CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Homes on the Range : Some Fresno residents talk of development as low crop prices, the drought and reform of the Central Valley Project have led to a fickle year in the nation’s richest farm county.
With all the talk here of vineyards sprouting L.A.-style mini-malls and of fig orchards succumbing to subdivisions, you would think a farm equipment show would be a celebration of things past, an exhibition of museum-piece tractors, spray rigs and mechanical harvesters.
After all, buying farm equipment is an investment in the future. But the future of California’s great agricultural heartland--the real estate mantra drones ceaselessly--is homes, homes, homes.
Didn’t the local newspaper, the Fresno Bee, recently drop its Sunday farm section in favor of more diverse business news? Didn’t voters in Stanislaus County defeat a farmland preservation measure this month by more than 2 to 1?
But if big, bad, rapacious Los Angeles has marched metaphorically up and over the mountain, Reedley farmer Harry Berberian believes that will be years--if ever--before a developer drops a retirement check in his hand.
So, in the interim, he has come to the AgFresno Farm Equipment Exposition at the fairgrounds in search of a machine to shred orchard prunings. His 79-year-old Uncle Ara, eagle-eyed patriarch of the Berberian clan, takes in his nephew’s every move with wariness.
“I’m progressive,” said 38-year-old Harry. “Uncle Ara is conservative. I’m the new world. He’s the old. I say: ‘Yes,’ let’s buy.’ He says: ‘No, let’s wait.’ ”
Equivocation is as good a theme as any at this year’s show, the 10th annual. Commodity by commodity, this was a fickle year in the nation’s richest farm county.
Consider the Thompson Seedless, the most versatile of grapes. Those who sold to wineries made out big. Those who chased the jackpot of past years--the table grape market--went bust. Those who took the middle road--raisins--pinched a small profit.
But there are deeper reasons why this year’s exposition, the biggest and best attended, feels skittish.
From Bakersfield north, California has entered its seventh year of drought. Heavy rains last month accomplished little in the way of snowpack, which replenishes the vast lake beneath the San Joaquin Valley each spring. In some places, the aquifer has dropped 50 feet in a single year as farmers have sunk their straws ever deeper.
Compounding the drought, farmers groan, is the recent congressional reform of the Central Valley Project, the great hydraulic system that shunts water from the wet north to the parched central and southern sections of the state.
Farmers are bitter about losing as much as 20% of their imported water to salmon and Southern California cities. Although the law will not take effect for five years, it is the loss of political clout implicit in President Bush’s October signature that bruises today.
“The CVP reform is just the beginning of the farmer losing water to the city,” said spray-rig maker Art Noroian. “That’s the history of L.A. Once the tap is opened, it never shuts off.”
Inside the cavernous exhibit halls, promoters from all over the state pitch products promising to extend good water, reclaim bad water, turn wet water wetter. John Wright said his Electro Static Precipitator, a cylinder that charges irrigation water with negative ions, performs no miracles. But he says it also happens to make the water 40% wetter, leaches deadly salt to the subsoil and fights insects, mold and mildew.
Outside the halls, purveyors in drought are making a killing. Business at Killingsworth Gear, which builds diesel-powered pumps that suck water from the ground, has jumped 15% a year during the record dry spell.
In the face of rising electrical costs, the diesel rigs are considered a bargain even though they cost $33,000 a piece and last only 20,000 hours. They draw 2,500 gallons of precious drink each minute.
“The cost is a drop in the bucket when the only other choice for a farmer is leaving his land unplanted,” said Kim Sullivan, a salesman for Killingsworth. “We do 30% of our business at this show.”
More than anything, AgFresno is a tractor exhibit. The Big Three--John Deere, Ford and Massey-Ferguson--display their behemoths side by side down the fair’s midway. Farmers have long regarded John Deere nonpareil, Ford a distant second and Massey-Ferguson a bargain third. But that too has changed in tougher times.
“We’re still the Mercedes of tractors and Mercedes don’t sell so well in recession years,” said John Deere salesman Sam Pallesi. More than Ford, more than Massey-Ferguson, John Deere is a barometer of good times and bad.
“In the ‘70s, when the growers were selling peaches for $6 a box, I was selling 50 and 60 tractors a year. In the ‘90s, they’re still selling peaches for $6 a box and I’m lucky if I sell 15 to 20 tractors,” Pallesi said.
Vern Conrad, who farms 100 acres of tree fruit in Reedley, said low prices--coupled with increased labor and pesticide costs and government regulation--give farmers plenty of reason to sell out to developers.
The issue is close to home for Conrad. He is a member of the County Board of Supervisors that has consistently voted to turn prime farmland into cookie-cutter housing tracts.
Conrad said the nine cities in his district are all gung-ho to grow. It would be political suicide, he says, to stand in their way.
Privately, he favors holding development to a demarcation line. Farmers inside the line who sell out to developers should contribute to a kitty for farmers whose land is in the greenbelt.
“We have to find a way to save our farmland,” Conrad said.
For this valley not to go the way of Los Angeles, it will take more farmers like the Berberians of Reedley--more farmers who are willing to be both forward-looking and cautious.
With innovative nephew Harry pushing traditional Uncle Ara, they have added to their vineyards specialty crops such as cherries, Asian grapefruit and white-fleshed peaches.
“By being diversified, we’ll never pay off the ranch in one year,” says Harry. “But we’ll never lose our butts either.”
