down its processing plant several years ago, it took 1,100 jobs with it, Laird said.

Tariffs will be eliminated in phases spanning 15 to 20 years, giving U. S. producers enough time to adapt to the influx of cheaper farm goods, said Cherie Wattee, international trade specialist for the state farm bureau federation.

That is no consolation to growers who fear that the agreement could remove the barriers keeping out imported fruit infested with insects and diseases.

Avocado growers are worried that a quarantine on fresh avocados from Mexico may be lifted, officials said. Growers said a worm called a seed weevil infests Mexican avocados, and imported supplies could spread the pest to one of the county’s biggest crops.

“Avocado growers are very concerned about keeping the seed weevil where it belongs--in Mexico,” Laird said.

Despite the fears, farmers acknowledge that the agreement would open opportunities for export.

Jana Goldsworthy, executive director of California Central Coast World Trade Center in Oxnard, said the creation of a free-trade zone would open an untapped market.

Canada and Mexico are the largest and second-largest providers of agricultural imports to the United States. And Mexico is the third-largest customer for U. S. farm products.

“They are buying a lot of agricultural products from us, and the increased trade could be positive for our growers,” she said.

Not all county farmers were pessimistic about the proposed agreement. One Oxnard vegetable grower said he sees the agreement as a chance to expand markets for products traditionally imported into the United States.

“If Mexico relaxes some of the barriers going into their country, I can see times of year where we could ship products down there,” said Tom Deardorff, president of Deardorff-Jackson Co.

Several years ago, Deardorff-Jackson formed a partnership with Mexican growers and distributed their tomatoes to U. S. buyers.

With lower tariffs, Deardorff said, “we may end up shipping some products that way too, more than we have in the past.”

High labor costs were a factor in Boskovich Farms’ decision to move some of its labor-intensive crops to farms in Mexico 13 years ago, said Joe Boskovich, vice president of marketing. Boskovich still raises strawberries and vegetables on about 2,000 acres in Ventura County.

“We’re concerned about expanding acreage in Mexico on items we grow domestically, but we believe we can compete,” Boskovich said. “We pay a substantial amount of duties, so we’re excited about having them lifted.”

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