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Citrus Growers Jump the Gun

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Quotas limiting sales of navel oranges are still in effect until midnight tonight--and until midnight Saturday for lemons--but that doesn’t seem to dampen the spirits, or slow the picking and packing, of many of the state’s independent citrus growers and shippers.

“We’re law-abiding citizens and we don’t like to violate the law. But we feel an obligation to fill the orders our customers are giving us,” said citrus grower, packer and shipper Don Johnston.

Johnston, whose Johnston Farms in Edison packs oranges grown on about 800 acres in the Bakersfield area, said that many shippers have disregarded quotas since Dec. 14. That’s when the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it was suspending, for the rest of this season, the marketing order system that since 1937 has set weekly controls on how many Arizona- and California-grown navel oranges and lemons can be sold.

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On Dec. 17, a federal District Court judge imposed a temporary restraining order that kept the Agriculture Department from lifting the quotas. But the judge lifted the restraining order on Tuesday, saying the Sunkist growers cooperative and other proponents of the quota system had failed to prove they would be irreparably harmed by the agency’s decision.

Growers such as Johnston, who supported suspending the quotas, say that the sooner the marketplace is free of controls, the sooner consumers will benefit. They contend that removing the quotas will put more fresh oranges and lemons in the grocery stores and that, eventually, prices will decline.

Daniel Haley, administrator of the USDA’s agricultural marketing service, said Wednesday that, since the quotas are still in effect, the department will consider prosecuting shippers who disregard them. But several growers questioned how diligent the government would be in going after violators.

Regardless of the quotas, supplies of fresh oranges and lemons have been kept limited in recent days by heavy rains that hampered harvests in the Central Valley. Also, growers and shippers say they need a few weeks to gear up for a system without quotas.

Chris Stambach owns about 10 acres of citrus groves in Orosi in Tulare County. A member of the Sunkist growers cooperative--and an opponent of lifting the controls--Stambach worries about getting packers and shippers to tend to his small lemon crop after Saturday. With the quotas, he said, he was on a more even footing with large growers. Now, he said, “the big guys are going to get . . . their own fruit off the tree and sell it first, then maybe they’ll take care of the little guy.”

Stambach said he doubts that markets will pass savings to the consumer. The Agriculture Department said at the end of last season--when it suspended the quotas--that prices went down but then returned to previous levels.

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Both sides agree that more fresh fruit will become available. Johnston said that under the marketing order system, nearly 30% of this year’s huge crop of nearly 3.8 billion pounds of oranges was destined to be turned into cattle feed, juiced or left to rot. He said independents are hoping that, with the quotas lifted, they can eliminate half that waste.

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